OT: paypal question...when to ship goods?

rodg82609 · Sep 11, 2004

Hi

I recently sold a couple of lenses for $2600 and the buyer, who lives in the US, paid by paypal into my wife's account (who uses it to only buy stuff). We rec'd an email from paypal saying the money was deposited into her paypal account, but it has not shown in our bank account yet (2 days later). Is it safe to ship these yet or can the purchaser still stop and reverse the payment? He paid by cc. He seems legit, but its alot of money to lose.

Rod

Robert Marshall · Sep 11, 2004

Is her account set up to automatically send the money into your wife's account?

I thought that she would HAVE to log into her Paypal account and request that the money be sent to her account?

As long as the money is in the PayPal account the original sender can certainly try and get the money back, though that doesn't necessarily mean they will.

Generally speaking, I always ship once the money is in my account, though I haven't ever sold anything nearly as expensive as you did!

Good luck,

Robert
-------------------

rodg said:
Hi

I recently sold a couple of lenses for $2600 and the buyer, who
lives in the US, paid by paypal into my wife's account (who uses it
to only buy stuff). We rec'd an email from paypal saying the money
was deposited into her paypal account, but it has not shown in our
bank account yet (2 days later). Is it safe to ship these yet or
can the purchaser still stop and reverse the payment? He paid by
cc. He seems legit, but its alot of money to lose.

Rod

jas0420 · Sep 11, 2004

You have to go into PayPal and enter a transaction yourself to withdraw funds (there's a tab called "Withdraw" on the menu at the top of your PayPal account page)... That is what moves the money from PayPal to your bank account. From the time you do this to the time that your bank account receives and posts the funds can be 3 to 4 days.

In the past, I would normally assume it is safe to ship after the PayPal account is funded, but I changed my philosophy about a couple of weeks ago when I sold my 10D and 28-135. The PayPal account funded, so I went and dropped the package off at FedEx the following afternoon. Four hours after I did that, I received an email from PayPal stating that they were investigating the buyer as potentially using a stolen credit card. My heart sank! It sank even more when I logged into my PayPal account and found that they had reversed the transaction and my account was empty. Had no camera AND no money!!

I had to call FedEx and get them to try to stop the shipment from being delivered (I shipped Second Day, so I had a little time for them to catch it). It made it allllllll the way across the country to the buyer's city though before it turned around, so it was a little unnerving to watch the tracking! Anyway... It turned out to be a false alarm on PayPal's part. The buyer had contacted me immediately after, and we worked it out with PayPal. He turned out to be a very legit and honest person, but it taught me a valuable lesson... From now on, my eBay ads are going up with a disclaimer that I won't ship until 48 hours or so AFTER PayPal funds... Because they obviously still look at transactions even after they've posted, so I'm giving them a little more time for the dust to settle before I drop my package off from now on!

Soooo... I'm not trying to scare you away from shipping your package or using PayPal in the future. If you've had the funds in your PayPal account for a few days and the buyer has a confirmed address with them, then you are probably in the clear!

--
-Jason
http://www.photosbyjasonsmith.com

Andy Williams · Sep 11, 2004

once i've got it out of paypal and into my bank account then i ship. haven't had a problem in years.

Jim Campbell · Sep 11, 2004

drawbacks and I believe at the very least for a large transaction you only want to ship to a verified paypal account. I don't know if it is possible to determine if the address you are shipping to is the actual paypal address on record. What is the buyers feedback rating? Funny, I almost feel safer buying something on ebay then selling.

rodg said:
Hi

I recently sold a couple of lenses for $2600 and the buyer, who
lives in the US, paid by paypal into my wife's account (who uses it
to only buy stuff). We rec'd an email from paypal saying the money
was deposited into her paypal account, but it has not shown in our
bank account yet (2 days later). Is it safe to ship these yet or
can the purchaser still stop and reverse the payment? He paid by
cc. He seems legit, but its alot of money to lose.

Rod

RichW · Sep 11, 2004

when you recieve payment. It will show up in your paypal account. Also the money will not be in your bank account until you trasfer and wait a few days. Paypal can take the money back out of your account as easy as they put it in.

Rich

Jim Campbell said:
rodg said:

Hi

I recently sold a couple of lenses for $2600 and the buyer, who
lives in the US, paid by paypal into my wife's account (who uses it
to only buy stuff). We rec'd an email from paypal saying the money
was deposited into her paypal account, but it has not shown in our
bank account yet (2 days later). Is it safe to ship these yet or
can the purchaser still stop and reverse the payment? He paid by
cc. He seems legit, but its alot of money to lose.

