harryball
09-24-2008, 11:26 AM
Let me start by saying this is NOT a PayPal slamfest. This is an FYI. I feel this is important to share since many of you may be taking PayPal for payments in your business plan.
I had a buyer make a purchase of $200+ and pay with PayPal. We filled the order and shipped and captured the funds via PayPal. When someone pays with a credit card the funds are Authorized, when we ship we Capture. This is typical and PayPal policy states "Merchants are advised to capture funds within 24 hours after a shipment." To complicate matters, I was scolded by PayPal once for capturing before shipping an item. We use to capture 2 or 3 days before we shipped. I tripped over a buyer that was a bit of a pain thus the scolding. PayPal assured me capturing ahead of time was not necessary since the funds were authorized they were safe.
In this case the capture failed with "This payment can not be captured at this time" and PayPal was unable in 4 days to resolve the problem or tell me why it happened. So they voided the payment without warning and told me to get with my customer and have them pay again. My customer was skeptical when requested to pay again (as I would have been) and then vanished for a while. Fortunately they did eventually pay after PayPal confirmed they had voided the payment.
This was a hassle from both sides. We have dropped PayPal as a form of payment based on the extremely poor customer service we have received in the past and this experience. I'm not saying do the same... but just be aware of what can happen. If we ever do accept PayPal again, I will absolutely capture BEFORE the boxes leave. It may be a bit of a pain to capture after printing each shipping label, but that will be our policy from now on.
/RB
I had a buyer make a purchase of $200+ and pay with PayPal. We filled the order and shipped and captured the funds via PayPal. When someone pays with a credit card the funds are Authorized, when we ship we Capture. This is typical and PayPal policy states "Merchants are advised to capture funds within 24 hours after a shipment." To complicate matters, I was scolded by PayPal once for capturing before shipping an item. We use to capture 2 or 3 days before we shipped. I tripped over a buyer that was a bit of a pain thus the scolding. PayPal assured me capturing ahead of time was not necessary since the funds were authorized they were safe.
In this case the capture failed with "This payment can not be captured at this time" and PayPal was unable in 4 days to resolve the problem or tell me why it happened. So they voided the payment without warning and told me to get with my customer and have them pay again. My customer was skeptical when requested to pay again (as I would have been) and then vanished for a while. Fortunately they did eventually pay after PayPal confirmed they had voided the payment.
This was a hassle from both sides. We have dropped PayPal as a form of payment based on the extremely poor customer service we have received in the past and this experience. I'm not saying do the same... but just be aware of what can happen. If we ever do accept PayPal again, I will absolutely capture BEFORE the boxes leave. It may be a bit of a pain to capture after printing each shipping label, but that will be our policy from now on.
/RB