I’ve started bidding on Ebay recently as part of my scheme to set up a part-time business selling books out of my house.
I do business with a number of high-volume sellers who offer me the option of paying with Paypal, Visa or Mastercard.
In case of problems with my purchase, which of these options offers the greatest recourse against a seller who, for example, fails to ship his merchandise, or ships “not as described” merchandise, etc?
Consumer protection with credit cards in the US is a matter of law.
Consumer protection with Paypal is what Paypal says it is. Then there is this web site from 2004 and what they attribute to a news story at the time:
YMMV.
you can have both. if the ebay auction is offering “PayPal Buyer Protection” then you are covered up to $1000 through PayPal. You also have the option of funding that payment with a credit card which entitles you to the protections mentioned in the above post.
the benefit of using PayPal is that you don’t share your credit card number with the seller.
Paypal is owned by Ebay. It is generaly simpler to get a refund through paypal for unreceived merchandise then with a standard credit card.
In general if your dealing with high volume sellers, they are slaves to there ebay ratings. A threat of negative feedback is usualy enough to get a refund if needed.
When you get to know the sellers (or rather they get to know you) you will be sending them cheques through the post - or depositing into their accounts.
As boytyperanma said, power sellers will sort out a dispute off-line.
Personally I dislike giving out credit card numbers.
As a followup question, isn’t there something in the paypal user agreement that if you pay paypal through a credit card, you will not seek a chargeback through the credit card company?? Of course, this probably isn’t legally binding to the point where it would actually keep someone from getting a chargeback, and I imagine that if a paypal customer gets to the point where they want to seek a chargeback against paypal, they wouldn’t really see the closing of their paypal account as a punitive measure. When you’ve lost confidence in paypal that way, you probably don’t want to use their services again.
Myself, I’ve had nothing but good experiences with paypal, though I suppose I’ve never sent money via them that I couldn’t afford to lose without worrying about it too much.
Some credit cards allow you to create a limited use CC #. You log on to their web site and sign in to access your account. You may see something along the lines of ‘shop safe’.
There you can set the limit of the card, anywhere from $1 to $1000’s depending on your credit limit and the expriration date. Unlike regular CC limits, these ones just go down as you use that number, and don’t go back up after you make a payment.
So for let say a $250 ebay transaction I would create a CC# that has a limit of perhaps $260 (I like to have a cushon) and expires November 06. It also gives you the 3 digit CVC (Signature) code that is sometimes requested.
By logging on you can change the exp date, the limit and or close that number entirely.
Also it doesn’t seem to place a ‘hold’ on your available credit, it’s just another number that works just the same as your main # within the limits you set.
I bought an item on eBay last year, and instead of payment information, it said, “Call our 800 number for payment details.” It was a long-established, reputable, bricks-and-mortar business, so I called their 800 number, and they said cheerfully, “We do all our eBay payments through credit cards, so just give us your credit card number.” I did, I received my merchandise just fine, and it was only later that my husband pointed out that, if we’re understanding eBay’s rules correctly, the seller had thereby avoided having to pay their seller’s fee to eBay by having me pay them directly with my credit card.
I’m not aware of anything in ebay rules that says that. Seller fees are due on the winning auction amount. You bid through ebay, you won the auction, therefore the bricks-and-mortar business has to pay ebay. If they’d claimed that you didn’t pay, they might have thus tried to get the seller fees reversed through cancelling the auction or something similar, but ebay would have investigated that with you first I’m sure.
Now, the paypal branch wouldn’t have gotten their fees. This is, unless I’ve missed something big, just fine with ebay. Paypal payment is a service that ebay inc offers for those auction customers (buyers and sellers) who agree to use it. If buyer and seller agree on an alternate means of payment, that’s still fine by the ebay terms of service.
Or am I wrong about all of this somehow? (Not a big ebayer)
Yes there is no restriction as to method of payment, the seller pays the ebay fees based on the closing price of the auction. If the seller claims that the item didn’t actually sell, ebay will contact the buyer to verify this, after the buyer verifies then the seller is refunded some of the fees.
The part that ebay looses is the the PayPal fees, which is fine since DDG never used the PayPal service.
Oh, no, if I sell an item on Ebay, Ebay invoices me for the seller’s fees.
I keep my account with them current or they’ll stop me selling through them. They would also have the right to send my seller’s fees to collections, assuming that there were no mitigating circumstances like none of my sales completing, etc.
I’ve paid Ebay for an item I sold a week ago where I haven’t even collected yet from the buyer…
I started this thread to get more input, but I have seen buyers say that Paypal’s internal handling method for payments sourced from CC is actually different from payments sourced from bank accounts. Basically their standards change…
I’m not sure about the user agreement. I do know that if the reason you’re filing the chargeback is because you didn’t receive the item, then PayPal won’t take a negative action on your account but rather attempt to recover the funds from the seller.
Having the bad experience of getting ripped off on ebay is enough without exacerbating the situation by taking ‘punitive measures’ against the victim.