Guest Posted February 10, 2003 Share Posted February 10, 2003 Hi All, This may or may not be of any use to you, but Paypal has recently updated it's user terms and agreements which come into effect on June 4 2003 if you signed up for Paypal before 07 Feb 2003. I know a lot of osC users use Paypal and despite getting some very bad press they provide what most people think is a very useful service, esspecially if you are a small non US/Canadian based company or individual. The following is taken from the new policy and is causing me some real concern, this information is provided by Paypal and is subject to change with notice but read it yourself and make your own minds up as to wether you think you need to consider alternative options (especially if you deliver digital content): - Policy Conditions. PayPal agrees to indemnify sellers of physical goods from reversal liability resulting from a buyer's unauthorized use of a credit card and/or false claims of non-shipment of goods. This protection applies only to the sale of physical goods, and not to any non-tangible, non-physical goods or services pursuant to section 1 above. It applies to up to $5,000 per year of payments received by the seller through PayPal if the following conditions are met: 1. The seller has a U.S. Verified Business or a U.S. Verified Premier Account or a Canadian International - Verified Business or Canadian International - Verified Premier Account. Note: While International sellers outside of Canada may have a status of International - Verified, they do not qualify for and are not protected by the Seller Protection Policy and therefore may be responsible for any reversals made due to fraudulent funds 2. The seller ships to the buyer's Confirmed Address. 3. The seller can provide reasonable proof-of-shipment which can be tracked online. This documentation must show that you shipped to the Confirmed Address. (Most U.S. carrier companies offer this service, including the U.S. Postal Service.) For transactions $500 or more in value that are initiated between November 15, 2001 and April 19, 2002, and for transactions $250 or more in value that are initiated on or after April 19, 2002, the seller also needs to provide an online proof-of-receipt in the form of a signature from the recipient. Because comparable proof-of-shipment is not currently available for electronically-delivered items, we are currently unable to offer Seller Protection for digital goods and other electronically-delivered items. 4. The seller accepted a single payment from only one PayPal account for the purchase. (Multiple payments from different accounts for a single item are a fraud indicator. Sellers should not accept such payments.) 5. The seller ships to a domestic (U.S.) buyer at a U.S. address. 6. The seller cooperates in resolving disputes by responding in the following time periods: When a complaint occurs, the seller must provide complete information within 7 days of a request from PayPal. However, if PayPal is required by the credit card association to respond immediately to resolve a reversal, sellers must provide the information within 3 days. PayPal will indicate the response time required in the e-mail message sent to the seller. 7. The seller ships within 7 days of receiving payment. - If you do not qualify for the Seller Protection Policy. When you receive funds through PayPal, if the sender's transaction is reversed for any reason and you do not qualify for the Seller Protection Policy for that transaction, you will owe PayPal for the amount of the reversed transaction plus any fees imposed on PayPal as a result of the reversal. You agree to reimburse PayPal from either your PayPal account or by other means as described in Section IV.2 under "Receipt of Payments." As you can see they appear to be saying if you are an International Verified user (Non US or Canadian Based then you are not protected against chargebacks to your accout.... They have also changed the feee structre with relation to 'chargebacks' as follows: # Chargeback Settlement Fee. To cover the cost of processing chargebacks, PayPal assesses a $10 fee to sellers who are determined to be at fault for credit card payment chargebacks. (A chargeback, or reversal, occurs when a buyer rejects or reverses a charge on his or her credit card.) The $10 fee will be waived in those cases where the sellers have fulfilled all of the requirements of PayPal's Seller Protection Policy. The $10 fee will also be waived for all sellers participating in our PayPal Preferred program. The chargeback settlement fee will be assessed in the currency of the payment. The equivalent fees are: Payment Currency Settlement Fee: CAD 15 CAD EUR 11.25 EUR GBP 7 GBP JPY 1300 JPY - Membership Fees. In general, there is no fee to join PayPal. However, some users, at PayPal's discretion, may be charged a $1.95 Membership Fee. Additional information is provided in section III.1 of the User Agreement. Despite a number of attempts I have been unable to get a response from Paypal as to what this means as I said for : - International Users (Non US/Canada) - Merchants who sell digital items - The Paypal definition of the following: PayPal assesses a $10 fee to sellers who are determined to be at fault for credit card payment chargebacks. I know a large number of UK sites use Paypal and I expect that international accounts make up some of Paypals 20 million members, IMHO it seems to me that Paypal are protecting the rights of US/Canadian users at the expense