PayPal survey: why shoppers abandon their shopping
June 24, 2009
PayPal have published the results of their second annual Checkout Abandonment Survey, looking at why website buyers don’t complete purchases. Just like last year’s survey, an excessive shipping fee was the number one reason for shoppers walking away. It’s clear that if sellers are able to offer shipping-inclusive prices, this is something that buyers like, however counter-intuitive that might be for those of us who typically sell more than one item at a time. And even if your site charges separate shipping, making that cost transparent at the beginning of the checkout flow – or earlier – is essential.
There’s some suggestion, though, that buyers are getting more savvy with their online shopping: the second most popular reason for abandonment was that buyers wanted to comparison shop, and 25% cited leaving the site to look for a coupon or discount voucher. Sellers should be using this behaviour to their advantage: if you’re not currently listing website coupons on voucher sites, you’re probably missing out on some valuable free advertising, and a fair number of sales.
But there’s some reassurance: a third of shoppers who abandoned their carts later returned to the same site to purchase. Sellers should consider:
- making it easy for shoppers to bookmark their site and specific items they’re interested in,
- using social bookmarking tools as well as traditional browser bookmarks/favourites
- extending the life of shopping cart cookies so that buyers who return later can find the items they’d already added to their cart,
- and offering a wish-list facility for longer-term use.
PayPal are running a video presentation later today to discuss their findings further.
eBay UK to ban electronic cigarettes, limit voucher sales
May 29, 2009
eBay UK have announced today that the sale of electronic cigarettes is to be banned on the site from the 30th June. The ban also includes componant parts, including cartridges, atomisers, liquid refills, vaporisers, batteries and shells.
Again on 30th June, eBay UK will launch a new policy on the sale of vouchers:
- expired vouchers (unless collectable) and emailed vouchers will no longer be permitted.
- Sellers will have to deliver physical vouchers to their buyers.
- Bulk listings for more than 100 vouchers total or more than 20 vouchers for the same item will be banned.
- Sellers are asked not to place unaltered scans of vouchers, which could be printed out and used in stores, on their listings.
What’s particularly concerning about this announcement is its concluding line:
Full details of these two policies will be available on 30th June
This is the same day that both policies come into force: in other words, sellers of any of these items are only going to get full details on the day they have to comply with the policy. I must admit that neither electronic cigarettes nor vouchers is my area of expertise: but every time eBay makes a policy change, the sellers who are actually affected by it need more information than is initially given out by eBay – and I don’t see why this is going to be much different.
Publishing the full policy on the same day it’s been enacted seems to run entirely contrary to Mark Lewis’s promise back in March to make eBay UK a better business partner, and to give sellers a sixty day notice period of changes to come.
New & improved PayPal pages
May 7, 2009
New PayPal History Page
The big transformation is on the history page, “Advanced Search” has gone (although you can still access the options by clicking on the “Find a Transaction” link). However most of the filter options you may have used in the past are now instantly available from the drop down filters menu. A nice feature is that the filter you last selected appears in the menu bar for next time.
Overall a some nice tweaks that shouldn’t take you too long to get used to, I’m already struggling to remember what the old pages looked like. Once you get the upgrade let us know what you think of the changes and if there are any options you can’t find as easily as before.
PayPal giveaway – £10k per week for six weeks
April 23, 2009
PayPal are to stump up sixty grand, with £10k a week going to a random eBayer who pays with PayPal. From April 20th each time you use PayPal to finance an eBay transaction you’ll be automatically entered into the draw (terms apply).
Along with the good news is a nice graphic showing how hard it is to remember your address unless you happen to write it on your hand – I know I’d forget where I live if I didn’t ink it on each day 
Seriously though, I do prefer the ease of paying with PayPal, but as most of my customers also already use PayPal it’s a fair bet that I’m unlikely to win the dosh. I’m wondering just how many buyers in the UK don’t already use PayPal and how few won’t get automatic entry to the prize draw – do your buyers still pay with cheques?
PayPal joins fight against child exploitation
March 4, 2009
PayPal is part of a coalition of organizations that has been formed to track and disrupt child sex offenders by monitoring money they make. PayPal has joined MasterCard, Microsoft, VISA Europe, Missing Children Europe, international policing agencies and the European Commission to form the European Financial Coalition (EFC).
