Paypal on watchdog.

Lawrenzini said:
Stop people listing/buying new items till they have left feedback.

It wouldn't work. You don't leave feedback until the goods have arrived, which can take up to two weeks. So far, I've bought 3 things on Ebay this week - with your system, I could only have bought 1.

Lawrenzini said:
Agreed it is sometimes hard to spot scams, but sometimes they are just obvious. Like a 500quid thing listed for 90 in china...

Fools are easily parted from their money, and that happens everywhere. Only a couple of weeks ago, a couple of blokes were flogging laptop PC's at only £50 a time. Buyers would be led to the nearest cash machine, and after they'd paid their £50, they got a sealed cardboard box. When the buyers eventually got the boxes open to reveal some scrap metal wrapped in newspaper, the sellers were long gone. Old proverb - "If something appears too good to be true, it invariably is".

Lawrenzini said:
A despsoit doesn't penalise sellers, it's a deposit, you can get it back.

Yes, but as we already know, sellers aren't always the problem.

Lawrenzini said:
The guy who recently got sent down for selling goods he didn't have did it twice, was convicted, came outta prison and did it again. He registered under his real name both times. They didn't stop him registering the second time... madness.

I daresay that with millions of users, many registered users have the same name. If someone is intent on working a scam, they're very hard to stop.

Lawrenzini said:
If you are a seller and you're registered for Vat then you should incoperate that into your costs by either using a reserve, factoring it into a buy it now or by having a higher starting price.

You have to charge VAT on the selling price AND the carriage. How can you factor it in, if you don't know what the final selling price is ? If you charge too much or too little VAT, you are breaking the law. Believe me, the Customs & Excise are not people to mess around with.
 
I'm the director of a software company who provide software for eBay users to automatically handle the VAT calculations in their accounts software for items they sell on eBay.

They'll put an item on eBay and accept the fact that the final selling price is, assuming that the buyer is in the UK, is, for accounting purposes, the gross price of the item.

So, for example, if they sell an item for £99.00 is goes through their accounts as Net £84.26 and Vat of £14.74. If the buyer is outside the UK, then no Vat is chanrged and the transaction goes through their accounts as a Net of £100 with Vat of zero.

John
 
johndon said:
So, for example, if they sell an item for £99.00 is goes through their accounts as Net £84.26 and Vat of £14.74. If the buyer is outside the UK, then no Vat is chanrged and the transaction goes through their accounts as a Net of £100 with Vat of zero.

John

So your software adds £1.00 to the gross selling price to end up with a net £100? :devil:
 
Fortunately, it adds up correctly, unlike me :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

John
 
So it is. Thanks for that.

I think all this squabbling over "intellectual rights" does nothing to move technology forward. Like the squabble over the waste paper bin in Windows, and the inventors of the GIF (or was it the JPEG?) threatening to charge people a fee to use it. After all, if the inventor of the auction was still alive, would there be no auctioneers now, because we would be breaching his intellectual rights ?
 
One of the problems, particularly in the US, is the fact that you seem to be able to get a patent for almost anything these days and a lot of them are so obscure in what appears to be an attempt to catch almost anyone out.

As I've got a vested interest in how eBay do, I've had a quick look at the patent involved. Now I'm no patent expert but, depending on how you read it, it seems to cover pretty much any online auction trading...

John
 
They were talking about this on the news (I think it was BBC news) and a guy working for the company sueing Ebay was being interviewed. They asked him if they'd be prepared to "rent" their system to other companies such as Ebay and the guy wasn't even remotely interested in the prospect, he kept saying "We are in direct competition with Ebay..." so you can see that all they want is to shut down the competition.
 
Thing is with this case is that the company with the patent has no intention of ever using it, they say they are happy to license the technology to eBay but will never use it themselves.

John
 
The problem with Paypal is that they are the judge, jury and executioner.

They make it very easy to use and all of the protection is for the buyer. If something goes missing in the post and you can't provide tracking information irrespective of whether the customer has paid for it or not the customer will get their money back every single time which is so wrong. This has happened to me many times.

