Paypal

I've been planning to set up one of my clients with Paypal to sell some items online. They will be selling in low volume and they are very thrifty, so Paypal seems perfect for them. I've personally used it several times to pay for auction items, but never to receive money. I was all set to do it, just waiting for final approval from my client. Then . . .

Yesterday, I discovered the site paypalsucks_com (I'm not trying to improve their search engine ranking, and will hereafter refer to the site as PPS), and reams of other complaints in addtion to that. Now, I can't take PPS very seriously, considering that they have banner advertising for competing services on their site, but this is actually the first time I have heard complaints about Paypal and now I'm forced to wonder if there is any validity to them.

Is anyone using Paypal for similar purposes? Have you had any problems? Please don't further confuse the issue by posting hearsay, rumor, innuendo, or even your personal experience, if you were doing something dishonest. If you do have personal experience using Paypal for legitimate business purposes, please post about it here.

The big problem most people have with Paypal is their reversal policies. From your clients prospective (recieving monies with Paypal) they must make sure that they ship the item only to a verified Paypal address, and that the item is shipped signature required with tracking documentation that is available online. If all of the above is done, then your client -should- be covered incase the buyer attempts a reversal.

I have heard complaints about the reversal policies. But the complaints that I've seen most frequently -- and that are most alarming -- focus on accusations of unwarranted freezing of accounts by Paypal, preventing users from withdrawing their funds.

In my client's case, I would impress upon them the wisdom of following the guidelines Paypal specifies in order to be eligible for their Seller Proctection Policy, including shipping items to the buyer's Confirmed Address (Paypal's term). Since many of the buyers probably would not have Paypal accounts, and would be signing up at that moment to make a credit card purchase, I'm hoping that Paypal makes the address they enter at that time their confirmed address (verified by matching it with the credit card billing address).

It's funny to see both sides of the coin -- policies that are an aggravating nuisance to the honest consumer suddenly seem only too reasonable from the perspective of a seller.

Fortunately, with this particular client, it seems unlikely that there will be fraudulent buyers, based on the nature of the items and other, intangibles (membership) they are selling.

But I still want to hear from people that have used Paypal from the seller's end. Word of mouth, from people whos credibility you can measure, is the only reliable source of information.

One of the problems I've had with Paypal is that they don't have a transparent approval process. What I mean by that is the visitor has to go to the paypal site. This can present problems when the visitor has completed the transaction because if they don't click the link/button at the bottom of the page they are not returned to the originating website.

I've seen this cause problems with several shopping carts. I'm aware of the IPN possibilities, but it still seems poorly designed.