of other international ones (maybe something to do with the legal challenges that Paypal is defending accross various US states) I have not had a response from Paypal but I will be keen to see what they say. I know this post is slightly non-topical but it does concern osC and e-commerce in general so I hope it doesn't get editied or removed. Regards Ed i-netmedia Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 10, 2003 Share Posted February 10, 2003 It seems to me that they are finally coming in line with current policies in place by North American Card issuers and associations. Credit card laws and rules are being strengthened over here to reduce fraudalent usage of both credit and debit cards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 10, 2003 Share Posted February 10, 2003 I understand the logic, what I dont understand is the 'if you dont like it , tough' attitude. I have been a Paypal Developer for a while and I imagine most 'mini' webmasters first experiences of e-commerce building and development used Paypal. It is sad to see that Paypal are giving people like me no option but to look elsewhere, it appears that the days of 'low cost, simple and secure' order processing and fulfilment are well and truly gone (some may argue this was always the case) Anyway just my 2 cents worth... Regards Ed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
loxly Posted February 11, 2003 Share Posted February 11, 2003 And where else will you look? I don't expect a credit card processor to pay for fraud, I would imagine there is insurance to cover this or it is a cost of doing business. I would think your low cost alternative is to only accept checks and money orders, not very realistic. Also, I think most of us are only using PayPal as one method of accepting CC payments, there are a number of similar processors now. But the fact remains that PayPal has probably the highest name recognition value. Debbie [no external urls in signatures please, kthanks] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
westkoast Posted February 12, 2003 Share Posted February 12, 2003 In my experience Paypal is great till something goes wrong.... I doesn't matter what new policies or whatever they make. Bascially if something ever goes wrong with paypal.com you're SOL. Anything they have in writing goes out the window and they just try to cover they're a$$. I've lost money several times to "verified" sellers, and have never received a cent. Then one time I sold my G4 powerbook (set off a *flag* because it was more than $2k), and they wouldn't release the money to me (and put my acct. undersome kind of suspension) untill I showed proof of shipment (which USPS doesn't do online). So, it took almost a month to get my acct. "un-frozen" and I had to fax everydocument under the sun including CA DL, utility bill, CC statements, etc, etc.....and have the buyer call them on to say he had received the package. If I ever get the chance to open a merchant acct. at reasonable cost, I'll jump on it...and tell paypal.com to go stick it. I need to read the rules more often... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
loxly Posted February 12, 2003 Share Posted February 12, 2003 If I ever get the chance to open a merchant acct. at reasonable cost, I'll jump on it...and tell paypal.com to go stick it. I think we all want to do this :) But the fact remains one of the reasons services like PayPal exists is because there aren't any inexpensive, easy to join and easy to use merchant accounts. I don't like having people go through another step in the checkout process, but because of my credit :) and other issues, I don't qualify for a full merchant account right now. As soon as I can, I will. PayPal is an option and a temporary solution, at least in my case. As such though, they know they can do pretty much whatever they want, because they are pretty much a monopoly. Debbie [no external urls in signatures please, kthanks] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ramesh Posted February 13, 2003 Share Posted February 13, 2003 Did'nt ebay buy paypal awhile ago ? For 1.5 Billion or something ? When companies take over others, is it not common for changes to be made ? At least they waited ! Special Effects / 3d + Flash Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 13, 2003 Share Posted February 13, 2003 If I ever get the chance to open a merchant acct. at reasonable cost, I'll jump on it...and tell paypal.com to go stick it. True merchant accounts from companies like Authorize.net, Echo Inc. Card Systems and Nova Information Systems. Are not as costly as you might think. We currently have an account with Nova Information Systems. The standard monthly fee is $19.95 and the discount rate for card not present transactions is something like 2.8% for Mastercard and Visa and 3.0% for American Express. For Card present transactions in the retail store, these drop to less than 2.0%. Overall it is very affordable and the company pays more in Paypal fees for less transactions than it does for Nova... You should look into it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
