Sending a cheque off costs *me* time and money too. As does accepting a cheque for many businesses. Most ebay sellers make a profit on the postage/packing charges anyway. It's no big deal to absorb any Paypal etc charges in those.
On the contrary, your credit card company will give you contact details of the merchant for any transaction on your credit card, on request. I've had to do this when transactions have appeared with unrecognisable names and I've had to phone up ABC Widgets Ltd and ask them if they are also trading as Magic Widgets.
Owain
NatWest charge Paypal transfers as cash advances, with the percentage and no interest free period.
Owain
I can't agree there I'm afraid: our family has conducted hundreds of ebay transactions over the years, both buying and selling, and a 'good' transaction paid for by Paypal - which does account for the vast majority of ours - really is totally smooth and very quick and easy.
For buying relatively low-value, possibly hard-to-obtain items I don't know of anything better; and have made/saved so much (in terms of cash and time) over the years that when the odd one goes bad (as it recently did with me as mentioned elsewhere in this thread) that I'm prepared to swallow that).
But you certainly wouldn't catch me buying something like a new laptop through ebay...!
David
In message , at 10:43:44 on Fri, 28 Dec 2007, Tim Ward remarked:
I stumbled over this just now:
14.1 Contact PayPal First. If a dispute arises between you and PayPal, our goal is to learn about and address your concerns and, if we are unable to do so to your satisfaction, to provide you with a neutral and cost effective means of resolving the dispute quickly. Disputes between you and PayPal regarding our Services may be reported to Customer Service online through the PayPal Help Center at any time, or by calling the customer support telephone number located on the PayPal WebSite(s).
14.2 Financial Ombudsman Service. You may contact the UK Financial Ombudsman Service and escalate a claim against us. You may obtain information regarding the Financial Ombudsman Service atand: PayPal (Europe) S.à r.l. & Cie, S.C.A. 5th Floor 22-24 Boulevard Royal L-2449, Luxembourg (+352) 27 302 143
In message , at
11:32:43 >What sort of problem (I'm having difficulty parsing that)? It always thinks the seller is in the wrong, or never thinks the seller is in the wrong?
Oh I have, I assure you.
Of course there have to be conditions. Otherwise people could (for example) sell one another things, claim they haven't arrived and milk money out of the system as a result of making claims.
It's a bit like an insurance claim - ever read an insurance policy in detail, and discovered exactly what it does and doesn't cover (rather than what you fondly believe it might)?
That's a condition of the *Seller* Protection scheme, which pays compensation to *sellers* if a rogue customer claims something didn't arrive and does a false credit card chargeback.
eg: "If the buyer claims that the item was not received, you must be able to prove that the item was delivered by providing PayPal with appropriate proof of dispatch to the buyer?s specified address."
Which takes a bit of a swerve in the middle. Interestingly, if you buy postage using PayPal's own system it automatically prints a "proof of posting" certificate for you to take to the Post Office (even if delivery is by ordinary post). And of course if you post something using the "Recorded Signed for" service, then you automatically get a proof of posting [the slip with the tracking number on it], as well as being able to track it *online* including an electronic "proof of delivery".
And then there are the anti-weasel words:
"For transactions involving an amount equal to £150 GBP or more [so not required below £150m - ed ], you must provide a proof of receipt that was signed or otherwise acknowledged by the buyer."
Maybe that's old information from before they had the online tracking for "Recorded Signed for". "Recorded Delivery" service, like "Registered Letter" doesn't exist any more.
That may be true, but isn't of itself a condemnation Paypal. Remembering also that the stuff above that you were complaining about is apparently regarding *Seller* protection!
So - if you have a Paypal account, but it's empty when you make a purchase so the full amount of an above £100 purchase gets pulled from your credit card, does that give you buyer's protection from your credit card (even though the transaction still goes through your Paypal account?
What's the benefit of using a credit card dedicated to PayPal? (Wondering whether I should have one, that's all, as opposed to the 'online only' credit card I use now.)