Rod

Click to expand...

Lotta_L.A · Sep 11, 2004

I just sold my 10D on Ebay last week. The buyer paid with Paypal and I transferred the money into my bank account.

As soon as I shipped the camera and gave the buyer the tracking number,

he called Paypal and filed a 'buyer's complaint' which froze my account. They retrieved the money right back from my own bank account!! (Yes, appearantly, Paypal can do this!). They din't even check with me first.

Now the money is frozen in my Paypal acccount for 180 days, and according to their user agreement there is NOTHING I can do about it. (A bank could never do this, but since Paypal is not a bank, normal banking restrictions don't apply to them.)

I was lucky enough to call my Post Office and had them recall the shipment, so I'm getting my camera back and the buyer will eventually get his money back from Paypal. But I have lost the shipping costs and the Ebay listing costs, too. Plus I will have to relist the camera on Ebay, and will probably get much less for it this time around, now that the 20D is out.

The world is full of scammers. And Paypal is not safe for sellers, by any means.

Your best bet is to empty your regular bank account as soon as the money has cleared into it. People don't think Paypal can access their personal bank account without your permission, but they CAN and they DO!

Lotta_L.A
PS. check this out:
http://www.paypalsucks.com

RichW said:
when you recieve payment. It will show up in your paypal account.
Also the money will not be in your bank account until you trasfer
and wait a few days. Paypal can take the money back out of your
account as easy as they put it in.

Rich

bigmikeg · Sep 11, 2004

rodg said:
Hi

I recently sold a couple of lenses for $2600 and the buyer, who
lives in the US, paid by paypal into my wife's account (who uses it
to only buy stuff). We rec'd an email from paypal saying the money
was deposited into her paypal account, but it has not shown in our
bank account yet (2 days later). Is it safe to ship these yet or
can the purchaser still stop and reverse the payment? He paid by
cc. He seems legit, but its alot of money to lose.

Rod

The problem with paypal is that their contract gives them access to whatever bank account you link the paypal account to. As someone else pointed out, they can freeze the entire account, so you don't want anything in the account if you can help it.

You can read some horror stories at

http://www.paypalsucks.com

After seeing that site, I cancelled my paypal account linked to one of my credit cards and opened a new one linked to a bank account with little money in it. My bank had a deal where you could have a checking account as long as you keep $500 in a savings account. I opened another small savings and got the free checking account. These are completely separate from our regular bank accounts. I keep some excess cash in the savings account and keep about $50 in the checking account. I gave Paypal the checking account number.

If any money comes into it, I can move it to another account before shipping and paypal can go do you know what to themselves.

Lotta_L.A · Sep 11, 2004

bigmikeg said:
rodg said:

Hi

I recently sold a couple of lenses for $2600 and the buyer, who
lives in the US, paid by paypal into my wife's account (who uses it
to only buy stuff). We rec'd an email from paypal saying the money
was deposited into her paypal account, but it has not shown in our
bank account yet (2 days later). Is it safe to ship these yet or
can the purchaser still stop and reverse the payment? He paid by
cc. He seems legit, but its alot of money to lose.

Rod

Click to expand...

The problem with paypal is that their contract gives them access to
whatever bank account you link the paypal account to. As someone
else pointed out, they can freeze the entire account, so you don't
want anything in the account if you can help it.

You can read some horror stories at

http://www.paypalsucks.com

After seeing that site, I cancelled my paypal account linked to one
of my credit cards and opened a new one linked to a bank account
with little money in it. My bank had a deal where you could have a
checking account as long as you keep $500 in a savings account. I
opened another small savings and got the free checking account.
These are completely separate from our regular bank accounts. I
keep some excess cash in the savings account and keep about $50 in
the checking account. I gave Paypal the checking account number.
If any money comes into it, I can move it to another account before
shipping and paypal can go do you know what to themselves.

cladnin · Sep 11, 2004

I did this once and still got burnt, for 500 bucks. What you need to make sure is when sending, to have a confirmation that you did for sure, 100%, send the buyer something at the address paypal provides to you.

Andy Williams said:
once i've got it out of paypal and into my bank account then i
ship. haven't had a problem in years.

