Just wanted to get everyone's opinion on this. I will be opening up a webshop very soon that will be selling Digital Products. These are digitial products from gameworlds like world of warcraft etc. The thing is that it can be risky because there are no protection for the sellers on Paypal for chargebacks...meaning someone could purchase a product from my store and in a few days, tell paypal to charge back the money since it was not physically delivered. Does anyone know about this problem and is there a way to protect the seller for digital products? thanks for all your help. - Gorilla_Bob
Most people are honest and chargebacks are pretty much the cost of doing business. If there is a way you can remotely disable the license of the games then that would work for you.
Unfortunately there isn't a way to disable it. Once the sale is done, we have no control over it anymore. Besides paypal, are there any other payment methods that can be used that support digital products? Ie, neteller, etc, etc?
Regnow or clickbank is an alternative to use. Though from my experience, chargebacks are inevitable. As long as you are selling a quality product, your chargeback ratio should be fairly low. Hope this helps!
Yes it is risky. If you can - use extra scrubbing, like MaxMind products - to help verify the transaction. The risk comes in all parts - from just the average Joe lying that it was not him to even though he uses the software it did not work the way it should. And then of course there is the fraud in which someone uses someone else's card. Some communication might help as well - i.e. send them an email a few days after the transaction to see if they like the software, etc. This will help in case they come back and say they don't like it. The more communication you have with them, the better
Depends on the person you deal with. If your business is managable, Try to contact your customer (or provide the licence key in SMS)... See his paypal rating..Age of account...and such things..
Pay pal will not give back any money i tried to get it and it does not work. It is more risky for the buyer then for you. Maybe if he is using a credit card but that is it.
This is my field, I would tell you not to do this. This market is mostly teens and young adults. Paypal has a rule, about selling virtual items. Its simply not tolerated. You can try using e-gold. But many people wont trust, you and they will not go first.You would have to trade first making it riskier for you. Overall its pretty hard to do.
I think Jewellery sites are more prone to risk than digital products, but still selling, however it is important to enablie SSL Protection and preferebly look for high risk merchant account to deal in secured environment.
Prodigy, Can I ask what type of digital products that you sell and how you personally made it work for you? Thanks, GB
Runescape, a mmorpg that I played sence the begging. I figured wasting my life on games like these are pointless. Sence they never end. But there is more then 9 million players daily that play mmorpg. I used bots/auto's (against rules of all games mostly) to gather items/currency in the game and had 5 computers working non stop. I made around 2k a month. I havnt explored this idea, but you could try second life.... THis game does allow you to transfer linden dollars (there game currency) to real life cash. I sold, runescape,w0w,everquest2 (using the game exchange sony set up) and eve online accounts on ebay/yahoo forums.. Dozens of lil kids around with mommy and daddy's credit card to buy up what you have. I made around 300$ a day selling accounts. for being 15 im living a pretty dam good life
sometimes yes, and sometimes no. For the scammers these world is having hiccups, no doubt. But still you need to remember about bill gates
I agree with you Outstrip. Our concept that we are planning is huge and 2 years in the making. We will definately go ahead with it. Just want to lay out all the groundworks prior. I'd love to know if any here has already done a commerce shop to sell digital products. If you have, please provide link so that we can see. Thanks!!
I'd be curious how you guys deal with refunds. I will be releasing a digital product soon and I'm not sure how I want to handle refunds. With most products you'll see a "If you're not satisfied we will give you a full money back guarantee", etc.. This creates some trust with a potential buyer. If he doesn't like the product he gets his money back. The risk factor for him/her is reduced. Problem with digital products is it's so easy to keep the product and ask for a refund. If you get a piece of software (download only) or an e-book there's no possible way to know if the person really wants a legit refund or just wants to keep the product and screw your business. I guess with software you can have a "phone home" method that talks to your web server every time the program is ran (to see if they are using it), but that's not really 100% safe. Someone could just bypass that, and phone home methods are really annoying to the user. It also wouldn't work for e-books. Do you guys just not offer refunds?
There will always be some dishonest people who will buy and then ask for a refund, full well knowing that they get to keep a copy of the item regardless. Fortunately they are a minority and just part of the risk of doing business online, whether digital products or not. Some people actually state "no refunds" due to the digital nature of their products, but to each their own. ~ Sirius Lin
I agree with Sirius in terms of the "cost of doing business". Even in a brick and mortar business you will run into people returning things after using it and requesting a full refund. I work for a major online retailer and people order PHYSICAL products and keep it and still request full refunds because of dissatisfaction or other factor. My point is that returns most likely will happen and it's best to factor in the cost of this into any business plan or budget projection you create. You can handle it in two ways you can absolutely accept no refunds or you can offer a satisfaction guarantee knowing that some people will still keep your product. Some of the things to consider with the first option: a) honest potential customers may be turned off and not willing to try your product if you don't offer money back. b) People determined to get money back may find ways to sidestep your terms such as complaining to their card company c)You may get even more dissatisfied customers than if you didn't have the no money-back policy thereby limiting your growth as a new company. I think people's main fear stems from this idea that with a money back guarantee you will get an influx of buyers who want a refund just because they know they can keep the product. But I found the opposite to be true, with the guarantee many people are happy with what they've purchased.
Better to have a high risk merchant account, Charge.com, ChronoPay, linkpoint ( firstdata) & instabill are dealing with such account, you can have look on these providers.