Looking to gather feedback from PayPal users

[PayPal_Colin]

Greetings, all --

My name is Colin Rule, and I am PayPal's Director of Online Dispute Resolution.

I am currently working with the Customer Advocacy team to gather feedback on aspects of our Risk Management systems that are generating user frustration.

The areas I am most interested in include:

1. Payment holds / reviews

2. Payment declines

3. Limitations / restrictions

4. Buyer and seller protections

5. The Resolution Center (disputes/claims)

6. Chargebacks / bank declines

If you have experience with one of these processes and you'd like to provide some constructive feedback on how to make it better, please post a message in this thread or email me at crule{at}paypal.com. 

Please note: I do not work in customer support, so I will not be able to help with individual disputes, claims, or limitations.  I am more interested in feedback about how our overall systems can be improved so as to minimize frustration moving ahead.

Many thanks!  I hope to hear from many of you soon.

Colin

[mooseboots]

You will have better luck on-line if you simply purchase directly with your credit card. You should only use PayPal for eBay transactions. If a company just has a website and a PayPal account and doesn't accept credit cards directly, to me - personally - that's a red flag that they're not a real business.

[luvstampin]

I myself have never had any problems/issues with my Paypal account.

From reading threads though it seems the Hold issue is a big one.

I can see anyone that has had a problem or a brand new seller and even really high priced items having holds but there are some sellers that have been around and have 100% positive feedback getting holds. There are even sellers that sell an item for just a few dollars reandomly getting a hold. The rhyme/reason does not make much sense sometimes. 

I think Paypal should look into that part of it and maybe relax a few things. I do understand 100% on why the holds are neccessary.

I think brand new sellers without much of a buying history should have the holds - by 20 buying acutions you can get a good feel for the buyer if they are honest and a good buyer/seller

Sellers that have had issues shipping/refunding and so on - go by the amount of disputes filed against the seller

if the item sold is above a certain higher amount then put a hold on the money. You could also go by the amount of feedback for this like you do now -=EXAMPLE - seller has only 10 feedback then hold money if the auction is over $50

seller have 50 positive feedback - then hold money if auction is over $100 and so on until they get to the 100 positive feedback and get it lifted totally.

Thank you Colin for taking the time to hear from Paypal users about issues. We appreciate that.

I love the ease of Paypal and it is user friendly. Personally I like Paypal and think it is a great online tool for payments and have no plans on leaving as I think its one of the best out there.

[PayPal_Colin]

Thanks, luvstampin.

I'm sharing your message with the holds team.  This is a new issue, but you're right, it's becoming much more of a prominent pain point.

And thanks for the compliment.  We're just trying to make it better!

Colin

[banjodawn]

I agree not every one should get holds on there funds.If you have had disputes i can understand the hold.I have never had a problem with paypal.Think this should be worked on. It;s not right for everyone to pay for it

[bobbyjj42369]

I posted this earlier in the disputes section before finding this thread and wanted to post again-

I attempted to sell an item online which i need the money payed with to get.  i get the item from a contact overseas and need to send him the money to purchase the item for me before i can receive it and then send it to my buyer.  I did not know that paypal has a new policy of withholding money from its sellers.  Here i got stuck with paypal.  First Paypal tells me that the funds will be released as soon as i provide a tracking number.  Fine i pay for the shipping before hand with UPS and it costs me $160 since the buyer has asked me to ship to africa.  After getting stuck again with paypal not releasing the funds because they require that the item be actually shipped.  i attempted to simply cancel the transaction and me and my buyer both asked to have the transaction canceled and the money returned.  PAYPAL REFUSES TO RETURN THE MONEY!  They keep insisting that i am a scammer and continue to threaten me! they threaten me that if i do not send the item they will take me to court! they say that they will contact ups and tell them to not refund my prepaid shipping!  I am in complete shock! i have been a loyal paypal customer for a number of years and i am now being threatened!?  I still do not understand why they cannot/refuse to return the money to my buyer.  Can someone help me?  I am also looking for someway to contact some sort of manager about this issue.  I have been in contact with a generic email and one person whose english isn't that great.