David
A 'good' transaction carried out by any means would be "totally smooth and very quick and easy".
What matters is when things go wrong.
Why haven't you tried uk.people.consumers.ebay ? Granted it's pretty seller-biased, but worth a shot surely.
David
Agreed - but Andy seemed to be saying the opposite.
And I do find the whole ebay thing extremely straightforward for lots of stuff, items that I really don't know where else I'd go to buy or sell with anything remotely approaching 'convenience'.
For sure...
David
But your CC deals with paypal. Not the person who gets the money off them.
Apparently (according to answers I got in a paypal forum), that's only required to setup the paypal account and is used as proof of identity for anti-money-laundering purposes. Once the paypal account is setup, you can cancel the DD.
In message , at 12:33:30 on Fri, 28 Dec 2007, Andy Hall remarked:
A non-sequitur. The competition authorities don't restrict themselves to these mythical "essential" facilities - although you might argue that Universal Service Obligations come fairly close. But no-one claimed that there should be a USO placed on eBay. There isn't even one on Broadband Internet Access (yet).
Just the same with items bought from traders online, even many of the item bought from eBay (via "buy it now", "second chance" and if the auction starting price is almost as much as you'd have expected to pay anyway).
Indeed. Don't buy off non-traders in online auctions unless you are aware that it's pretty much just a car boot sale online (with the potential for some payment protection thrown in if you don't pay cash).
Not since they moved out of the UK in July this year. It now comes under Luxemburg financial law.
A colleage had to take them to court to get his money back, but that was whilst they were still under UK law.
In message , at 12:37:23 on Fri, 28 Dec 2007, Tim Ward remarked:
In a pretty dumb way, if all the correspondence ends up being sent to
*you* though!
Unless this person has done something wrong (see my other postings for some possible ways to determine that) it doesn't seem likely that you could cause them sufficient inconvenience that they'd stop future attempts.
I'd still be interested in pursuing the eBay angle - for example can they be persuaded to freeze the account on the grounds that the corporate details are clearly wrong (after all, one of the complaints about eBay is apparently they freeze things at the drop of a hat).
I can't think of that many items that I buy that would fall into that category though. I certainly use on-line traders quite a bit, but don't tend to find things that I would want on Ebay.
Right. It's the cost/time/risk equation.
To me, the most expensive component is time, and so I prefer to mitigate risk. Ebay transactions significantly increase the risk element and if something goes wrong, the decision becomes:
- Take action and chase after the supplier. Very time consuming and delay
- Write off the transaction. Then one has to source the item again, more time and cost, or forget the whole thing, although if it's the latter, then what was the reason to buy in the first place?
That's really my point.
For the most part, I don't want to have to get into an argument/recovery game with individuals over buying and selling, especially of small things.
I would rather buy the small things from somewhere that I can get redress quickly and easily. For example, the M&S shoes that I ordered immediately before Christmas arrived this morning. The size is way too small - frankly undersized against the nominal. Therefore they are going back. That happens by ticking a box on the delivery note, sticking a peel off label on the packaging and resealing it. Then it's Freepost at the post office or drop it into a store if I wanted. Short of their arranging collection, that's pretty good service. I don't really care if it costs a little more than the same from an Ebay supplier. Two minutes, problem solved. Next thing.
In message , at 13:50:09 on Fri, 28 Dec 2007, Lobster remarked:
The PayPal T&C are full of references to CC chargebacks, and so on. So it seems quite likely this is the case. I'd be interested to hear peoples' success/failure stories on this particular issue though.
Good question. I asked it earlier.
In message , at 14:38:13 on Fri, 28 Dec 2007, Mogga remarked:
Indeed so. And this is what makes the situation less than 100% clear.
In message , at 14:11:46 on Fri, 28 Dec 2007, Lobster remarked:
Yes, I think I will. Thanks for the pointer.
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