PAYPAL PAYMENTS

Recently we encountered a situation where Paypal took money out of our Paypal account because a customer (who had already been sent their goods 10 days earlier) had for some reason put a stop on the credit card that topped up their Paypal account. Buying our item had taken our customer overdrawn with Paypal and so with no card backup Paypal took the money back from us rather than chase our customer for it. After this, on further investigation it turned out that none of the transactions put through Paypal from slotcarcentre.co.uk are elgible for Paypal Seller Protection. This is despite the transactions apparently meeting all the requirements of the protection scheme, and our having the required level of Paypal account in good standing. So without protection, any time there is a problem with a customer's payment, we would stand to lose both our money and our goods.

Over a period of several days in November 2008 (about one reply per day) we asked Paypal to tell us why these transactions were not covered, but after a lengthy series of obtuse emails, stock responses and circular arguments, we really got no definitive answer. But it's certainly clear that because of situations like this where Paypal can't get their money back from the buyer and so take it from the seller, we have regrettably decided that it is simply too risky to take Paypal payments through the shop any more. Paypal themselves admitted it was extremely risky to send goods to people without verified addresses. And in our opinion the system is too open to abuse and leaves us exposed to the risk of sending goods to customers and then having Paypal send the customer their money back as well. This will of course be a disappointment to those customers who like to fund their hobby spending via Paypal, separately from their main credit cards, but it's simply not a safe way for us to run a small business with small profit margins like ours.

From time to time we do sell items on Ebay and if you sell on Ebay then things are different - our transactions on Ebay seem to all be covered. So if you buy an item from us on Ebay, Paypal will still be an option.

If you wonder why other retailers aren't doing the same, well maybe they haven't found out the hard way yet. Off-Ebay retailers who don't or can't adhere to Paypal's strict seller protection rules are leaving themselves open to fraud and chargebacks. If you are surprised by this news, then for more information search for "paypal reverse", "paypal fraud warning", "paypal scams", and also visit paypalsucks.com, particularly this section, also see this review on Ebay , and this page on paypalsucks.org.