I hate PayPal, but am stuck with them

[g0dM@n]

I have to give you the "silver lining" speech here. At the end of the day, it sucks a LOT, but at least it was a relatively small amount of money.

I ran a kinda quasi home business doing some buying and selling of guitars. Some months, I made a killing. It was literally "free" money for me at the time. The problem was when I started doing international orders. Ironically, people in australia and england pay dramatically more than americans, so I opened business to overseas in certain markets. My first international sale was to a gentleman in norway (Ibanez RG2120x, bought for ~700, sold it for 1800). It went fabulous. My next sale was a pink 1992 EBMM EVH (bought it for 300$... which was absurd. Right place right time. Sold it for 2700$). A few more small ones here and there... and then... I had a wonderful, honest, fantastic buyer from australia hit me up about shipping, as he was planning on buying multiple guitars from me... So I said "yeah, i will combine shipping".

He bought and paid for them all.

He bought->
Ibanez J- Custom RG8570
EBMM Petrucci 7 BFR
Fender Deluxe Strat
Ibanez JS1
Ibanez JEM777VSK
Ibanez JEM77GMC

Now, I didn't buy these for personal use. These were out of pocket expenses to resell and make a profit. The REAL fun part was when i shipped them, australia doesn't have tracking like we do over here. So I Shipped them (~400$...)... and shipping showed them reaching australia. From there, they have their own system, and thats how it goes. About a week after I ship them, I check out the shipping info, and it shows it reaching australia pretty quickly. I was pretty happy. Until this wonderful man puts in a paypal claim immediately claiming to never have received them. He didn't even message me. I checked, triple checked. I took pictures of EVERYTHING, including my receipts and our chat messages, and immediately uploaded them. Paypal took almost no time in locking my account. About a week later, and lots of angry phone calls, they refunded him his money. That... was a lot of money. The kicker here... I STILL had to pay the ebay fees (10% lol), the paypal fees (5%), lost shipping, because the shipping manifests showed country of origin receipt, USPS would not reimburse me for the insurance claim, out the guitars, and out the sale money.

So yeah. I don't use paypal too much anymore (minus small or convenient payments[ thanks dad! lol]). I will not give paypal a dime until the day I die.

Those individuals need a blanket party, BADLY. I don't necessarily HATE people for small thefts. I've been young and stupid and have done my fair share of unfair crap, but these losers who bleed money out of honest folks are the real scumbags. PayPal, too. They have built an insanely stupid system. The system can be great, but what they are doing is saving tons of money by not working out situations THE RIGHT WAY. By their "automated" BS system, they save hundreds of thousands by not having to pay the salary of someone who can look into it the right way... that's my guess, and I'm sure it's not inaccurate.

Any time I have an issue with PayPal, I Call them. The person on the line unwilling to help gets asked for a supervisor. If it don't work out my way the first time, I call back a day later. Be persistent, but be sure you talk to someone on the phone. Never write them. Call. Oh and same goes for e-bay, call them too. I'd call ebay first to make sure you have transactions worked out and they can tell paypal the mistakes.

Also, the buyer should have contacted you.



It is BS. This is where your firepower comes in. The buyer didn't contact you and submitted an action that was unnecessary.

Curious! ebay and or paypal did not notify you of this charge back? Generally you get a notification before they push it through.

I've totally learned the trick... yes, call, and call, and ask for a supervisor, etc. My wife often let's me take the lead even when she has issues. She's too much of a pushover when it comes to customer service.

What can you use instead of PayPal?

Amazon payments is gone for the most part... upset about that. Chase QuickPay works, but I don't know what type of protection there is.

 

[wingman99]

I just remembered I lost $300 through pay pal when I purchased a video card and did not receive the card. The person had a fictitious account at eBay so pay pal only would refund me $100 and I had to go through hell to get that. This was a long time ago back when I was using AGP 8X, pay pal had week security because they could not get the money back from him. Pay pal and eBay at the time advertised safe payment.

 

[MaddMutt]

I have initiated several disputes on ebay from items that I have purchased. I always start with the seller to see if something can be worked out. Most of the disputes were items damaged in shipment or arrived DOA. I have always found the sellers to be nice and easy to talk with but you have a few that are "You Bought It, Now It's Yours" attitude. These are the the one that I ask PP to step in and help. The best one I remember was I was trying to get a second ATI HD 4650 to crossfire. I had purchased one of the few DDR3 models and finding another one was hard. I found one for not to much and bought it. (I forgot to look and see that it was shipped from china) When I got it I ran GPU-Z to verify the card. The card actually was the DDR2 model that was all over ebay. I was mad as hell because he advertised it as the DDR3 model. I contacted the seller about the problem and received " I bought a shipment of these and was told they were the DDR3 version" sorry can't help you. In the end I kept the card as the return shipping was more that the cost of the card. After that I have been very cautious and completely read the description of the item. If I have a question about it, I ask for clarification on xx subject.

Thanks

MM