PayPal in your business plan...

[harryball]

Let me start by saying this is NOT a PayPal slamfest. This is an FYI. I feel this is important to share since many of you may be taking PayPal for payments in your business plan.

I had a buyer make a purchase of $200+ and pay with PayPal. We filled the order and shipped and captured the funds via PayPal. When someone pays with a credit card the funds are Authorized, when we ship we Capture. This is typical and PayPal policy states "Merchants are advised to capture funds within 24 hours after a shipment." To complicate matters, I was scolded by PayPal once for capturing before shipping an item. We use to capture 2 or 3 days before we shipped. I tripped over a buyer that was a bit of a pain thus the scolding. PayPal assured me capturing ahead of time was not necessary since the funds were authorized they were safe.

In this case the capture failed with "This payment can not be captured at this time" and PayPal was unable in 4 days to resolve the problem or tell me why it happened. So they voided the payment without warning and told me to get with my customer and have them pay again. My customer was skeptical when requested to pay again (as I would have been) and then vanished for a while. Fortunately they did eventually pay after PayPal confirmed they had voided the payment.

This was a hassle from both sides. We have dropped PayPal as a form of payment based on the extremely poor customer service we have received in the past and this experience. I'm not saying do the same... but just be aware of what can happen. If we ever do accept PayPal again, I will absolutely capture BEFORE the boxes leave. It may be a bit of a pain to capture after printing each shipping label, but that will be our policy from now on.

/RB

[knight_toolworks]

paypal like most large such corps are never going to have good customer service. but stuff happens I have been using paypal for 9 years now I think. there have been issues but it has worked out.
I have not used it a lot for cc cards though most of my payments the person has a paypal account.

[GlenP]

Paypal seems to make Canadian account holders wait longer for our money. I use Paypal for our website and every time a customer uses debit instead of credit card they hold the money for 10 days to "clear". Paypal calls it a echeck. The money is out of the customer's bank account and they believe they have paid me for the product. I don't see it hit my account for ten days and then it takes another 3-5 days for me to put it in my account. I find this too long. If was a US account it takes 3-5 days for the money to hit my paypal account. If there is any Canadian botters out there using another service I would love to hear about it and look into it. In todays age of electronic banking 10-14 days to get a payment is way too long. Snailing a paper check can beat that.
Happy Botting

[knight_toolworks]

a echeck is usually a option. I get paid with them once in awhile and I have to wait about 5 days for one to clear. that's in the us.