If you’re here, you’re curious about why I no longer accept PayPal as payments for amateur radio items I sell online. I used to, and it worked well especially for a few times I needed to send refunds to people. The majority of these refunds were made because people did not follow ordering instructions on one of several web sites which I sell on.
Never have I been back charged by PayPal for anything because a buyer was unhappy with either the item or the shipping policies of these web sites. That is until I sold a book to Guillermo Sobalvarro of Doral Florida. On the web site (RadioAuthtors.com), I have several notices posted throughout the site, which state that I only ship via USPS to the continental United States. Clear enough for most, yet there’s always someone who has to game the system.
The book, a $7 sale for me plus free shipping to the continental United States. I packed the book up and mailed it to the following address:
7973 NW 21st ST
20450TP1CO
Doral, FL 33172
A few days later (three days if I’m not mistaken), I get a complaint from PayPal. The buyer states he never received the book. Well, three days should be enough to reach the Miami area, and also I realize I didn’t use a tracking number. I have never used tracking numbers on the other hundred books, never had any delivery problems with the mail either. Anyways, I hopped onto QRZ forums to see if anyone else had a problem with this buyer. One fellow alerted me to the fact that the address I shipped to was a mail forwarding location. All this time PayPal is hammering me because the buyer ‘never received’ his book. Through some poking around, the buyer admitted that he lives in Columbia and uses the mail forwarding address to purchase things from America. So now I tell PayPal this buyer lives in Columbia and expects a book to go from Sumter County Florida to Columbia in three days or less. PayPal, ever the understanding company, says too bad. I couldn’t ‘prove’ the item was shipped (my fault, in the long run, trusting another ham), so they back charged me for the $7 book. Sending PP the USPS receipt was a waste of time, they still sided with the buyer.
Yeah, I know what you’re thinking “all that fuss over $7?” No, if PayPal takes the customer’s side without so much as investigating it, then why bother using them at all? So I no longer use them to accept payments for things I sell online. Only for payments I make. Will I lose sales? Probably, yet there’s also more out there filing goofy claims like this fellow did so I’ll lose money either way you look at it.