Led by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre – the UK’s policing organisation for protecting children from sexual exploitation – the EFC seeks to send out a stark warning to criminals who make money from the distribution of child sex abuse images.
A PayPal spokesperson said: “PayPal is pleased to become a founder member of the European Financial Coalition. It underlines our commitment to the fight against those who seek to profit from child exploitation. PayPal has a team of highly specialised agents worldwide who work solely in the area of anti-child exploitation, supported by sophisticated detection tools. We work closely with the police and other agencies around the world in the fight against child exploitation.”
Also reported by the BBC.
PayPal reserves: here’s what’s really happening
February 16, 2009
A seller on the UK Payments and Postage board says that they were told by a PayPal support rep that the company is planning to introduce a new policy of holding a proportion of all sellers’ payments to protect itself against chargebacks:
We received an email out of the blue from Paypal on Saturday to let us know that our account that we have held for six years will now be subject to a rolling reserve of 6%. This means that from now on Paypal will deduct 6% of all of payments and hold them on a rolling 6 month basis to protect itself against chargeback’s. [sic] … According to the person I spoke to at Paypal yesterday this is something that is rolling out to ALL Paypal accounts and that we are ‘lucky’ as some people are being charged up to 20% with 10% being the norm. … When I asked why we had not had any notice and when this was announced I was told by the Paypal agent that this was an ongoing process that started at the beginning of the year and that they had 60 million accounts to go through.
We’ve heard from several sellers that the same has happened to them over the last year or two, and PayPal’s user agreement makes provision for putting holds on a proportion of a seller’s account for a number of different reasons, including a couple of cover-all clauses that mean they can instigate a hold if they feel your business is more risky than they’d like. It’s also normal practice for merchant accounts to hold a reserve.
But PayPal doing this to every seller, regardless of the reality of their account, seems drastic: does the support rep have it right? We asked PayPal UK for a comment; here’s what they said:
It’s certainly not true to say that PayPal is holding 20% reserves on all seller accounts.
We only apply reserves to a small proportion of sellers’ accounts, and typically allow these sellers to withdraw 95% of their account balance. The remaining balance is held for a set period of time, usually 60 to 90 days.
Our aim is to protect consumers and PayPal while enabling a flourishing buyer and seller community. The decision to apply a reserve to an account reflects a host of factors, which may include the level of customer complaints and chargebacks, the financial performance of the seller’s business and the amount of information available about the merchant. We also consider other ways of mitigating the risks involved, such as personal, directors’ or bank guarantees, but again it is rare for PayPal to require these. Decisions are taken case by case.
So it’s not going to happen to everybody – but it could still happen to you, and it’s something that every seller needs to consider, and ensure their business and their family could survive.
If you’ve had PayPal put a hold on your account, let us know what happened in the comments.
More free pix for eBay.com collectibles’ sellers
February 12, 2009
eBay.com have announced more free photos for sellers in the Collectibles, Art, Antiques and Pottery & Glass categories.
The first picture for all eBay listings is free, but as of February 18th, listings in these categories will get Picture Pack and Gallery Plus free, for all listing formats and durations. Picture Pack allows sellers to add up to twelve extra photos to the listing, and Gallery Plus displays a larger picture when buyers hover over a gallery picture on the search results page.
eBay says that
more free photos will allow sellers to provide buyers the visual details they need to make these decisions, lower buyer questions, and increase seller sales.
Though most collectibles’ sellers post extra pictures using their own hosting, this should make it easier for everyone to post plenty of images on listings that really need them (though I sincerely hope it doesn’t presage eBay limiting photos on listings to eBay-hosted ones). Gallery Plus is a superb feature, and it would be great to see that freebie expanded over the whole site.
There are more enhancements to the “visual shopping experience” promised for eBay.com too: more information as soon as we get it.
Please note that this announcement has been made for eBay.com only, and does not apply at the moment to any other site.
eBay, Moneybookers & Paymate – Amazon launch FPS
February 6, 2009
This week marks the launch of several new payment services on both eBay and Amazon.
eBay.com Payments
eBay.com which is now a strictly electronic payment only venue have enabled both Moneybookers and Paymate on the site in addition to PayPal and ProPay.
Paymate is an Australian company, and no stranger to dealing with eBay. They were one of the companies to oppose eBay’s move to go PayPal only in Australia and wrote to the ACCC to complain about the plans which were later dropped.
