A client of mine paid to a email address of our domain name that is not our Paypal email address. She never asked us for the Paypal address but just pay direct. Now she claimed that her credit card payment has gone through. But I do not have such an account. Do I just ignore her and ask her to pay again? Paypal information was never available on our web site as we do not take in Paypal normally.

Tell her she made a mistake and to request a refund/chargeback through Paypal and give her the correct Paypal address.
If you didn't supply her with the incorrect address or your website didn't lead her to use that address tell her she made a mistake and payment has not been received.
Bit like posting cash to the wrong house!

...
Bit like posting cash to the wrong house!
Or maybe, "The check's in the mail!"

Has she been a client? :S

Is the email address a valid one? If so, PayPal would have sent an email to that address and gave you further instructions on collecting the payment.

If there is no paypal account associated with the Email address then all your client needs to do is simply login and cancel the payment from their paypal account.

She is a client under the most basic package. One of the very difficult to deal with clients, so tough that I was thinking of just absorbing the loss. But feel kinda fedup about that.

I tried to activate that email address but can't seemed to do that :(


Or maybe, "The check's in the mail!"

Has she been a client? :S

did she forward the paypal receipt to you? (so you can verify no typos)

where does that email go? does that address exist?

I tried to activate that email address but can't seemed to do that :(


Surely you have a catch-all email address on your domain to catch the stuff which goes to email addresses that aren't actually live?

In any case, as somebody else pointed out, you can politely request her to cancel her payment. If she refuses, absorb the loss and put her on a months notice.

Tough people are still customers to treat smoothly, but sometimes one has to be a little firm too :)

I tried to activate that email address but can't seemed to do that :(

Why not?

Try again.

She made an earnest payment, she is out the money, I would recommend making yourself available to it. If you choose not to claim it, that's your problem, not hers.


........ and provide her with the correct Paypal address for future payments.

In this case simply helping the customer is a lot easier, and a lot more friendly, than fighting her. I mean, if your ultimate goal is actually to dump her, then do her the simple respect of communicating that clearly and nicely to her. Don't beat around the bush and be difficult to work with. OK, so she screwed up. Either deal with it, or drop her, but don't disrespect her.

JMO!! :)

:D Bailey

I think it was both parties fault and maybe you should consider giving her a discount if she cancels the payment and does a chargeback (since she's been charged).

But how is it both sides' fault when we do not accept paypal and she randomly paid to one email account of ours that do not have paypal? In fact we never advertise paypal, our collections are 99% cheques and some bank transfers.

I think it was both parties fault and maybe you should consider giving her a discount if she cancels the payment and does a chargeback (since she's been charged).

I'm with boonchuan. The customer made the mistake.

I tried to contact Paypal, it is still going in loops. We already had a company account, so checking with Paypal on how we can get the 2nd account and is it ok to get the 2nd account. Trust me Paypal isn't that easy to reach :( . The fastest reaction time they had was for spoof@paypal.com


Why not?

Try again.

She made an earnest payment, she is out the money, I would recommend making yourself available to it. If you choose not to claim it, that's your problem, not hers.


........ and provide her with the correct Paypal address for future payments.

In this case simply helping the customer is a lot easier, and a lot more friendly, than fighting her. I mean, if your ultimate goal is actually to dump her, then do her the simple respect of communicating that clearly and nicely to her. Don't beat around the bush and be difficult to work with. OK, so she screwed up. Either deal with it, or drop her, but don't disrespect her.

JMO!! :)

:D Bailey

PayPal will just hold payments that have been sent to a non set up addres. Happened to me before, its really annoying. I had to wait 2 weeks before I got the money returned to my bank. :(

The fastest way to contact PayPal is using this page
http://www.paypalsucks.com/PayPalPhoneNumbers.shtml

A -lot- of numbers on it are dead. But some do work, and I got our account lock issue sorted out in hours using that...email was taking days!

instead of creating a second account, see if you can add the email address to the existing account.

The customer made the mistake here and she made it with a third party payment processing service. She needs to contact Paypal at this point, she should certainly (and easily) be able to cancel the order from her login area in Paypal as they just hold the funds when they have not been accepted.

