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Thinking of Selling on eBay using Paypal? Think Again

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Re: Thinking of Selling on eBay using Paypal? Think Again

#51

Post by jliptzin »

URSpider94 wrote: post #28

Have you called an attorney? If you have one that you're on any kind of friendly basis, I've generally found that you can get a quick read on your case (30 minutes' worth of time) without any cost. IANAL -- first and foremost -- but I would think the best tactic may be to go after PayPal to get them to discharge your supposed debt to them, given that you've already swept the money out. Their seller's assurance contra…

LOL! What attorney would give a crap about a $500 phone? The sad truth is that in this system of ours, you can screw someone for up to $50-100k and get away with it because that's the minimum potential damages amount that would pique a decent attorney's interest.

Re: Thinking of Selling on eBay using Paypal? Think Again

#52

Post by steve8918 »

The only logical conclusion that can be made from eBay's and Paypal's policies is that they no longer want small sellers to use them. They want professional sellers to sell from their site, people who are used to dealing with chargebacks, etc, and can foot the bill when it comes to chargebacks/fraud. They want to facilitate BUYING from regular people, but make SELLING by regular people very difficult.

There is no other explanation for getting rid of buyer reputation and providing no protection to sellers. They only want people who don't care about buyer reputation, and have deep enough pockets and the expectation that chargebacks and fraud will occur. If they deal with these larger customers, this increases their selling volume (and fees) and decreases their support costs.

Re: Thinking of Selling on eBay using Paypal? Think Again

#53

Post by agumonkey »

eli wrote: post #12

A few years ago I sold an Android phone on eBay. A scammer bought it, claimed it was broken, and filed a claim with PayPal. The guy sent me back a different phone of the same model that was indeed quite broken. I appealed to PayPal and lost. I got screwed in this case, but frankly I'm not sure what PayPal/eBay is supposed to do about this sort of scam. Dude even swapped the sticker with the serial number from inside…

It's hard, as a paranoid person I try to document things as much as I can, filmed tests, clean pictures, filmed packaging process. It's not perfect but for what it's worth, I had an issue on priceminister (european website) involving an old motherboard being flagged as failing by the buyer, they were thorough and rejected his claims after all. Nothing major it was 20$, but it's good to see that some websites go the other way too.

Re: Thinking of Selling on eBay using Paypal? Think Again

#54

Post by UnFundedHype »

discountgenius wrote: post #47

This article goes into my "arguments for Bitcoin" pile. More sellers need to recognize the risks involved in doing transactions through PayPal/any other credit card processor and protect themselves.

There just needs to be an easier way to buy bitcoins. I added it to my gamerholic site and a couple users were just confused on where they can buy coins. You have to click one link after another.

Re: Thinking of Selling on eBay using Paypal? Think Again

#55

Post by kerryfalk »

jaredsohn wrote: post #27
kerryfalk wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shameless plug; we've built one for automotive enthusiasts: https://www.styckyd.com Our target is to serve the C2C market and make shipping less painless as well as eliminate some of the risk on the buyer's side. With the current climate for buying goods online companies serving the space are at risk for opening themselves up to scams like this one by buyers. The reality for anyone accepting credit cards is that you'…

What's the value prop for "make shipping less painless"? :)

Because we're targeting consumers, they're less familiar with shipping than businesses. Our system provides buyers with accurate shipping costs and prepares labels for sellers when their parts have been purchased.

All they have to do is put it in a box and drop the package off.

This also means that we can eventually grow each seller's addressable market within our system as we'll handle cross-border shipping on their behalf.

Re: Thinking of Selling on eBay using Paypal? Think Again

#56

Post by codenerdz »

DanBC wrote: post #45

Did Ebay / Paypal forward the fraud information onto the bank? Did the police do anything? It really sucks that the seller took the hit. Who should? The credit card companies? The banks of the scammers?

Credit cards and Paypals both take a piece of a transaction fee and creating an illusion of a safety net is cost of doing business to them. Paypal has a much better chance of having direct contacts with fraud departments of other institutions than individuals do, so they should take it upon themselves to sort it out.

Of course Im not being objective here, but their Seller Protection wording could be a lot more forthcoming in communicating the lack of protection for this case.

Re: Thinking of Selling on eBay using Paypal? Think Again

#58

Post by kerryfalk »

adrianm wrote: post #42
sukuriant wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you pronounce that?

My mind read it as "stickied".

Correct.

We built it to integrate with vBulletin forums: https://partners.styckyd.com

Our brand name is taken from "stickying" a post on a forum.

Re: Thinking of Selling on eBay using Paypal? Think Again

#59

Post by codenerdz »

tjr wrote: post #26
joaorj wrote: post #19

Everyone who's been in the internet for a long time know that there are dozens of sites for people to go tell their "got screwed by paypal" stories. Why paypal has always been the most used site for online transactions? That i don't know.. I know i would never use it.

Maybe because people who have bad experiences tend to want to publish them more than people who have good experiences. I sold a damaged iPhone 4 (listed as such) on eBay+Paypal earlier this year. I got paid, the buyer was happy, and I did not write a blog post about it.

Im with you, i sold a number of things without problems, but I did it assuming that if I follow the rules of Paypals Seller Protection, i would be covered. This is not the case here. I now know that Seller Protection means nothing to the fraudster in the know

Re: Thinking of Selling on eBay using Paypal? Think Again

#60

Post by MBCook »

DanBlake wrote: post #13
larsberg wrote: post #9

To jump on a point totally unrelated to the post's complaint but related to selling smartphones, I've found that if I'm selling electronics (especially generation-behind iPhones for the family) I can do much better than eBay, even before you discount both their listing fee and paypal use fees. And there's comparatively no risk. For cash: gazelle For slightly more cash (usually just a few percent), in the form of a gi…

Gazelle is worthless and preys on the poor and uneducated. You get less than 50% what you would from selling on ebay. http://www.gazelle.com/iphone/iphone-4s/at-t/iphone-4s-64gb-... vs http://www.ebay.com/sch/Cell-Phones-Smartphones-/9355/i.html...

I sold my iPhone 4 on Gazelle. I know I could have got more through Craigslist or eBay, but it wasn't worth my time.

With eBay I have to photograph it, write it up, list it, answer ridiculous questions about shipping it to the 3rd world and take payment in the form of casino chips mailed to me in a few months. Then I have to deal with the buyer, ship it, and the whole time I have to be worried about scammers. All the time I'm competing against companies that are listing 50 iPhones a day because that's their fulltime job and my account hasn't been used in 4 years. I wouldn't buy from me in that circumstance.

With Craigslist, things are a bit worse. Not only do you get occasional scammer emails, but I have to meet the person to physically sell the item. I've had people stand me up numerous times, be continually able to schedule, etc. And when I do meet up with someone, they could give me fake money, or just steal the item, or refuse to buy it meaning I have to go through the whole thing again.

With Gazelle I got a perfectly fair bid. I hit accept and in a day or two a box showed up on my door. Put the phone in it, dropped it off at a UPS store, and in a few days I got my Amazon gift card. No weird fraudsters, and I spent a total of about 10 minutes of my time. In return I got a price I was quite happy with, an easy experience, and I was able to use the money to help support my Amazon habit.

Worst case scenario, Gazelle could have said no and shipped the phone back to me. I wouldn't be out any money (unlike if I paid for eBay shipping), and I could have sold it on Craigslist.

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