Well, I've come upon a dilemma.

What do you do when a customer pays a yearly fee of over $300 and then about a month later, they reverse the payment, and the money gets sent back to them? The reversal happened 25 days after they ordered yearly hosting.

Additionally, I have another question regarind paypal. Two clients recently ordered yearly hosting packages over $450. One day later, paypal does this places a "Temporary Hold" (type) and the status is "placed" The money from the client was taken out of my papal account and I don't know where it went.

All 3 of these customers are still using their hosting. What kind of action should I take with the customer and or paypal?

Thank you,
Alfonzo

Suspend the accounts since they are not paying for the hosting. If they want their site up they will pay.

Alfonzo,

I would say the best recommendation is to take it up with paypal - the client (other than the one with the chargeback) most likely has nothing to do with the hold.

The one with the reversed payment, cancel them obviously.

So why did paypal place the hold? and what do I do to get that $$ back?

The same reason banks sometimes do I would assume - if the $450 originally came from someone sneaky they take a look into it, and hold it in whatever account its currently in.

//Just an assumption, contact paypal! They'll know.

Probably nothing, it's more than likely that they will not refund the money.

The usually place money on hold that they feel was fraud.

Are you guys saying I won't ever get the money back?

And where do I go to contact paypal?

http://www.paypal.com

http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_contact-phone
PayPal Customer Service Agents are available to help you during the following times:

4:00 AM PST to 10:00 PM PST Monday through Friday
6:00 AM PST to 8:00 PM PST on Saturday and Sunday

Call us at: 402-935-2050

Originally posted by jmweb


I'm currently away from a phone and will be for a while. Is there a way to contact them via email?

I don´t think so, PayPal is more a offline business usually ;-)

Hello Galfon

Do as they guide you above, File a complaint stateing nature of problem etc. I think there is a fee though of £20.00 GBP

Good Luck ;)

Best Regards

Adam

I have had this happen and most of the time it has been fraud when they put a hold on it. 99.9% of the time you will not see the money. I would suspend the account and notify Paypal with as much details as possible.

Not sounding very good here. I emailed the people and they did not reply to me yet.

Originally posted by Lorenz
I don´t think so, PayPal is more a offline business usually ;-) Not exactly since most of their business happens online...

http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_contact_us

Click on "Resolution Center" after you login to your account and submit the problem.


Tim

Originally posted by cookie
Click on "Resolution Center" after you login to your account and submit the problem.


Tim


You cannot file a claim against this transaction. This is usually because the transaction has not yet been completed. If this is a completed transaction, please double check that it refers to a payment that you sent.

Also it says

File a Claim
To file your Buyer Claim, click Continue. We will work to resolve your Buyer Claim as quickly as possible, but it may take at least 30 days to complete our investigation and resolve the dispute.


I didn't buy it, they bought it from me.

If paypal placed a hold then they're probably smelling the aroma of fish (aka fraud).

The SECOND someone reverses or disputes a payment with us, their site is shut down immediately until it is resolved.

Quit taking yearly payments - paypal's window for disputing a charge is 30 days so if you get paid monthly when NEXT month's payment comes in last month's payment is pretty much no longer eligible for reversal...

Paypal is rubbish - this happened to me. Turkish client signed up, fully hammered support with questions for 29 days. Get an email with chargeback.

Reason: unauthorized transaction.

I faxed and emailed paypal tons of logs, chats, emails, ip's, TOS etc.... I stated clearly, this is a SERVICE - its for web hosting.

after their clumpsy 3.5 weeks of investigation I get a reply from them saying that I didn't provide them the tracking number and delivery address of the parcel.

Case closed - No more resolution center option, no way to explain to them that it was a service. Then I called their phone number throught out the day, and receive answering machines all the time.

Originally posted by Dixiesys
Quit taking yearly payments - paypal's window for disputing a charge is 30 days so if you get paid monthly when NEXT month's payment comes in last month's payment is pretty much no longer eligible for reversal...

You are right. It happened with me also and paypal put a hold on my account and that went for almost a month and then i had to confirm lots of thing, i was on the phone for an hour.

Anyway do not accept big payments using paypal. Try to get a small merchant account so once the payment is done you are in charge. Paypal is for smaller amounts, I am using a third party site that gives a Plug 'n Play kind ordering system where you get the option of getting payment from paypal or using 2Checkout and they are good.

Try to do something like that and do not waste your time after getting paypal people.

Best Luck !

I guess, this is indeed one of the downfalls of Paypal. I actually thought that they were getting better the last 5-6 months with less similar complaints but I guess I was wrong...

Originally posted by Dixiesys
paypal's window for disputing a charge is 30 days so if you get paid monthly when NEXT month's payment comes in last month's payment is pretty much no longer eligible for reversal...

I sell software online, and a "customer" filed a reveral after 8 months. Paypal promptly refunded their money to them. :angry:

(Worked out ok, because I simply cancelled the customer's license...)

Originally posted by mrzippy
I sell software online, and a "customer" filed a reveral after 8 months. Paypal promptly refunded their money to them. :angry:

(Worked out ok, because I simply cancelled the customer's license...)

do your programs/applications check with your database's licenses to verify everytime its in use?

Originally posted by GIGANET
do your programs/applications check with your database's licenses to verify everytime its in use? Yes, I use www.phpaudit.com for license control. (Excellent license control!)

All I had to do (after the customer did the reversal) was log into phpaudit and suspend their license. Bingo.. they can no longer use my software.

Originally posted by mrzippy
I sell software online, and a "customer" filed a reveral after 8 months. Paypal promptly refunded their money to them. :angry:

(Worked out ok, because I simply cancelled the customer's license...)

Well Paypal's window is 30 days, if you finance the paypal payment with a credit card, then heck it can be a year or more, if they chargeback the charge.

What does that mean? I have 30 days to take affirmative action?

Originally posted by Galfon
What does that mean? I have 30 days to take affirmative action?

You are most likely out of luck on this. Stop accepting such large yearly payments. Have your larger plans only available on a month-month basis.

What is the money limit for too expensive for paypal? That they consider it fraud?

Originally posted by Galfon
What is the money limit for too expensive for paypal? That they consider it fraud?

There is no hard limit that I know of.

There's a very good chance that the account holder was a victim of a "phishing scam".

My advice to you would be to simply bite the loss and move on. Paypal is notorious for very poor treatment for merchants. Emails, phone calls and such will amount to nothing.

Originally posted by Dixiesys
Quit taking yearly payments

Couldn't of been said any better. This was the #1 reason why we stopped accepting payments over 3 months at a time. Especially if you are purchasing dedicated/game servers.

Imagine getting 3 customer orders at $100 per month paid quarterly. You just received $900.00. Now each customer files a dispute with paypal on day 25.. and each one gets the money back.. lets say it was fraud. In most cases you are now out $900.00 instead of the $300.00 if you did it month-2-month.

I always recommend.. have atleast the amount of money in your bank that you are hosting. Incase problems arrise you can pay off your debt right away. I've seen quite a few resellers (of resellers) sell dedicated servers they have customers file chargebacks and be out quite a lot of money.. which of course they cannot cover and go under in days.

So yearly payments are a nono.

What about offering quarterly deals?

Is there like a limit?

Also, is the client allowed to chargeback whenever he/she wants too? So 2 years down the road?