Moneybookers unique selling point is the number of payment methods they accept, particularly in Europe. They enable payments from 200 countries in 34 currencies, using 50 payment options but with just 1 connection so will appeal to sellers who ship worldwide. In comparison PayPal accept just 18 currencies.
In truth however it’s likely that most buyers on eBay will still want to pay via PayPal so sellers who remove this choice are likely to do themselves a disservice. The good news however is that should your PayPal account ever be limited there are at least viable alternatives for eBay.com.
Amazon Flexible Payments Service (FPS)
Amazon FPS has come out of Beta and as well as announcing it’s availability to all have launched a free payment processing offer for the first 90 days. To qualify you need to register by 15th March 2009, launch your application by 1st June. You’ll then qualify for 90 days of free processing up to a total of $1/2 million turnover.
The big advantage of Amazon FPS is existing Amazon customers will be able to pay using their Amazon user name/password with no additional sign up required. Buyers shipping addresses and payment information already on file with Amazon make this a quick and simple payment system. It’ll be interesting to see how much traction it gains against PayPal in the future.
PayPal maintenance 7am Friday 30th Jan
January 29, 2009
PayPal will be undergoing maintenance for half an hour tomorrow (Friday) morning beginning at 7am.
During the maintenance most PayPal website features will be unavailable, including the ability to send or receive payments.
Friday mornings are always the time that eBay and PayPal undertake site maintenance but it’s unusual for PayPal to be totally unavailable. If you intend to be working early it’s normally a good idea to print orders off ready for packing on Thursday evening, or accept that prior to 9am Friday the site may be intermittently unavailable.
VeriSign secures UK PayPal accounts
January 26, 2009
VeriSign and PayPal have today announced the introduction of strong authentication passwords in the UK. They will be enabled either through the use of the PayPal security key or passwords delivered via SMS text message to users mobile phones.
Essentially up until now PayPal users have been playing russian roulette with phishers desperate to steal their password. VeriSign Identity Protection (VIP) offers an extra layer of security to protect your online identity and secure your PayPal account.
There are two options – PayPal or VeriSign keyfob or creditcard style tokens (costing £3.00 from PayPal), or SMS text messages via your mobile phone. Both options can secure accounts by using a new one time password each time you log in.
Once you’ve activated your security key (from the profile section of your PayPal account) you simply log in as normal and there’s an extra screen which will ask you for the number displayed on your security token. This number will change every 30 seconds so it doesn’t matter you seeing my “password” on the screen shot above – it’s already out of date!
If you prefer you can skip this screen by entering the six-digit code displayed on your Security Key immediately following your password (e.g. if your password was PASSWORD and the security key is displaying 123456 then enter PASSWORD123456 as your one time password.
I’ve had a PayPal security key since eBay Live! at Boston in June 2007 and was at last able to activate it today. If you already have a Verisign token which you use for work or secure banking you can use the same token for your PayPal account – there’s no need to carry multiple tokens around. Alternatively if you don’t have or want a hardware token then using your mobile phone is just as secure and possibly more convenient.
“Offering the Security Key via text message is really important as we want to make it as quick and convenient as possible. You just need your mobile phone to use it, which prevents having to carry another gadget around with you.”
Garreth Griffith, Head of Risk Management at PayPal UK
Whilst the PayPal security key isn’t a cast iron guarantee that your account will never be hacked, it is a huge leap forward in securing it and does protect against phishing. No one will be able to log into your account without knowing your password and having your security key or mobile phone.
If you’re a business user and want to protect the thousands of pounds passing through your account I’d recommend ordering a security key, or signing up for PayPal text message passwords today.
PayPal withdrawals to be free in the UK
January 12, 2009
PayPal have announced a raft of changes to their user agreement, the most significant of which is that withdrawals to UK bank accounts will be free of charge for all users. Currently this is free when withdrawing more than £50.00 but for smaller amounts there is a fee of £0.25. This fee will be removed as of 11th February 2009.
The effect of this will be to make Personal Payments sent through PayPal totally free for the recipient allowing them to withdraw the money to their bank account with no charges at all. Currently to stay fee free they either need to leave their money in their PayPal account until it totals more than £50.00, or re-spend it paying with PayPal.
