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Couple days ago I received a "transaction dispute" on PayPal.

Someone who donated 226 JPY (2 euros...) on 23 JUNE has filed a chargeback claim JULY 15 to dispute the "payment".

Thanks to this persion I am wasting a good chunk of time today trying to figure out how it could negatively impact my account to accept liability for this claim.

Needless to say I don't sell anything as such, and PayPal administration is anything but plain english.

According to this blog post I could even loose money for chargeback fees. How nice.

Just another day administering the website.. >_<

To make matters dumber, it's entirely possible that the person didn't mean to do it and simply hit the wrong buttons on their PayPal account while investigating the charge.

And worse yet... PayPal is known to make some really dumb decisions based on their data, like cancel accounts. I wouldn't put it past them to cancel an account that gets too many charge-backs.

Obviously, I am not a fan of PayPal at all.

A few months ago PayPal suspended a payment to me claiming they thought the sender was fraudulent, and demanding an explanation from me. I wasn't sure why I had to be involved at all, but I wrote to them and explained that the payment I received was a donation and if the sender had decided they want their money back, they were welcome to it.

The next day, I wake up to an email from PayPal saying they'd frozen my account because they can't accept donations in Asia and no it's not negotiable and no they won't do business with me again. I sent them a reply asking them if there was anything I could do, which ended up taking weeks due to them redirecting me to different departments and not replying for 8 days. The overly verbose canned headers and footers were a beautiful finishing touch. "Thank you for contacting PayPal. I am delighted to be answering your question today. We really appreciate your contacting us. We can not reinstate your account and this decision is final. If there's anything else we do for you, please don't hesitate to contact us."

I'd strongly advise you to move money out of your PayPal account regularly. Their system always sides with the purchaser, and it's really easy for the receiver to be screwed.

Wow, that's pretty awful. Is there no other way to handle donations easily outside of Paypal?

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@wccrawford: Me neither >_< Of course I don't mind returning the money, honestly even if was 50 euros or more. But it's very frustrating to solve these claims as you have to go through these hoops on paypal's website, and it's anything but clear.

Resolve Wrote:The overly verbose canned headers and footers were a beautiful finishing touch

Yeah it's a real pain! Last month I received an email from them stating that there was a unauthorized use of my account. So of course I'm worried that someone might have hacked my account or something. Thankfully I updated the password and few other details and they unfroze the account. I can only guess their "bot" programs saw a login from an IP in India, and decided that must have been someone else. Makes no sense to me since assuming someone had stolen my password or the login cookie or something, they may have done the same and wouldn't even been able to log in to "solve" the issue.

sethg Wrote:Is there no other way to handle donations easily outside of Paypal?

I don't know. Anyone tried Google Checkout?

It's just that PayPal is so established nowadays, especially for donations, you risk discouraging people if they have to go through the hassle of registering to yet another payment service, a lot of people already have a PayPal account with ebay and so on. Also you can easily get credit card payments (they take up to 5% fee).

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On further thought I suppose I could add the europena bank information like IBAN. From anywhere within Europe there should be no extra fees for the bank transfer. But I'm a bit wary of displaying bank account details on a public website.

Also I'm not sure it would be worthwhile for US or Japan. Any idea what the overseas bank transfer charges are like?

After some research I found some other payment providers which I use now (Google checkout is not available in Japan). Unfortunately, they have higher fees than PayPal and can only transfer money to Japan via intl. wire ($15+ a pop).

But the biggest problem is just that people are more reluctant to use alternatives. Some are wary of giving out personal details to payment processors they haven't heard of before (even if they've been in business for 10+ years), others don't have a credit card and only have a PayPal account. Since the PayPal fiasco, donations have dropped to about half of what they used to be, and this trend started well before I released AnkiMobile.

Quote:Also I'm not sure it would be worthwhile for US or Japan. Any idea what the overseas bank transfer charges are like?

Higher than the average donation. Unless they're in the same country as you, it's not really an option.

It makes a difference whether it was filed as a Paypal dispute or a credit card chargeback. I'm not sure which from your post. The latter has extra fees because the credit card company charges Paypal for it, which then gets passed onto you.

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Resolve Wrote:Since the PayPal fiasco, donations have dropped to about half of what they used to be

Ouch. Forgive my curiosity: how do prospective donors know about this? There is a PayPal account rating somewhere?

They know because PayPal won't let me use my account anymore, and thus the links on the Anki donation page point to sites other than PayPal now.

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Wow, that sucks.

I hope it's gonna work better for you with the iPhone/iPad apps.

Thanks. :-) It was very lucky I was working on AnkiMobile at the time, really. Without that alternative income, PayPal would have sent me broke.

ファブリス Wrote:On further thought I suppose I could add the europena bank information like IBAN. From anywhere within Europe there should be no extra fees for the bank transfer. But I'm a bit wary of displaying bank account details on a public website.

There is 0 risk in displaying your bank information on a website, provided you only display an account number and routing number (like a UK sort code and account number, or a BIC and IBAN number). The IBAN just identifies your account - but can't be cross-checked to reveal personal details without Interpol intervention. The BIC just identifies which bank the money should be routed to.