Juniper Berry · Sep 11, 2004

Holly Cow you were lucky. That is the one thing I hate about PayPal, the buyer turns out to be crook and the seller gets the shaft too. The funny thing is if you hold of on shipping a week to make sure something like this happens and the buyer complains PayPal will get all over you for it. PayPal needs to work on comming up with a way that it is safe and most importantly fair for everyone. Right now it is so one sided. I have only had a couple of problems with PayPal over the last couple of years, but I have certainly heard the horror stories.

JB

jas0420 said:
You have to go into PayPal and enter a transaction yourself to
withdraw funds (there's a tab called "Withdraw" on the menu at the
top of your PayPal account page)... That is what moves the money
from PayPal to your bank account. From the time you do this to the
time that your bank account receives and posts the funds can be 3
to 4 days.

In the past, I would normally assume it is safe to ship after the
PayPal account is funded, but I changed my philosophy about a
couple of weeks ago when I sold my 10D and 28-135. The PayPal
account funded, so I went and dropped the package off at FedEx the
following afternoon. Four hours after I did that, I received an
email from PayPal stating that they were investigating the buyer as
potentially using a stolen credit card. My heart sank! It sank
even more when I logged into my PayPal account and found that they
had reversed the transaction and my account was empty. Had no
camera AND no money!!

I had to call FedEx and get them to try to stop the shipment from
being delivered (I shipped Second Day, so I had a little time for
them to catch it). It made it allllllll the way across the country
to the buyer's city though before it turned around, so it was a
little unnerving to watch the tracking! Anyway... It turned out
to be a false alarm on PayPal's part. The buyer had contacted me
immediately after, and we worked it out with PayPal. He turned out
to be a very legit and honest person, but it taught me a valuable
lesson... From now on, my eBay ads are going up with a disclaimer
that I won't ship until 48 hours or so AFTER PayPal funds...
Because they obviously still look at transactions even after
they've posted, so I'm giving them a little more time for the dust
to settle before I drop my package off from now on!

Soooo... I'm not trying to scare you away from shipping your
package or using PayPal in the future. If you've had the funds in
your PayPal account for a few days and the buyer has a confirmed
address with them, then you are probably in the clear!

--
-Jason
http://www.photosbyjasonsmith.com

--
Grow Some Dope. Plant a Politician!

Juniper Berry · Sep 11, 2004

That is no guarantee either as when you sign up for PayPal you gave them permission to withdraw any needed money from any bank accounts that are attached to your PayPal account. So if the buyer turns out to be a crook and you have no money in your PayPal account they will take it from your bank account. They can also take it from the credit card on your account if your bank account is empty. If none of this works they they send it to a collection agency and if need be they will file a suite against you. Just something to keep in mind.

JB

Andy Williams said:
once i've got it out of paypal and into my bank account then i
ship. haven't had a problem in years.

--
Grow Some Dope. Plant a Politician!

Juniper Berry · Sep 11, 2004

If you want to be as safe as possible only take money order or cashiers checks. It takes more time for both of you, but you have the best control and the least chances of getting the shaft. Deposite the check in your bank account and wait for it to clear before you send (7 to 10 days). DO NOT assume that because it is a money order or cashiers check that you are safe. They have been quite a few fakes ones passed arround and you won't know this until your bank tries to collect it. So wait and be patient. If they buyer doesn't understand then sell to someone else.

JB

Lotta_L.A · Sep 11, 2004

I used to think Paypal was "safe" and reliable, but I learned the hard way that you have absolutely NO say in what they do with your money if a crooked buyer files a 'complaint' when the item is shipped.

Their customer service is terrible and will absolutely not help you in any way. They are not a bank, so they are free to make any decisions they want, and it's never in the seller's interest. They are totally free to access your personal bank account, which many people don't know.

There is a class action lawsuit going on right now against Paypal's shady business practices - I always thought people were complaining for no reason until the same thing happened to me 2 weeks ago...

http://www.paypalsucks.com

rodg said:
Hi

I recently sold a couple of lenses for $2600 and the buyer, who
lives in the US, paid by paypal into my wife's account (who uses it
to only buy stuff). We rec'd an email from paypal saying the money
was deposited into her paypal account, but it has not shown in our
bank account yet (2 days later). Is it safe to ship these yet or
can the purchaser still stop and reverse the payment? He paid by
cc. He seems legit, but its alot of money to lose.

Rod

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OT: paypal question...when to ship goods?

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