There will also be fee changes for those that use PayPal Website Payments Pro Fees for PayPal Express Checkout again effective 11th February 2009.
Other changes include the removing the need to complete the Expanded Use Programme as part of the process to lift their receiving or withdrawal limits – PayPal will introduce an automated process to confirm your address information is correct.
The privacy policy will also be amended to allow PayPal to collect information about you from other PayPal users, add more companies that PayPal share your personal information with and to allow PayPal to contact you by telephone to confirm your identity.
You can read the full changes by logging into your PayPal account and clicking the “Policy Updates” link on the left hand side in the “What’s new” section.
Free subtitles to run until Feb 09 on GTC listings
January 7, 2009
It’s not unheard of for eBay to make a mistake, but they’ve really gone to town on the subtitle promotion for which sellers who participated are benefiting.
Having initially disallowed Good Til Canceled (GTC) items from the free Subtitle promotion, which ran for the whole of December, eBay allowed users to include free subtitles on GTC listings. They then announced they’d refund any Subtitle fees incurred up until 15th January at which point sellers would be able to remove subtitles from GTC listings (even if they had sales) so that they wouldn’t be charged for Subtitle on subsequent relists.
Today eBay have announced that they’ve been unable to update the site to enable users to remove Subtitles from GTC listings and this will now be enabled by 3rd February. Consequently the fees for Subtitles on GTC listings will be refunded for all qualifying GTCs on relist for the period 1st January – 9th February 2009.
So what started as a promotion for December will no effectively benefit sellers for up to three months. Any GTC listings launched with Subtitle between 1st and 11th December will get two renewals with Subtitle and a full 90 days benefit. All sellers need remember to do is to remove the Subtitle prior to the listing renewing after 9th February.
PayPal glitch ‘cancels 3 year old echeques’
December 5, 2008
Several eBay sellers have reported receiving emails from PayPal earlier today, notifying them that echeques could not be processed by their buyers’ banks, and they should not post the goods. Not so unusual, except that the transactions in question were, according to PayPal, from 2005 and 2006.
My chum Tracey from Rainbowcraft had an email telling her that an echeque for £2.19 from 4th March 2006 had been cancelled. Aside from the sheer nonsense of taking two and a half years to tell a seller they’re not getting paid, the problem was that, digging back through her PayPal account, Tracey couldn’t find any sign of this transaction.
Further digging in fact revealed that there *was* a cancelled echeque to go with the buyer details PayPal had supplied, but it was from July 2008. Still far too far back to be being notified of cancellation now, but better than March 2006. Other sellers have confirmed they have the same problem. As Tracey says, thank goodness it was only £2.19 – but it could so easily have been £219.
This is just another in a long line of PayPal glitches over the last few weeks. With eBay doing their best to push buyers and sellers towards only using PayPal as a payment method on eBay, it’s about time the system became a lot more reliable.
Linking PayPal accounts for higher discounts
November 19, 2008
There’s a little known benefit available from PayPal for those that hold more than one PayPal account. It’s been confirmed via Monroe on a recent eBay call, and verified with account managers that you can link two or more accounts for the purposes of volume discounts.
If you have a PayPal (either Premier or Business) there are volume discounts available if you process more than £1500.00 per calendar month. Discounts can lower fees from 3.4% down to as low as 1.9% for those processing more than £55k per month. By linking accounts the your PayPal account with the lower discount level can receive the same discount as your account with the larger monthly processing volume.
Quite how this stands with PayPal’s stance that members can have one Personal and one Premier or Business account isn’t clear.
PayPal allows members to have one Personal account and one Premier or Business account.
PayPal, like eBay, have never quite acknowledged that someone may operate several distinct businesses with separate banking arrangements and be different entities in law. It’s not unusual for users to have multiple PayPal accounts although PayPal themselves state that it’s against the rules, although famously even the then head of PayPal Geoff Iddison was unaware of this rule when asked at an eBay university.
At eBay Live! we specifically asked the question and the answer given was “We won’t mind so long as you don’t do anything you shouldn’t”. Or in other words have as many PayPal accounts as you like, but don’t get caught doing something you shouldn’t.
By linking accounts for the purposes of discounts (and quite frankly I think as a Business PayPal are mad to give discounts on accounts that otherwise wouldn’t qualify), PayPal are acknowledging that their own rules are out of date and need reviewing. Both eBay and PayPal need to allow businesses to open a true “Business” account tied to a company and not in the name of a particular employeee.
