Paypal Good or Bad? - Page 2

lisa · #11 (**permalink**) 04-19-2007, 08:09 PM

Welcome fs.bb!

You are actually not the first person I've heard say negative things about PayPal... especially recently. In fact many of the affiliate programs that used to pay me using PayPal have dropped them and switched to other systems. What a shame 'cause I've had good experiences with them thus far.

max · #12 (**permalink**) 04-22-2007, 11:10 AM

The only bad experience I had was I got "had" by an e-bay auction and the seller never sent me the product. I already paid him and PayPal was unable to resolve the resolution. Other than that it's been great for me.

Seclinix · #13 (**permalink**) 04-22-2007, 02:44 PM

yes that is one of the most worst cases i have everseen... you pay for the product and you never get it. You need to purchase off someone you can trust.

revenue · #14 (**permalink**) 05-06-2007, 10:07 PM

Paypal has been in business since 1998 and was acquired by eBay Inc. in 2002. Although it claims to not be a bank (to avoid being regulate as a financial institution) it effectively operates as one, handling other peoples money and then taking a small percentage for all services as its fee. There is some controversy over paypal's operations, and there have been truly some nightmarish stories coming out of paypal experiences, where peoples bank accounts have been frozen in their entirety during an investigation. You can get the full story from the gripe site http://www.paypalsucks.com

Nonetheless paypal has become a standard on the web accepting payments. Many use paypal for years and dont have anything really bad happen to their account. paypal has done some annoying things, such as change the format of its purchase notifications more than eight times, without notifying system administrators or site owners before hand and this has caused some to cause their UF's transaction server to barf. Ultimately meaning having to go in and upgrade accounts by hand until the new code was in place on their ends.

dont forget that paypal skims a fee, usually a flat amount plusa percentagem for each trancsaction, Its's imperative thaat you figure this fee into your cost and profit calculations; you can five yourself quite a shock when yu think you should have $500 dollars in your paypal account and discover you only have $475.

Paypal now allows for credit card processing without forcing buyers to create paypal accounts. All they need to do is enter their card details and a purchase can be made. This is good news because it removes one more obstacle from the mantra of making it as easy as possible for people to give you money.

Generally paypal seems to work. It takes a little effort to set up an account and i recommend (with some reservations) that you do so. If you dont want to chance doing business with paypal you'll need to accept that you're cutting off a non significant avenue for revenue. There are alternatives to paypal: moneybookers.com yowcow.com clickbank.com
Each has its own quirks.
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miles · #15 (**permalink**) 05-07-2007, 02:17 PM

Yeah I agree there are advantages and disadvantages but I think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. If you need to accept payments from your site, they have the most simplest setup as far as I'm concerned.

booklowertravel · #16 (**permalink**) 05-15-2007, 10:01 AM

Paypal works, but it is limited in taking your business to the next level. For one people see you as a mom and pop shop when you use paypal. Paypal order form if someone does not have paypal account can turn off your customers. You have to include the fees that paypal charges to recover your cost. However, if you are just starting out, paypal is your best bet. There are similar order sites like paypal. One I think is called Worldpay. You can search for it on google. They offer very secure ordering for your customer where the customer has to verify by email that they made the order.

2fer · #17 (**permalink**) 08-31-2007, 01:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fs.bb

Please, understand that I'm honestly not here trying to bash PayPal. I am a Business Owner trying to help you see EVERY side of PayPal.

For more info you can check out http://www.paypalsucks.com

If you do decide to go with PayPal, its not as if they're going to intentionally be gunning for you. Just be very careful and read their rules carefully.

Good Luck

I used to use Paypal and thought it was the greatest thing on earth. You are right, even being careful, sooner or later they will get you. I am stuck again with Paypal because when I left Paypal after they "got" me for close to $1500, and opened a merchant account with payments through VeriSign, then Paypal bought VeriSign. They just forced me over to their Paypal Manager virtual terminal even though I still have 8 months all paid up with "VeriSign". I have a short paragraph on that website you mentioned, which I never heard of until I wanted someplace to post what happened. They are trying to clean up their act, from my own experience, but once burned....

PosterBoy · #18 (**permalink**) 10-25-2007, 05:51 PM

I've been using Paypal for a long time now and haven't really had any problems. A few years ago there was a problem with our account and I recall that it was h*ll trying to get their customer support to fix it. In the end we had to abandon that Paypal account and open a new one.

But, that was a long time ago and I haven't had any reason to deal with customer support recently. Maybe a lot has changed.

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