Hi Im a freelancer , recently i did a small programming gig which was for about 1500 USD. Now as usual the down payment was given and work was started and on completion i gave a demo and asked for the complete payment for the project.Which was promptly transfered to my paypal account abd the sources were Emailed. Now two days later i learn that the payments were from an Un-Authorized account and A charge back had been issued. Even after supplying the emails received etc i knew that i had been tricked and paypal took the money back. Now my question is , how do i avoid getting into such a situation next time . The Emails were received from the ID which made the payment but later they turned out to be hacked accounts. I was wondering if i transfered money for a cash pickup ( through XOOM for ex ) will i still land up into problems ?. Regards Vikas
It is possible that money was sent from hacked paypal .. but what I suspect is, buyer tricked you ... he used his own paypal, but after receiving source code he filed dispute and used "Unauthorized Access" as the reason. Transfer money using XOOM and Western Union wont lead to similar problems .. you can also consider using MoneyBookers and ePassporte to accept payments, since they do not offer chargebacks. But hardly you will find a customer trusting you and sending payment via a irreversible method. A piece of advise: Only accept paypal from people you know.
This is not correct: Moneybookers does chargebacks in case of unauthorized use, so in this case this would be the same. One method could be you let the buyer write an email from the registered PayPal email adress so you can be sure he got the power over this email account. This would be a first step to be more secure. Another thing for example is let you give a screenshot from the profile (in this case of telephonenumber) and call the number written in the profile. For bigger amounts you could also let the buyer send you an ID scan with all "personal" info (like passport # or similar) black outed. These are only some suggestions but only "practicabel" for bigger amounts I would say. regards
Well, a friend of mine told me one method to prevent this from happening(not sure if it works or not). They told me to have the person file a charge back right after they transfer the money to the account, but then close it soon after..I believe this prevents a charge back later down the road because I assume they can only do one charge back. I am not sure because I have never tried it personally. Also, you could let the paypal workers know that the goods are intangible which they cannot do anything about so no money should be taken back from you.
do one simple thing. in this case just say the sender that send me the payment and i'll give you script 3 days after the payment is made. meanwhile your money will be secure. this will save accidents to large extent but can't finish it from the roots. for this we need to have a better payment option which is not available yet
your money won´t be secure. if you withdraw the money to bank account but after this you get a chargeback and loose your balance will become negative and paypal will contact you to pay them back. this happened to me once: i lost 6000$ from it. so a 3 day hold doesn´t help you much as chargebacks can be done even after 45 days and if done by cc even after 90 days.
HI guys Thanks for the suggestions i had taken precautions as usual. I checked weather the paypal email and persons email were the same. The first payment did not get charged back until the project was emailed. Asking for passport / other such details for small amounts is unfeasible. Also i dont want a new paypal account for each transaction , so ill stick to one account than go into negative balance. So am still open for ideas ...
You can also create one "master account" (in your real name etc.) and other acc with "fake info" (I know it´s not the standard but before I loose money from chargebacks I would do so). Let the buyer send payment to fake acc. (you have to arrange something like a 3-day hold period or so). You transfer then from the fake acc to you "master account" but only after two days, not immediately. Then you got the money in your real account. It shouldn´t be a problem then for you if the buyer claims a chargeback to the fake account, this account can become negative then, doesn´t matter for you. If the buyer claims a chargeback within the hold period you didn´t loose anything as your real account is not limited and the "buyer" or scammer doesn´t have anything from it. If the fake account gets limited by PayPal just reverse the payment and everything is okay again. Maybe this could work I experienced 2 weeks ago I bought something from a "seller" but he didn´t deliver (I filled a chargeback after 1 day only). The chargeback was "solved" for me but I didn´t get anything because the seller transfered the money before. So this seems to work. Of course this is only a suggestion for "legit sellers" not to loose their hard earned money regards
First off, Stop accepting that high payment in Paypal. Next, Even if you do , do not deliver the project until you have withdrawn the the initial payment. Else, the back hat trick would be to have two Paypal account's like one in your name and the other in your Bro's name. Take the payments in Only one paypal account and transfer the money to your original account as soon as you get any high payment leaving behind $5 or $10 so that Paypal does not suspect you of money laundering. This way even if your tricked all you loose will be $5 or $10. Ace Tuku