If you lose a debit card, you'll get a new one with the same acc no and routing number on it - because you can't do anything with those details except put money in.

Also ファブリス it sounds like a card chargeback - paypal can't stop those. The payment was probably preauthorised from their account then bounced when the actual transaction tried to go through a few days later.

Blahah Wrote:There is 0 risk in displaying your bank information on a website, provided you only display an account number and routing number (like a UK sort code and account number, or a BIC and IBAN number).

Jeremy Clarkson said that too. In fact he put his money where his mouth was by publishing his sort code and account number, and somebody set up a direct debit that took 500 quid from his account and paid it to a charity...

If anything that demonstrated how good the system is. A direct debit is the only type of transfer you could set up in the UK using just account number and sort code. It's covered by the direct debit guarantee which means that the money is instantly replaced in your account if you challenge the payment. What's more a direct debit can only by taken by a company which is in the scheme, not by a member of the public.

pm215 Wrote:Jeremy Clarkson said that too. In fact he put his money where his mouth was by publishing his sort code and account number, and somebody set up a direct debit that took 500 quid from his account and paid it to a charity...

Good to know. Live and learn, huh

I had my PyPal account frozen trying to transfer funds into a bank account I could access in Taiwan. All of the accounts were owned by me, and I had TOLD all parties involved that I would be in south-east Asia... I could not get it resolved and my funds were frozen in transit. I had to return to the USA to get access to my account restored, and in the mean time had to borrow *thousands* of dollars from a friend (lucky, and embarrassing).

If you find a workable alternative, please let us know!

@Blahah good luck getting your money back after the bank finds out you posted your numbers online. That's a legal gray area.

@mafried in the UK at least, it's not a grey area (nor is it regulated by law). You are free to give your sort code and account number to anyone, including strangers. All UK consumer banks are part of the Direct Debit scheme, and since only approved companies can take Direct Debits, the banks all offer a full, instant refund guarantee if there is a debit that you didn't authorise.

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Wow. Just wow.

Chargeback Settlement Completed
Gross -€2,00 Fee -€11,25 Net Amount -€13,25 EUR

Reason: The transaction was not marked as "SPP Eligible" (SPP meaning Seller Protection Policy).

ファブリス Wrote:Wow. Just wow.

Chargeback Settlement Completed
Gross -€2,00 Fee -€11,25 Net Amount -€13,25 EUR

Reason: The transaction was not marked as "SPP Eligible" (SPP meaning Seller Protection Policy).

Wow. I'm starting up a business and we're planning on only using Paypal- this is really making me second guess that decision.

Are there other companies available that allow you to take credit cards as easily as Paypal? I know there is Google Checkout but that doesn't seem very popular.

captal Wrote:

ファブリス Wrote:Wow. Just wow.

Chargeback Settlement Completed
Gross -€2,00 Fee -€11,25 Net Amount -€13,25 EUR

Reason: The transaction was not marked as "SPP Eligible" (SPP meaning Seller Protection Policy).

Wow. I'm starting up a business and we're planning on only using Paypal- this is really making me second guess that decision.

Are there other companies available that allow you to take credit cards as easily as Paypal? I know there is Google Checkout but that doesn't seem very popular.

Monopoly is great isn't it?

I'd go for Google Checkout as it will only get more significant over time. Android is booming right now and Google Checkout along with it. It's also very easy to setup, it's connected to your Google Account (who doesn't have gmail these days) and I found its experience rather painless. I didn't dig deeper into it, just a users perspective.

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I'm going to look at adding a Google Checkout alternative.

What's frustrating in this is the automated responses from PayPal.

I still don't know if it was possible to avoid the chargeback fee by allowing the chargeback asap and not "dispute" it. My guess is no, because it was automatically filed as a "dispute" in the PayPal account.

I'm not sure what to do next:

* Put a lower limit on donations? Probably not going to help much, but 2 euros donations are pretty uncommon anyway.
* Block donations in JPY and only accept USD and EUR. Same, I'm not sure it's gonna make a difference.

The name of the donor is Japanese (name and surname in romaji). It's pretty rare that I get donations from a (presumed) Japanese person but it's happened before.

Google Checkout may also charge $10 for a chargeback. The help suggests that in some circumstances you can refund promptly to avoid the fee, but I don't quite understand when you can and when you can't...
http://checkout.google.com/support/sell/...wer=177463

Captal: Any method of accepting credit cards risks losing the payment amount, if not additional fees, unless you can jump through the hoops of the Seller Protection Policy or whatever the equivalent is at your payment provider.
A bigger problem with relying on Paypal for your business is what happens if your account gets frozen. Some businesses have got into serious trouble from that.

ファブリス Wrote:* Block donations in JPY and only accept USD and EUR. Same, I'm not sure it's gonna make a difference.

Another fabulous feature of paypal is their atrocious exchange rates--they make regular bank rates look like a bargain by comparison. Because most donations and/or purchasing options through paypal are in dollars or euros and not yen I end up paying more to use paypal for anything and everything. It adds up over the course of a year, besides the fact that I resent having to pay over and above the bank exchange rates just to line PP's pockets.