Paypal, life saver or tool of the ill willed?

[icachum2]

I'm considering switching my customer from conventional credit card swipe to paypal, so i check out ripoffreport.com and it seems there's plenty of reports of unhappy buyers and sellers getting ripped off in one way or another. Also, some claim Paypal has taken money from their accounts for no legitamate reason, then are not able to contact Paypal to resolve the matter. Do you have any ill experiences with Paypal? Is it safe?

[candyman]

My family uses paypal quite often, we buy online a lot. So far whenever we get ripped off it is usually because of other sites and ebay. Paypal has helped us during every situation and made sure we got our money back. You just have to make sure you call them for complaints during the day, they have offshore companies take their calls during the evening and it is very hard to understand them. We use paypal and still do. I hope this helps out.

[DarkShadow]

Our web portal has the traditional online Point of Sale transactions embedded in our store that accepts credit cards, and for those that don't have that method of payment, we've also embedded a PayPal option for payment.

The reality of the matter is, fraud will exist in ANY medium of transaction, and you as the company can do nothing about it. I'll pose this scenario:

Some guy in Eastern Europe blasts emails to a million people, pretending to be PayPal customer service, asking for users' personal information. Unfortunately, there are idiots that will respond, and a few moments later, some hacker has their PayPal login, which is linked to a legitimate banking account.

We do online services; in other words, we don't 'ship' out anything when a user purchases services on our site. So, we'll process the order since we have no clue it is a fraudulent purchase. (This is equivalent to somebody having your ATM card and your pin number. When the crook goes to the ATM, the machine will not magically see that person using it is not the rightful owner of the card; he has the card, and he has the PIN, he MUST be the owner)

1 time outta 10, the idiot who gave out their information will notice the charge, and will either call us directly a few days later, or request a refund via PayPal. If it falls into the window where we can issue the idiot who let their personal info out a refund, there is very little hassle. The refund is processed, and everybody goes on their merry way.

9 times outta 10 though, we'll get a PayPal alert MONTHS after the order was originally procssed, letting us know that a payment was made via fraudulent means. The idiot won't notify us directly, won't notify anybody in time, and by the time they do contact PayPal, our company is hit what is called a "Chargeback."

In essence, because some moron gave out their PayPal info and got funds taken out of their account AND they are irresponsible enough to not contact anybody in the appropriate amount of time, not only does our company have to refund the original purchase price, we are hit with a $10 chargeback fee from PayPal.

All because some moron responded to an email giving out his personal information.

•

Now, here's the kicker.

This happens more often on our regular credit card transactions than it does on PayPal.

The exact same thing happens as I described above, but this time, the chargeback fee for the credit cards is $25, aside from the purchase amount.


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Now, as a user of PayPal for online transactions, I have yet to experience any problems with it. Aside from the service fee, which is to be expected, it has been smooth sailing when using it as a method of payment.

(Maybe that's because I don't respond to emails asking for my personal information.)

[HEMAN]

Paypal fees are kinda high. You can get an account with Quickbooks or GoogleCheckout or even Authorize.net for under 2% charge for transactions. Lots of options out there. Rates differ between keyed in transacations vs physical swipes as well.

[NoHo ART]

i been using paypal for ebay and online gaming for the passed 9 years lol
only down side with paypal is every time someone pays you they get a nice cut. but then again if you happen to get ripped off paypal makes sure you get your money back.
overall im happy with paypal you get what you pay for.

[Jig-Guy]

PayPal works for me. I have been buying and selling and using PayPal since 2006, never had any problems.

[JSAUCE818]

Paypal fees are kinda high. You can get an account with Quickbooks or GoogleCheckout or even Authorize.net for under 2% charge for transactions. Lots of options out there. Rates differ between keyed in transacations vs physical swipes as well.
i work for QuickBooks, and yes you are right, rates do differ.

Qualified Rate-Swiped Transactions, always gonna be lower cause card is present.

Mid Qualified Rate- Are all manually entered or web trans. that are regular credit cards.(VISA,MC,DISCOVER)

NON-Qualified Rate- Business,Corporate,Foreign,Rewards, and Goverment Cards, this rate will always be the highest since they are more at risk.

You can also get set up with a auth.net account through us. (you can use auth.net as a gateway, and us as a processor)

[jlgarciaiii22]

From my own personal experience PAYPAL is only good for the buyer.... The seller gets raped with fees, along with buyer scams which they are protected thru paypal. Haven't used my account in over 3 years, my account had a balance of $2 and some change.... a year later just check my account out of curiosity! Negative account balance of $157.67 due to some customer who purchased Baseball cards from me and claims never recieved them. I had delivery confirmation # but not knowing there was a dispute never provided information. They deducted $157.67 from my bank even though i checked and the items were delivered!!!!!! Would not refund my money cause the transaction was over 90 days!