In the mean time if you do have more than one business entity each with it’s own PayPal account then speak to your account manager, ask for a “fee override” and get them linked for discounts.
ProPay for eBay.com payments – A first look
November 17, 2008
ProPay is the only third party payment system integrated into eBay checkout. Although currently only available on eBay.com, it could be the first of many payment systems in the future.
My first question had to be “Why would anyone pay other than by PayPal on eBay?”. ProPay explained that they can offer a very simple checkout experience where a user can simply enter their card details much as on any other ecommerce site. For first time buyers on eBay that’s a lot simpler than opening a PayPal account and for many of my buyers, who make business purchases, to be able to pay on eBay with a company credit card makes a lot of sense.
Other advantages are ProPay provide sellers with a full merchant account and merchant ID (recognised by the banking industry) the ability to take payments both on and off eBay along with the customer service you’d expect from a merchant provider.
Currently ProPay is currently available on eBay for Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Titanium PowerSellers based in the US and offer an eAuction Account, with an eAuction Pro Account coming early next year.
There is a $24 annual fee for the eAuction Account, which is refunded as a processing credit if more than $3000 is processed in the first six months. The only other fees are the transaction costs which are as low as 2.4%. Transaction costs are not based on the volume of payments (as with PayPal) but on the sellers PowerSeller level making ProPay extremely competitive to use alongside other payment methods.
Added benefits for the eAuction Pro Account will be an online virtual terminal, touch-tone telephone processing, secure email invoices (send an email and the buyer clicks a secure link to make payment), direct API and encrypted ProPay Card Reader. The enables sellers to take payments both on eBay and from other website or off-line payments.
ProPay were pretty honest and up front explaining that the initial integration on eBay wasn’t as smooth as they and eBay would have liked. That’s not surprising as it’s the first time eBay have opened up their checkout for a payment provider other than PayPal. For the future other third party payment providers following in their footsteps should find the integration much easier.
PayPal have had the exclusivity of eBay online payments for many years, although more of their revenues now come from off-eBay transactions than from eBay generated payments. The future will be interesting and anyone that’s had their PayPal account limited will welcome the first approved alternative payment option for trading on eBay.
Next year as well as launching the eAuction Pro accounts, ProPay will make the eAuction Account available to Bronze Power Sellers and later to all eBay sellers. With a track record of handling payments for on and off-line home based businesses ProPay is one option I look forward to seeing in the UK and well worth considering if you’re based in the US.
PayPal glitch undercharges on 3rd party checkouts
November 15, 2008
There is a glitch with PayPal which is undercharging for carriage on 3rd party checkouts. The glitch appears to be affecting sales where the buyer selects optional insurance on top of the normal postage cost. PayPal appear to be changing the total and not charging for the insurance the buyer has selected.
PayPal and eBay have identified the problem which first exhibited itself at around 11am on Thursday and are working on a fix. They aim to get a solution completed and rolled out as soon as possible and will continue working on it over the weekend.
Buyers who don’t select optional insurance are not being affected with postage correctly charged and the glitch only appears to affect those using 3rd party checkout solutions. Sadly many of those using 3rd party checkout solutions such as ChannelAdvisor are amongst the biggest sellers on eBay who may have hundreds if not thousands of incorrectly charged transactions.
PayPal Which? report on BBC News
November 8, 2008
BBC are running a story on news broadcasts regarding a Which? report on PayPal claiming, although consumers are fully covered for purchases on eBay, when buying off eBay you’re purchase is only protected if you pay by credit card.
Martyn Saville from Which? said if you’re buying outside of eBay your protection is inadequate “we think”. The broadcast explained that if you pay for a purchase using a credit card you’re full covered for claims between £100 and £30,000. Items purchased on eBay are fully protected, however if you make payments off eBay using PayPal “recovery of your claim is not guaranteed”. When purchasing items such as airline flight tickets or non-tangible items like downloadable music there is no cover with PayPal.
Carl-Olav Scheible, head of PayPal explained that PayPal does have benefits over and above credit cards and many buyers are concerned about identity theft – PayPal protects them by keeping their personal details and bank/card details hidden from suppliers. Convenience and security are the reasons he gave for people using PayPal.