radders Posted February 13, 2003 Share Posted February 13, 2003 I don't find Paypal a lot cheaper than a proper merchant account but I offer it as an option because some customers seem to prefer it. What I do object to however is that they still insist that my own and my customers' addresses are unconfirmed even when all sorts of proof is given and credit cards supplied. Has anyone managed to get their address confirmed by Paypal? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XtremeCarAudio Posted February 14, 2003 Share Posted February 14, 2003 I don't find Paypal a lot cheaper than a proper merchant account but I offer it as an option because some customers seem to prefer it. What I do object to however is that they still insist that my own and my customers' addresses are unconfirmed even when all sorts of proof is given and credit cards supplied. Has anyone managed to get their address confirmed by Paypal? I have never had this problem in the 2 years I have been using the service, if the customer inputs a Credit card, and the AVS comes bakc good, then there addressed is Confirmed, this does not mean the account is Varified, these are differant status structures... and paypal is cheaper, in many ways 1. No Set up Fees (this could range form a Few hunder to a few thousand) 2> No Gateway Fees 3> No monthly minmum 4> Relitivly Low Rates, Online Rates avg 2-5%, PayPal being 2.9 is right in the middle, and if you are a PayPal Preferred member, you can get a rate ar 1.5% if you use the Cash Back Feature..... Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 14, 2003 Share Posted February 14, 2003 I don't find Paypal a lot cheaper than a proper merchant account but I offer it as an option because some customers seem to prefer it. What I do object to however is that they still insist that my own and my customers' addresses are unconfirmed even when all sorts of proof is given and credit cards supplied. Has anyone managed to get their address confirmed by Paypal? Yeah, I had my address confirmed three days after I started my Paypal account. Did you ever go through the confirmation process and verify their two deposits to your account? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
radders Posted February 14, 2003 Share Posted February 14, 2003 :o No they didn't give me that option. They insisited on a credit card and they seem to charge me around 5% per transaction once the currency conversion is taken into account but at least there are no up-front fees. I think they still disciminate against 'International' customers. I guess I'll have to move to North America then I can save on the VAT too. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
westkoast Posted February 14, 2003 Share Posted February 14, 2003 I have never had this problem in the 2 years I have been using the service... Knock on wood! If you ever do have any problems they are pretty much non existant when you need them. Funny how that works... However I do agree that for a starter acct. paypal rules! One thing to note though: If you send a product to an "unverified" address and something goes wrong (unauthorized transaction, stolen card, etc) its your butt...... I need to read the rules more often... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XtremeCarAudio Posted February 14, 2003 Share Posted February 14, 2003 I have never had this problem in the 2 years I have been using the service... Knock on wood! If you ever do have any problems they are pretty much non existant when you need them. Funny how that works... However I do agree that for a starter acct. paypal rules! One thing to note though: If you send a product to an "unverified" address and something goes wrong (unauthorized transaction, stolen card, etc) its your butt...... that is the same as sending it is not Non-AVS matched Address with a "true" merchant account.. no differant, i use to have all the merchant account, untill AMEX took me for over $2K and put me out of business for a few months, I shipped 2 High Priced items to a 100% AVS matched Address, and 2 days later the card it reported stolen, and they take the money out of my account with out a second though, and with a fought them on it they basically told me to go to hell, and I have talked with paypal support many times on unrelated issues, and they are always prompt and happy to help, I would never ship to a unverifed address, for ANY reason, any customer not willing to make a 5 min call to their card holder to add a second shipping address has somehting to hide IMO.... I will be setting up accounts with all the card compained again someday, but that is a unknown date aat this point Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
radders Posted February 14, 2003 Share Posted February 14, 2003 OK so you have managed to get Paypal to verify your address. It is not easy to do. I have a business account with them. All the details on the card match exactly and mine is still unverified after 4 months. :? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XtremeCarAudio Posted February 14, 2003 Share Posted February 14, 2003 OK so you have managed to get Paypal to verify your address. It is not easy to do. I have a business account with them. All the details on the card match exactly and mine is still unverified after 4 months. :? I dont see why My account was Confirmed instantly, and Verified in one week, and Every customer that has signed up to purchase from me, has had confirmed addresses instantly Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daemonj Posted February 23, 2003 Share Posted February 23, 2003 You need to contact them then. I was able to have my account verified within 2 days without a problem. "Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence." - A. Einstein Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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