OT: Paypal's buyer-"protection" process

[alex at pennace.org (Alex Pennace)]

On Thu, Dec 29, 2005 at 01:19:27PM -0500, Robert La Ferla wrote:
> Jerry Feldman wrote:
> >My wife does a lot of eBay selling, and in the past she has used PayPal
> >customer service to her satisfaction. I don't know much about the
> >buyer-"protection" stuff though.
> >  
> eBay makes money from sellers so it is seller focused.

Most money entering PayPal comes in through credit cards. The banks
almost always side with the customer, even if it is patently
insane. Based on second-hand information (mostly, various posts from
<http://www.livejournal.com/community/ebay_blacklist>), PayPal has a
dispute mechanism that tries to maneuver in lock-step with their
counterparts at MasterCard/Visa. PayPal would be wise to handle the
dispute "in-house" before a real credit card chargeback results in
money being unceremoniously yanked from their merchant account.

The important point is like MasterCard/Visa, this mechanism of dispute
also costs nothing extra through PayPal. So the question is, what
exactly is this "buyer-protection" thing the original poster signed up
for. I guess it is a sort of insurance that pays out claims, even if
the seller's account is empty. Judging by the tone of the message the
original poster received from them, I would say they are keen to avoid
paying up.

The original poster has many, many options available to him that does
not involve running around town to confirm his product is
defective. Using MasterCard or Visa "rules" [1] as guidance, the
original poster can simply get all his money back, right now -- if the
seller wants the product back, the seller can issue a UPS Call Tag to
pick it up at his expense.

[1] I'd be delighted to post a link to the raw and uncut rules, but
those are secret. No, not even the merchants can see the rules.