-as you can see my experience with paypal has turned from years of happy use with no problems to complete disdain within a few days.  I am appalled at being treated this way by a company i previously recommended to friends.

[saypoint]

I'm surprised at the extent to which Paypal will protect a fraudulent seller.  I recently bought what was advertised as a genuine licensed software product, only to find that it was not genuine when I ran the online validation on the manufacturer's website.  A call to their support service revealed an illegally generated product key was the problem.  Once I filed a complaint with Paypal, I got an email stating that the seller's ebay account had been somehow "breached" by persons unknown who had made fraudulent transactions.  Yeah, right.  If he didn't sell me the pirated software, why is he asking for it back?  You know he's going to sell it again to someone else.

The seller refused to refund my money, but after I disputed the charge with my cc company, he agreed to take it back.  I sent the product back and provided Paypal with a tracking number.  Is this the end of this annoying and very inconvenient transaction?  We'll see.  The seller emailed me this morning asking if I "sent the disk separately".  I guess he's implying that I sent him an empty package.  what a jerk.

I don't know how this will end, but I will probably never buy anything on ebay again, and will probably not use paypal EVER for anything that has even the remotest chance of being a problem transaction down the road.  Paypal should clearly see that this guy is a fraud, based on the facts of the transaction and the fact that his ebay seller's account was subsequently shut down. 

[PayPal_Colin]

saypoint--

Thanks for the post.  Can you email me the details so I can look into it?  crule{at}paypal.com

PayPal and eBay both have a zero-tolerance for counterfeit software sales.  The PayPal User Agreement even says "If you lose a Significantly Not as Described Claim because the item you sold is counterfeit, you will be required to provide a full refund to the buyer and you will not receive the item back (it may be destroyed)."  Selling counterfeit items is a violation of our Acceptable Use Policy and can result in immediate account restriction.

I don't know why in this case the seller wasn't held to that standard.  Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the seller argued their account had been "taken over" -- seems highly suspicious to me, based on the information you shared, but maybe that put this matter into a different team.  Usually buyers have their accounts taken over, not sellers.  And why would a bad guy use the account to sell fake DVDs?  They'd be shut down as soon as the actual account owner figured it out.  Doesn't add up.

This seller does seem to be behaving like a jerk.  But you've gotten your money back through the credit card, it doesn't matter if he asserts you didn't return the disk -- your card issuer won't care.  Ignore his emails.  I bet his PayPal account will be shut down soon if eBay already shut it down.

I'm sorry you had a bad experience... I will say that it can be tough for us to identify fakes like this prior to the transaction -- that's not to excuse PayPal's response in this case, but the problem of fakes on eBay is 100 times better than it was when I started at eBay 7 years ago.  We've gotten much better at detecting them and getting them off the site before a buyer ever sees or bids on them.  But it's clear there's more work to do.

I appreciate the feedback.

Colin

[hmiller]

You want feedback . . . just look at the hundreds and hundreds of postings from frustrated users complaining that your buyer and or seller protection is worthless. By the time you jump through all of the hoops, and you are very, very lucky - you might be covered. You are only seeing the tip of the iceburg - there are 10s of thousands that never bother complaining.

[surplusdealdude]

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@hmiller wrote:

You want feedback . . . just look at the hundreds and hundreds of postings from frustrated users complaining that your buyer and or seller protection is worthless. By the time you jump through all of the hoops, and you are very, very lucky - you might be covered. You are only seeing the tip of the iceburg - there are 10s of thousands that never bother complaining.

---

Since I am one of the advisors that ANSWERS these questions, I can tell you that almost all of them are the result of people not reading the User Agreement.

If you read and stick to the User Agreement, you will win your disputes.  If you don't, you won't.

It's that simple.

[kcalla]

I know sellers need feedback and I can appreciate that. My problem is when I have had a less than positive experience it is almost impossible to post feedback that Ebay will accept, the site does not allow it to post! The site continues to stop me and if by any chance it does go through, I have noticed it doesn't stick. So what is the point? I have had mostly positive experiences on Ebay, but it makes me not want to bother with feedback, since Ebay makes so extremely hard to post anything that is not Excellent!