I have to say I tend to side with PayPal, it’s very rare that I’ve not received goods, or received them not as described… but I am lazy! If I get the choice to pay by logging into PayPal, rather than fill out address, email, card, telephone details etc, I’ll always choose the easy option.
PayPal advertise on ATM cash points
November 7, 2008
PayPal have started to advertise on cash machines across the country. As I was about to withdraw some cash the on screen advert caught my eye and sure enough it’s PayPal with the message “Get the speed and convenience of a cash point….. Online”
I’m not sure it would be enough to convince me to open a PayPal account, but advertising like this can only increase PayPal’s reputation and encourage more users to pay with PayPal when it’s offered as an online payment option.
It’s definitely interesting to see PayPal growing into a mainstream payment method and start to advertise off eBay and off the Internet.
PayPal glitch threatens to cancel echeque payments
October 25, 2008
PayPal echeques are a pain point at the best of times. Buyers often think they’ve paid and don’t understand why sellers don’t ship immediately. Sellers are frustrated at having to wait up to 10 days for the funds to clear and when an echeque doesn’t clear it’s often days until it fails and they have to request the buyer to repay by an alternative method.
Now the latest glitch from PayPal is an email informing sellers that their echeque payment will be canceled if they don’t “claim the funds”.
Dear Chris Dawson,
Claim your funds
You received 4.99 GBP from xxxxxxx@xxx.xxx on 23 Oct. 2008. If you do not claim your funds by 21 Nov. 2008, this transaction will be cancelled and the money will be returned to xxxxxxx@xxx.xxx’s account.
Log in to your PayPal account to view the details of this transaction.
You are being asked to manually claim this money because:
You are one of our high-volume customers. We ask PayPal users who receive more than $10,000.00 USD per month to complete our Supplemental Merchant Information form.
To fill out the form, click the link below:
https://www.paypal.com/uk/MERCHANT
The information you provide helps us protect the integrity of our network. Payments sent to your PayPal account will be held as ‘Pending’ until you complete this form.
If you have questions about this transaction, log in to your PayPal account and click on History found towards the top of the page. Click on the details of the transaction in question for more information, or to accept or refuse this payment.
Yours sincerely,
PayPal
The echeque detailed is due to clear on the 31st October, in the mean time there is nothing that can be done to “claim” the payment or to get the echeque cleared quicker.
The email, although addressed by name, resembles spam and has the one thing that PayPal advise they never to do – it contains a clickable link requesting users to log into their account to update their information. Quite frankly all the time PayPal send emails with links in it’s no wonder that unsuspecting users fall for phishing emails. Using US dollars in emails to UK customers makes the email look even more suspicious.
Reporting the email to PayPal elicited the response “That is a spoof email. We would never ask you to fill out your business information on a link. We would ask you to log on to your account and follow steps to complete”. Sadly the emails aren’t spoofs – they’re addressed to the correct name containing details of a genuine transaction and the link is to a genuine PayPal page, they’re just a PayPal glitch.
PayPal have a new website intended as a fun interactive way to learn about online safety with a test. The correct answer to how phishers prey on victims is “Describing threats to your account and stating you must authenticate your information immediately followed by a link”.
In order for the advice to be taken seriously PayPal themselves should never send emails requesting users to click links and update their information.
PayPal glitch unlocks payments on hold
October 18, 2008
A PayPal glitch is allowing users to withdraw funds being held under the 21 day rule. A thread on the UK Payments and Postage board details how a user made a legitimate partial refund and discovered that funds became instantly available with the temporary hold removed. A similar thread on the US discussion boards was pulled by the moderators.
Some sellers have tested refunding as little as 1p and their payments have come off hold as well, allowing them to withdraw the balance to their bank account. The sellers who have reported this state that they have already been left positive feedback and so PayPal should have released the funds anyway. They’re not using it to release funds which are still legitimately on hold according to PayPal’s rules.
For anyone thinking of taking advantage of this we’d highly recommend that you don’t. PayPal can still hold funds or even freeze your account even if you’ve withdrawn the money. If you think the funds should be made available then telephone PayPal and ask them to remove the hold, rather than risk losing your account entirely.
10 grand for 10 weeks, for 10 years of PayPal
October 15, 2008
To celebrate 10 years of trading, PayPal are going to give away £10,000 a week for the next ten weeks.