I had one really bad experience with Paypal a few years ago. I was going to Australia for 3 months and I had not taken any money out of Paypal for about three months, this was going to be my spending money, I had just under £9k in there. I got an email from Paypal saying "Your account has been linked to another account and you must provide full identification to restore access, in the meanwhile all access to your funds is frozen" So I call them up and go absolutely (I am flying out in six days) mental. Speaking to Paypal on the phone is a battle (back then the UK section was still based in the States and not Ireland as it is now) and all they could answer back with was a pre-determined response like some mindless automoton. I had to fax through to them: -

5 Proofs of address (yep five)
My birth certificate
Passport
Verify the three bank accounts I had setup with them.

Every time I called up they would ask for something else. In the end they were saying that they would have to keep the money for 180 days to see if someone made a claim against my account, if not I could have it after the 180 days.

In the end I got my old man who is a lawyer to call them up and they eventually released the funds. They never said anything about whose account it was meant to be linked to. From start to finish it took 6 weeks to get my money back.
 
I've had 2 expereinces with paypal when I've asked for some money back...

one was when I ordered a cd that turned out didn't exist and I got my tenner back, but also I ordered a used laserpod and it broke down within 10 hours - the seller told me where to go and paypal did the same...now I just send messages to potenial buys of his products informing them what a :censored: he is...which reminds me... :D
 
PoochJD said:
Hi,

For me, I won't use PayPal because I don't trust them. I'd much rather pay by postal order, (or a traveller's cheque) which have a tiny bit of security attached to them, so if a seller decides to cash them, then not send me the goods, or send me an item that isn't as described, then I can go back to the travel agent or post office, and get them to give me a refund, and put in a form to the police that the PO or traveller's cheque has been fraudulently cashed!

Pooch

I take the opposite view!

My very first purchase on eBay (earlier this year) I paid by cheque (seller didn't offer PayPal). After a few days of winning the item, I emailed the seller and asked when I could expect to receive the item (a cassette box set costing me about £15). I received a very rude reply saying when he got his money I would get my tapes. I told him that I had checked my bank account on the net and the cheque had been presented. - he replied he had not received it - I said that if hadn't cashed it someone else had and I was informing the police; at the same time I got a copy of the cheque from the bank - after sending a copy of this to him and another to eBay to whom I had now complained - I got my tapes. Afterwards, I read the sellers FB and found I was not the first to be nearly duped by this liar and made eBay aware of him.

I have since purchased about 20 items (and sold one) using PayPal and I will ONLY buy using this method from now on! As I've said on another thread in these forums, do your homework on the price and read ALL the feedback on seller before you commit! :nono:

Terry
 
i've used ebay about 20 times, most of which with paypal, and have had no problems
 
You are never going to stop people using Ebay or PayPal, so i htought this might be a good idea (peoples Ebay IDs have bee nchanged to protect their identity):

Buyer = highlander1
Seller = mymum57

mymum57 sells Highlander1 a laptop for £100
Highlander1 sends mymum57 £100 via PayPal, which sits there in PayPal (but is out of their account).
mymum57 cannot get the money yet.
highlander1 received the laptop and says to PayPal "i have the laptop, release
the funds".
mymum57 then logs in and gets the money.
if Highlander1 does not receive the laptop then they tell PayPal that this is the case.
PayPal then contact mymum57 and it gets sorted via the Ebay complaints division (seeing as PayPal are owned by Ebay).

The only thing people wil lsay is that you can scam it that you can say you never received the item in the first place, but this is just like it is now, where people can easily turn around and say that they have sent it, but why would they, when the money has gone from their account, and the buyer cnnot get the money till both parties agree it has been sent.

This would also promote recorded delivery, which helps ALOT in tracking and proving you sent stuff.
 
TeeDoubleUDee said:
I take the opposite view!

My very first purchase on eBay (earlier this year) I paid by cheque (seller didn't offer PayPal). After a few days of winning the item, I emailed the seller and asked when I could expect to receive the item (a cassette box set costing me about £15). I received a very rude reply saying when he got his money I would get my tapes. I told him that I had checked my bank account on the net and the cheque had been presented. - he replied he had not received it - I said that if hadn't cashed it someone else had and I was informing the police; at the same time I got a copy of the cheque from the bank - after sending a copy of this to him and another to eBay to whom I had now complained - I got my tapes. Afterwards, I read the sellers FB and found I was not the first to be nearly duped by this liar and made eBay aware of him.

