People who immediately open disputes in PayPal after a purchase should be banned.

TommyCarey Level X³

August 26, 2017, 7:10 am

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People who immediately open disputes in PayPal after a purchase should be banned.

When it comes to purchasing something online, we all know that PayPal is one of the main ways to do this, especially if it comes to a digital product like an SEO service. As many of you know, I've been running an SEO company since 2003 which means I've had my fair share of disputes and claims opened against me for the dumbest of reasons, and I'll go over some of them in this discussion

For those of you who don't know, you can open a dispute with a seller through PayPal if you think that the order wasn't complete, the package didn't get to your home or for any other reason in which you're not satisfied with the seller. A dispute allows the buyer and seller to have a conversation through PayPal while the overseer, PayPal, watches from the shadows. This is like an office room where you and the buyer sit down and go over what went wrong and how to fix it. Usually the buyer is pretty compliant and will drop the dispute, but not always.

When a buyer escalates the dispute to a claim, this is where PayPal steps in to take over the mediation and figure out what is going on with the transaction. If you're selling a physical product and have a tracking code, you're usually ok and the claim will be dropped if PayPal can see that the package ended up at the buyers location. If you're selling a digital product, which means there's not tracking code, you are pretty much screwed and PayPal will almost instantly side with the buyer. It doesn't matter if you're running an SEO service and you have sent the buyer 100 different reports showing everything you've done, PayPal will side with the buyer because they don't know what they're looking for when it comes to the reports. Web design is a little safer, but not much. At least with designers you have the way back machine and can show PayPal what the design looked like prior to you doing the agreed upon work, and they might side with you, but not always.

When a buyer instantly opens a dispute....

I love waking up to a few notifications saying that I've made some sales via PayPal. It starts my day off on the right foot and I'm always a happier person because I know that I made money while sleeping, which 99% of people can't do because they work 9-5 jobs and get paid while at work.

What I hate is when I log into PayPal to check the order and I see that the buyer instantly opened a dispute claiming they didn't receive the work they purchased. I mean how dumb are you that you order an SEO or backlink service and think it's going to be done 5 minutes after the payment clears? I even have a turn around time on every digital product I sell and make the buyers check a box that states they understand what they are buying and how long it takes to complete, which PayPal apparently doesn't give 2 sh*ts about Usually, if the buyer doesn't immediately escalate the dispute to a claim, I can add into the comment box "The service you ordered takes X to XX days to complete and it's only been 9 hours since you purchased. Please close this dispute and we will send you a full report once we finish" and this sometimes gets the dispute closed, but not always.

When I see that the buyer instantly escalated the service to a claim which doesn't allow me to respond, I know they just wanted the service for free. They didn't give me a chance to respond in the comment section of the dispute and just wanted PayPal to look it over since they know they'll get their money back from a digital transaction

What really irritates me is how dumb these buyers are. I mean if you plan on purchasing something for $200+ and then opening a dispute or filing a charge back, you don't think I can find your website? I have forms that capture your information so that I can run a campaign on your site in order to help it out. But now they doomed their websites after they file the claim almost immediately after I send them their reports...

To fix all of this, PayPal should track which accounts are constantly filing charge backs or opening disputes after their purchases. I'm sure it would cut down on a lot of the "fraudulent" purchases and people would be more willing to funnel their money through PayPal. I highly doubt that PayPal will do this because they are money hungry and if they start banning accounts for this reason, those people will just open up forum threads, blog posts, etc. flaming PayPal and how their account was banned for no reason at all, even though the account should have been burned a long time ago.

In conclusion:
If you're running a digital service and you expect to keep 100% of your profits from every sale, you're crazy. There are people out there who purchase high ticket digital items and will open a dispute/claim as soon as they recieve the product. For this reason I praise SEOclerks because they likely deal with this 100+ times a day and know exactly what all of us little guys are going through as well.

Remember to follow me!
https://www.seoclerks.com/user/Razzy

Thanks!

Razzy

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kgord

Some people are never satisfied and they never will be. It makes a great deal of work for everyone, when people file nonsense complaints. I know this is why PayPal severed their relationship with eBay. It was just too big of a headache for them to deal with all the issues and complaints that came from these interactions.

7 years ago

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RedVelvetJuliet

I agree wholeheartedly. Consumers like that don't really care about the work you put into what they want. There should be better ways, surely, to weed them out, but there aren't really reliable ways. If they spot one "mistake", you can rest assured your payment is in danger of being revoked. These situations are very unfortunate.

7 years ago

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RedVelvetJuliet

Alas. When you're involved in digital work as many of us are, there's more pressure on you to please the public. With that pressure comes great responsibility. Unfortunately, consumers are aware of this responsibility and take advantage of it. There's less protection than in a real world job where you are guaranteed a wage or salary. Even in an outside retail job, if a customer wants a refund, both sides will still get paid. Online it is riskier. Paypal really should crack down on which sites abuse this system and perhaps they should change the rules a little. They appear to have this "the customer is always right" attitude and I think, like a lot of other retail entities, they take it too far.

7 years ago

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Pixie06

I can totally relate to whatever you stated above. I am an online seller and I have to deal with those cases very frequently. Sometimes you have some very good customers and once you resolve their problems they come back to you. As for others they give you negative feedback even at times when it's not really your fault.

7 years ago

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Barida

It's bad when some of the clients don't understand that some transactions can go sour not because of the issues with the seller, but as a result of some other things we can't really figure out as well.

