Hi, It's high time we start filling the treasure chest with something other than chit-chat. What I am posting may not count as treasure, probably you all would already know much of it but I'll post it for the benefit of those who are new to selling digital goods with paypal. It's a general myth that Paypal always favors buyers, especially with digital goods. In reality Paypal is impartial and if you follow good selling practices you'll always be safe 1. Always Have a BIN button. Don't accept payments via the "Send Money" function. It's always safe to give buyer a BIN link to pay from. If you are accepting payments for articles or anything with requires custom quotes create a BIN button, it takes just a few seconds. Reason: When you accept Payments directly, you'll always meet smart-asses who send money for "goods" and include their shipping address. Later if they open a dispute you will have to provide tracking information which you obviously wouldn't have. While creating the BIN button you have the option to not accept shipping address 2. Protect Yourself from unauthorized payments. If you are sending your digital goods via E-mail, insist on sending it only to the primary Paypal ID. If the buyers asks you to send it elsewhere expect something fishy. Always be careful when you receive a high amount from an unverified PayPal account Be alert for unusual buyer requests, for example, buyers who want a rush delivery at any cost or buyers who send partial payments from different PayPal accounts. What to do when you have disputes? (These points only apply to Non-Ebay transactions and if you followed the points above) 1. Not as Described Dispute: For a Non Ebay Item you cannot lose this kind of dispute, so if you believe that the buyer claim is fraudulent/unreasonable or if you can't agree on a resolution but have your funds on temporary hold, then escalate this dispute to a claim. You'll win it instantly. 2. Item not received dispute: If you haven't sent the item yet then send it and escalate it to a claim immediately. Do the Same if its already sent. Just tell Paypal that the payment was for a digital item which has been delivered via E-mail. Most of the time paypal will decide in your favor within a month. 3. Unauthorized Dispute: Action Depends on situations. There's rule of thumb when dealing with such disputes. Thats all I could think of now, I'll probably add more later. If you have any Questions regarding Paypal (as buyer or seller) post here and I'll try to help Regards, Helvetii
Great suggestions for a safe paypal experience. The only thing that I would add is that when selling never send payment as 'personal.' If you're dealing with B/S/T or any paypal transactions you'll probably get someone trying to avoid the paypal fees and asking you to send payment via the 'personal' option. This is fine for people you know, but once payment is sent using this option it is near impossible to dispute the payment. I learned the hard way.
This guide was actually for sellers. From a seller POV I usually ask for a "personal payment" whenever I deal with less trustable buyers.
I'll suggest some more that I follow myself and have been chargeback free for 2 years. 1- When sending money, always select "Goods" option. So if the seller doesn't deliver you can say you paid for mp3 / mobile phone or anything that fits the amount you sent. obviously the seller will not be able to provide tracking number and you get your money back. looks unethical but you do it to protect yourself please don't abuse it or paypal will flag your account when you launch too many chargebacks. 2- When receiving money, Try to use a service that has fraud detection, this helps decreasing and maybe killing all fraud at once. WHMCS.com is a billing system who has a built in support for maxmind fraud detection services including proxy detection and address verification and free email detector. You can also use plimus.com to receive payments for digital goods since they do fraud screening (didn't try them before though)
Plimus causes a lot of inconvinience to buyers. They take 4 hours on an average to send the download link. Sometimes they call the buyer too not to forget that their payment form is enough to freak many people out.
As I said, I never used them. I stick to my in-house solution which is whmcs with the help of maxmind fraud detection module. I'd recommend this combination for anyone willing to sell digital products.
E-junkie is not a payment processor. It only provides shopping cart, download management etc. features. Say if you want to sell an E-book, E-junkie will direct your customer to paypal, google checkout, Authorize.Net, TrialPay, ClickBank and 2CheckOut, whichever you choose. The customer will pay and then after getting confirmation from the payment processor they send them a download link. You choose how many downloads are allowed from one link or the life of the each link. You can find more details here: http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/features.htm Fees are just $5/month with no per transaction fees.
the only thing i can say about paypal is that a bunch of monkeys are running the company....i got disputes too many times....
I wondering where is BIN button, i searching it but cant find it, is in merchandise or in somewhere else,...