You just need to clearly and concisely explain to her that Paypal is a third party service, and unfortunately because of the error that was made, you have no hold over the funds.

I hate to tell some of you folks, but as a client you don't have the ability to place a check in the mail to the wrong address and then complain that its the company's fault. With any other company that would incur a late charge and would quite clearly be the responsibility of the client. The case is the same here. It is the client's job to get the payment to the right spot on time.

If the payment is sent to a non-existent address, then the option to "Cancel Payment" is available on his/her PayPal Recent History page.

Thanks for all the helpful advice, frankly I am not sure of Paypal myself seldom used it. Your feedbacks and suggestions are much appreciated.

Boon, I would say the same. This was all client error, as you said you do not advertise accepting Paypal to begin with. As such the client assumed you accept it at insert_address_here. Heck by the sounds of it considering how fast they just fired money away I would be speculating if the order isn't fraudulent anyhow.... (normally people ensure their money is going to the right place before just hitting send money on paypal...)

If I were you, I will try to claim the money but if that can't be done within reasonable efforts I won't go to the extent of absorbing the loss. It's like giving in to her ignorance and arrogance, which may encourage her to do the same again in future.

Politely but firmly ask her to cancel payment and resubmit via normal payment methods. This seems to be the most logical solution to me.

Anyway, the money will still be refunded to the customer after 30 days (https://www.paypal.com/helpcenter/main.jsp?locale=en_US&_dyncharset=UTF-8&countrycode=US&cmd=_help-ext&serverInstance=9003&t=solutionTab&ft=searchTab&ps=solutionPanels&solutionId=10288) if you don't claim it. But, it's a long time to wait.

Is there an email address you can contact PayPal on to reslove this?

I dont know any of the PayPal emails.
They would be useful :)

I would not ignore her, but inform her that she made a mistake. Tell her she needs to contact paypal for a refund, as you have not received that payment from her.

But how is it both sides' fault when we do not accept paypal and she randomly paid to one email account of ours that do not have paypal? In fact we never advertise paypal, our collections are 99% cheques and some bank transfers.

Just add the email as a second paypal email and you will recieve the money. It takes about 3 min to loggin add the email as a secondary email and then no problem you will get the money. If you dont accept paypal i would kindly reminder and tell her there will be a small added fee because paypal charges so much on the merchant side.

Trust me Paypal isn't that easy to reach :([/email]

Did you try calling them? I've had to call Paypal a couple times in the past, and I usually get a live person on the line in 1-2 minutes every time.

I too have called paypal in the past and may at the most have held on for about 5 minutes but did get a live person on the line. By the time I got off the line the issue had been resolved. I would definitely trying calling them.

If you dont accept paypal i would kindly reminder and tell her there will be a small added fee because paypal charges so much on the merchant side.

It's against PayPal's terms to add a fee to cover their charges. That being said, you don't need to say the fee is being added to cover their fees.

well !! if she has paid to some email id of paypal.. u get an email on tht id ..from paypal ..
if tht is ur own domain's email .. u shuld rercv payment on tht email id. .just create a paypal a/c
transfer tht money to ur paypal a/c or use it for something ... tinyminy thing ..
and tell her to pay using other means later . for next payment

some minor losses to u shuld b acceptable ..for long term relationship .. wid a client u may wanna build. .

if you dont accept paypal, just ask her to recall the payment - if you've not "accepted" it and it's not gone to an exitsing paypal address, then there's no cost or delay to them just cancelling it.

A client of mine paid to a email address of our domain name that is not our Paypal email address.
A bit late, but anyways: Paypal sends out payment received notices to the email address. You surely have a catch all for your hosting domain, don't you? You can just claim the payment there...

Instead of all this messing about, tell her to contact paypal. You didn't tell her you accepted paypal, so it isn't your fault.

Are you frightened of this client?

If there is no paypal account associated with the Email address, paypal will send an email to that address and alert them about receiving a new payment and ask them to create an account with that email and accept the payment, if the account won't be created after a few days, they money will be automatically put back to the buyer account.