To qualify you simply need to make a purchase on the PayPal Offers site and of course pay using your PayPal account. There are hundreds of merchants to choose from with many offering discounts or cashback if you purchase through PayPal offers.
The qualifying promotional period runs up until the 18th December, so when you’re out buying your Christmas presents check out PayPal offers, there might be a discount or cashback, but there could also be a 10 grand bonus paid into your PayPal account.
PayPal transactions reversed without warning
September 21, 2008
I’ve had a bizarre problem with PayPal payments over the last week or so. Certain payments have been – apparently at random – reversed in my PayPal account and the money returned to the buyer, without any action from me or from the buyer. They’ve all been related to eBay purchases, and in every case, I’ve had the payment email from PayPal but no email about the reversal.
In some cases, there’s been a second PayPal payment, which has successfully completed and the item shows on eBay as purchased. Other times the item listings don’t show a corresponding purchase, My eBay and SMP don’t show the transaction, and the item remains available for purchase: it’s as though nothing ever happened.
The one glimmer of cheer is that the reversals seem to take place immediately, so checking a PayPal account via their site does show whether the transaction is successful or not.
I’m not the only person with the problem: a thread on the PowerSeller board has many sellers with the same issue, but sadly, no solution from eBay.
This is what PayPal support have said:
this transaction was reversed as a result of a failed Ebay transaction.This customer had attempted to purchase this item via Ebay, however the Ebay transaction had failed. As a result of this transaction failure, Ebay had instructed PayPal to reverse this transaction. You are unable to view this transaction in your Ebay account because of the fact that the transaction failed.
If you wish to obtain additional information as to why the Ebay transaction failed, we recommend that you contact Ebay customer support for further details.
eBay Support say they are not aware of any problems with Checkout.
Fortunately, in most cases, my buyers have been sanguine about it. Most (the ones with the duplicate payments) aren’t aware of any problem. One, who had multiple failed payments, said he knew something odd was happening but would just keep trying til it worked, and has – more buyers like him please! One lady insisted that she had an email from PayPal saying she’d paid me, and she hadn’t cancelled, so she’d paid. Only after repeated pleas from me to look at her PayPal account did she see that, yes, the payment had been reversed. I think she thinks I did it, but at least we’ve resolved the matter.
If I ever get any sense out of Support, I’ll post it here: otherwise, anyone who relies solely on PayPal emails to manage their dispatches, needs to start checking their account.
Dulux are now accepting PayPal
August 21, 2008
PayPal have won another mainstream account – Dulux now accept PayPal for payments through their website.
Anyone ordering paint samples can either spend the time entering their contact and payment details or simply click the PayPal button and the transaction is completed with a simple PayPal log in.
It’s impressive to see PayPal expanding with mainstream businesses, and Dulux is a great win for them.
PayPal improve echeque notifications
August 20, 2008
If you’ve been paid by PayPal echeque in the last couple of days, you’ve probably received a nice email from PayPal explaining that it’s going to take nine days to clear, and that you need to communicate with your buyer and let them know you won’t be shipping for a while: “teaching your grandmother to suck eggs,” as one shooting star PowerSeller commented to me this morning.
click to embiggen
But the good news is the email that your buyer is getting. Finally, buyers are being given accurate information about how long UK echeques take to clear: “around nine working days”. Better still, they’re being told why their payment has gone through as an echeque: either their card has expired, or they never added a card in the first place. And best of all, buyers are being encouraged to fix it, with a great big link to add or amend their card details.
Sellers will still need to ensure they keep their buyers up to speed on when their item will be shipped, but this is a very welcome, if rather overdue, change from PayPal.
Sending personal money with PayPal
August 11, 2008
It’s not often I use the “Send Money” tab in PayPal – as a I seller I receive more payments than I send. Today however I had to send a payment to a friend for some tickets they paid for and it gave me the opportunity to send a personal payment.
Personal payments are free (when made via eCheque or PayPal balance) so the entire amount will get paid into my friends account.
To send a personal payment through PayPal simply click the “Send Money” tab in PayPal and the click for personal payments. I then selected the “Personal Money Owed” option as most appropriate.
If you owe someone money and want to send it to them quickly and easily try PayPal personal payments. It’s free, easy and instant.
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