Top 10 tips for Sellers considering using PayPal

We have had many many issues with PayPal in the past, but the final straw was last month when PayPal suddenly suspended our account with no notice for an entire month, and then imposed a reserve on our account of GBP 10,000 plus 50% of every payment that goes through our account. This is despite for 6 years never having had one complaint or request for charge back from any Buyer.

The interesting thing about PayPal is that there is actually no-one that you can talk to about this. Phone calls and emails are responded to by nice, but utterly unempowered Irish call centre staff. I know of no other large company that would treat its customers with such complete disdain and disrespect.

Given my terrible experiences of PayPal over the years, I have these Top 10 tips for Sellers considering using PayPal (I assume that as a seller you have no other option, as either you live outside the US/UK and/or you sell via Ebay.

1) Seller Beware! Your account with PayPal is NOT a bank account. PayPal has the right to suspend your account without notice at any time and to hold on to your money for as long as they want to and if you use PayPal regularly they will definitely do this.
2) PayPal are the prosecutor, judge and often the defendant of disputes, and as they benefit from taking and holding money from your account and as they also keep their fees if you lose a dispute, do not expect to be treated fairly by them.
3) Withdraw any cash that you receive into your PayPal account immediately you receive it to avoid PayPal taking the funds from you.
4) PayPal’s exchange rates are punitively bad. If you can ask your buyers to pay you in the currency that you can withdraw the cash in you will save yourself a considerable amount of money.
5) Immediately and always register yourself for “Merchant rates”. If you hit a threshold any month, PayPal’s charges will be less the following month.
6) Registering a formal complaint with PayPal is not possible. All you can do is send an email through their system. Do not expect a response, and do not expect any action (see point 2)).
7) If PayPal suspend your account without notice, immediately stop all payments to the account as PayPal will keep them for at least 6 months and often longer. Contact your buyers and offer them a discount to pay by other means.
8) Set up more than one PayPal account so that if PayPal does suspend your account without notice you can still continue to do business. This may require establishing more than one email address and more than one bank account – but this is worth it.
9) Look at www.paypalsucks.com and other similar websites to see real life stories of sellers who have lost money through PayPal.
10) Final Tip – I have said it before but it is worth repeating – DO NOT EVER TRUST PAYPAL.

No protection for sellers using PaypalI sold an item via e-bay and once the payment cleared, send the item immediately via first class, retaining the receipt. The buyer send me an e-mail of thanks, telling me how much he loved...

Paypal does not care about SellersThey do not care about the sellers,They are horrible at Business!They encourage the cheats and liars and scam artist of the world to come out of the woodwork!Someone needs to give them some competition and...

Posted: October 22, 2012 at 4:17 pm