Comment: Be careful selling by PayPal and offering "Pick Up" of the item.
Background: A number of sellers (auto parts mostly) on Ebay offer "Pick Up" as a method of shipping but, they will only accept cash or credit card at the time of pick up, for payment.
The reason for this is so they can be absolutely certain that the person who picks up the item, is the one paying for it.
Example: You sell something and agree to having the buyer pay by PayPal and pick up the item in person. You get the PayPal notification that you've received the money and tell the buy to come and get the item.
Someone arrives at your door and picks up the item. So far so good.
A few days later you find a "Dispute" registered on your PayPal account for that transaction. The buyer is claiming they never picked up the item. Or, that it was an unauthorized transaction and they never bought it in the first place.
You may have a problem at this point. How do you "Proove" the person picked up the item? When you ship, you have post office receipts, etc. to show you shipped the item. You have your ebay reputation. But not so with a personal pick up. This is why some ebay sellers won't accept PayPal on pick ups.
Solution: (Possible, suggested....)
- One thought is to take a picture of the person receiving the item when they come and pick it up.
- A second thought is to ALSO ask to see a "Photo ID" of some sort. Drivers license would be good. Make sure the name is the same as the buyer and that the picture matches. WRITE DOWN THE LICENSE NUMBER!.
- This way you at least have something tangible to give to PayPal, if the transaction is disputed, that proves the buyer did come to you and retrieve the item.
Buyers AND Sellers need to take every reasonable step to protect themselves. There are a lot of scammers out there on both sides of the equation.
NT