7 years ago

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Authord

Well, you can't blame them, it's not mainly their fault, some are due to ignorance, or lost touch of reality, not everyone has the same brain power or a tech literate like you. so you shouldn't come all out on them

, people are dumb sometimes.
And like the guy you quoted that ordered for an SEO or backlink service and think it's going to be done 5 minutes after the payment clears, you see some people do lose touch of reality, so you make them realize, the duration and days the project will take.

7 years ago

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Soulwatcher

I know what you mean I hate the whole paypal dispute thing. People can dispute anything and paypal will refund them. I sold a cell phone on ebay and I packed it in huge styrofoam and in a big box. Well the buyer said they it came damaged and disputed paypal. Paypal sided with them and charged me shipping both ways and made me give them their money back. When I got it back it looked like they took a hammer to it. So I assume they gutted it for parts for their phone and smashed it and sent it back. That's one of the reasons I don't like to use paypal to sell things.

7 years ago

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vinaya

When I buy online, my prefered store is ebay. I buy an ebay because ebay has buyer's protection. If I don't receive the item or if the item is not as desctibed, I have an option to file a dispute. One of the reasons wh paypal is my preferred payment system is I can get refund. I have filed disputes couple of times and I have always been refunded fully. I filed disputes because I did not receive the item or I received damaged item. I hear that there are people who file disputes immediately after buying. Perhaps their primary intention is to cheat the seller. I believe they should be banned.

7 years ago

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clerkboy3

I completely understand Razzy concerns.
I was scammed at least twice in the past and believe me, it is a painful experience!!!

7 years ago

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DarthHazard

I had this problem when I used to sell Xbox Live codes on the eBay marketplace. A few days or even in one case a couple of weeks later, I would get an email from PayPal saying that there had been chargeback claims and that the money in my account has been put on hold. It's awful because you think that you will lose a lot of money even though you actually sent the item. The claims this time was that the credit cards had been stolen and used. Luckily, they went all in my favour without me having to do anything except one. And I lost around $25 on that one claim.

7 years ago

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clerkboy3

I'm glad they sided on your favour

But how did you managed that? Was it very hard?
Because paypal almost always sides with the buyer

Can you share your story?
Thanks ;)

7 years ago

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DarthHazard

I actually didn't do anything and that is what was surprising. It took a little while but they all started to come one by one in my favour. I think the only thing that I did was send an email to PayPal stating what had happened and mentioned to them that this was surely a scam because there was no way that almost all my buyers had their credit cards stolen.

7 years ago

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overcast

Paypal is buyer friendly so they may never take chances with sellers. So they don't give any protection to seller. Only issue in this case is not to accept paypal. And instead just accept credit and debit card with stripe or some other cart option. So you can see that having good shopping cart is going to solve the problem with paypal purchases and buyer frauds. But I guess there has to be some sort of system to tackle this as it's more of white and black area.

7 years ago

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augusta

Weird and crazy people everywhere.You shouldn't be mad because these kind of people are everywhere.I have a fair share of mine.Someone will contact you for article writing,you did your very best,so that your article would be accepted not for the person to reject it.He or she will be not be willing to pay and at the end of the day,you still find your article online,the same article he or she claimed wasn't good enough.I'm always skeptical when dealing with people online.Fraudulent people everywhere.

7 years ago

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Barida

It's always painful sometimes, but we have few choices which is the reason we have to learn from the bad experiences and move up in life. As freelancers, there are bigger opportunities that awaits us in the future.

7 years ago

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Judas2018

I've never had an issue with a single person whose paid one of my invoices in 12 years of doing business with the exception of one person, this past Spring. They didn't open a dispute right away though. They waited till their order was almost completely filled to open one. Their claim was null and void and PP ruled in my favor. It was a professional dispute though. Never got ugly, vile threatening or immature. So no hard feelings on my end.

7 years ago

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Barida

You're quite lucky not to have had issues working on the internet for these years. There are clients on the internet looking for people that can do free work for them and that's not fair.

7 years ago

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Judas2018

I am good at rooting out bad purchasers before we even do business. But also the services I sell fit nicely into the niche which I am planted in. So I know most of my clients through other people. Since those people are cool - most of my clients tend to be cool. The odd clients I get are people asking for services or tasks I don't do. I always wonder where on earth they got the notion that I perform these tasks? As none of them are even listed in my freelancer profiles.

7 years ago

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Barida

It's simply unprofessional for some of the clients to react in such a manner, I mean that it doesn't end at that stage since the seller can simply claim that they are not doing things the right way. In as much PayPal doesn't want to start banning accounts, they should listen to both sides before taking a decision.

7 years ago

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clerkboy3

That's what you have, when a company operates in a monopoly (Paypal is not technically a monopoly, but in practice it is!... That's why they can charge more than a whopping 4% when you receive funds in a currency other than yours and that's why they most of the time, side with the buyer and not the seller).
I think that at least the United States and the European Union should do something to protect the buyers of companies like paypal and establish rules and laws against monopolies!...

7 years ago

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Judas2018

Paypal has competitors but I doubt they will beat or dethrone them anytime soon. Paypal is used so widely by many big online retailers. Including E-bay. Amazon however has yet to cave and probably never will. But I think that's perfectly ok with Paypal.

7 years ago

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vinaya

Until now, no one has filed a dispute against me, however, I have filed disputes a couple of times and have been refunded fully. I once bought a product on ebay. I waited for 45 days but did not receive the product, I filed the dispute and got refunded. I also got refunds for the money I had invested in an income generating program. Since I did not get the profits as promised, I filed the dispute.

7 years ago

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SEOClerks

People who immediately open disputes in PayPal after a purchase should be banned.

People who immediately open disputes in PayPal after a purchase should be banned.

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