Paypal Seller Protection Enhanced. Good for LEGO Sellers?

[Jeff Mack]

Just got an email from Paypal about enhancing their protection policies for sellers.  Should be good news for some of you out there..
 
 

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[Guest brickcrazyhouse]

great as long as the fee % doesn't go up 

[justafrog]

That is good news, particularly that non eBay transactions only need a recognized, not confirmed, mailing address. Makes it nice for Bricklink sales, upcoming Brick Classifieds sales, and of course those unimportant other-sites book sales of mine.

[sadowsk1]

And things continue the same as before.

[Darth_Raichu]

That is good news, particularly that non eBay transactions only need a recognized, not confirmed, mailing address. Makes it nice for Bricklink sales, upcoming Brick Classifieds sales, and of course those unimportant other-sites book sales of mine.

Sounds murky to me.  Whose definition of "recognized" address should we go by ?  With confirmed, we know Paypal already did the work beforehand to verify the address.

[justafrog]

Recognized by PayPal - i.e, if they'll let you print the shipping label and they've accepted the address when the buyer pays, you're covered.

 

It's been this way on eBay sales for a long time, glad to see they're expanding it to other venues.

[DoNotInsertIntoMouth]

Looks good to me. More coverage is always better. Luckily haven't had to deal with it too much yet.

[Lego813]

Just curious if this covers the seller if the item is lost or non delivered? If I as a buyer purchase items on Bricklink for example and do not choose to insure the package and the package is lost or not delivered is the seller covered? Am I covered as the buyer as well? Do I have to pay for insurance in that situation to be protected or is it the sellers responsibility to get the items to me? Thanks ahead of time for your feedback on this.

[justafrog]

As a seller, you are covered with PayPal against a non-delivery claim if your package under $250 is shown via tracking (USPS, Fedex, etc.) to have been delivered. You are not covered if the tracking does not show delivered, if you have no tracking, or if the buyer claims the item(s) are not as described.

 

In spite of the adorable verbiage of many Bricklink (and even some eBay) sellers terms, buyers are not responsible for purchasing shipping insurance to be protected if their items don't arrive or arrive damaged. Insurance is always to protect the seller. Sellers can embed insurance costs into their shipping and handling charges if they want to, but if a seller neglects to purchase insurance or the claim is denied, PayPal (and eBay) will back the buyer in every case of non-trackable (and over $250, non-signature) delivery. PayPal (and eBay) will also protect the buyer who claims the item is not described, by requiring the seller to accept a return or to refund without the return if the seller refuses the return at all.

 

On Bricklink, you do risk (as a buyer) negative feedback and stoplisting (stores adding you to their blocked lists) but your money is safe in cases of non-delivery provided you use PayPal and provided no tracking shows that it was delivered to you.

[BrickGirl]

Hmmm I don't see how this is any different then what they were doing. Signature confirmation for over 250 I thought was already a rule to prevent chargebacks.

The key line here, "Transactions that would have been ineligible for Seller Protection due to an unconfirmed address may now be eligible" does not help much as confirmed or unconfirmed I am sure you are still going to need a proof of delivery so really no different then before and I like how they use the word "MAY be eligible." They could help out by making more people confirm their addresses or by even forcing a buyer to select an address when checking out. Many times I get a payment and no address even though they paid as merchandise.

[justafrog]

The difference is that when selling something on eBay, I have been protected for quite some time against claims of non-delivery provided I ship to an address that PayPal has accepted into their system as a shipping address from the buyer. It doesn't have to be "confirmed", it just has to be an address that PayPal recognizes as a real address.

 

Now, that protection is extended beyond just eBay sellers to anyone accepting money for tangible goods on PayPal.

 

Requiring buyers to confirm addresses, etc., sounds fabulous on the surface, but it's a few extra steps that can mean the difference between the buyer going through with the transaction and saying, "Meh, too much trouble" and backing right out again.

 

With the expanded protections in place, non-eBay sales are now on the same footing as eBay sales. It's good for sellers in general, and good for buyers who ran into paranoid sellers telling them they had to go through the extra steps to get "confirmed" by PayPal.

[dr_teng]

I'm surprised - I find most Ebay (and related, like Paypal) policy changes to be problematic but this seems like a great change for sellers.