I have since purchased about 20 items (and sold one) using PayPal and I will ONLY buy using this method from now on! As I've said on another thread in these forums, do your homework on the price and read ALL the feedback on seller before you commit! :nono:

Terry

The thing is it could well happen that you pay with Paypal (on a website other than Ebay only), the seller takes the money out of his account, doesn't send the item, you complain to Paypal, they tell you you've won on your complaint but they can't give you your cash back because the seller's account is empty.
So even though you've won, you've got no money and no item.

Luckily on Ebay you have a bit more protection.
 
Lawrenzini said:
I think that virtually everyone who uses ebay has either been scammed or someone has tried it on with them. It is only a matter of time before someone has a better idea and everyone moves to that.

Swopex is pretty good for DVDs and games. You can list your items on there for free but buyers have to pay a 99p fee for each sale. Thing is your money is held in escrow until your item arrives at which point you either tell them to release the money or if there is a problem send the item to swopex and once they've confirmed it's damaged/illegal copy they'll give you a refund including the 99p fee and then send a warning to the seller and I think they charge them 99p administration charges.

Worked pretty well for me so far and whilst I have been sent an unplayable DVD I did get a refund very quickly.

EDIT: The other good thing is that the price you see includes postage so there are no nasty suprises.
 
Hi all,

I joined this forum after looking for advice on a paypal issue I am having. (It sounds like I am one of one complaints recieved a day.)

I have sold 20 items on paypal last week, I have never sold but have brought 300 items on eBay, most of which through paypal. One thing that has never been done, as it was not strictly required, was to confirm my email address. It does not need to be done but does for sales. So I clicked the confirm email address button. It did not work and I recieved no email.

I tried a multiple number of times and the same happened - no email. I recieved the payments totally £300 pound, well technically they are not in my account as they can only be accepted if I confirm my email address.

I have rang the call centre 4 times and they cant help me. In the end a manager concluded there was a 'system error' on the email address in paypal and it cant be used. The only way around it - they tell me - is to get all these people to cancel payments and send them to a new paypal account with a new email address.

In theory this is great, however all people have their items as I posted when the payment first appeared and when the payments started getting cancelled many (the majority) did not resend - good old human nature!

Obviously what the eBay customers have done it wrong. However Paypal caused these problems and they were aware this would cause this to happen.

It seems I am going to have to take 13 people to caught for a few hundered pound. The small claims applications in total will cost £650!!! I cannot afford that!

Are paypal in anyway responsible and are they regulated by the FSA - who do I complain too?

Any advice will be welcomed!

Luke
 
So called Paypal protection is a joke.

Cant' stand the company but I take thousands a month with them from one of my firms , so many damm people prefer to pay via Paypal that I can't remove it.

Hate putting money in their pockets.
 
Today there was an attempt to put through two fraudulent transactions on my Paypal account, totalling $87 (obviously from the US, but who knows).

Patrick Schaufuss
and
Candelaria Matias


How did I know about these?

Believe it or not, I got a phone call from Paypal in the US asking if I had authorised these unusual transactions. I said no, of course, and they immediately took action to sort it out.

I thought that was quite neat for them to pick it up. However, it begs the question, how did an unauthorised transaction go through against my account? :suicide:
 
Today there was an attempt to put through two fraudulent transactions on my Paypal account, totalling $87 (obviously from the US, but who knows).

Patrick Schaufuss
and
Candelaria Matias


How did I know about these?

Believe it or not, I got a phone call from Paypal in the US asking if I had authorised these unusual transactions. I said no, of course, and they immediately took action to sort it out.

I thought that was quite neat for them to pick it up. However, it begs the question, how did an unauthorised transaction go through against my account? :suicide:

I don't have an answer to your question, but assuming you haven't already done so, I would recommend changing your paypal password and any associated ones as a precaution
 
Yeah, I had to go through a new verification with Paypal and I've changed the password. I made sure it was actually the Paypal site and not some "ph"ishing site!
 

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