posted on October 10, 2000 08:56:41 PM
Caveat Emptor!
Well after reading horror story after horror story I really believe that it is not a question of if but when paypal will freeze your account!
All that has to happen is you get a payment from somebody committing fraud you will pay the price.
I just read the thread about someone having their account closed with over $1000 in it. I would not keep anything in my account. And in fact I'm beginning to think that it is just too risky to offer paypal. This site full of threads that list one horror story after another. I'll bet that most of those people thought "it won't happen to me".
posted on October 10, 2000 10:32:05 PM
How right you are. I always thought "that" wouldn't happen to me. PayPal has been great, at least up until today.
I had an auction close last night & the buyer paid with PayPal. I received the usual notice from PP that the money was in my account, but there was no money, that is there is no money from this buyer. I wrote to them & I wrote to the winning bidder & neither has answered my email.
I have received two payments since last night so at least I know my account is not frozen. It may be just a little problem & the amount in question is only 21.55. But, I have lots of second thoughts about a company that is so careless with their member's money & from what I have been reading, thinks of themselves as totaly free to do whatever they wish and can not be held accountable.
The person probably addressed the payment wrong, however it was close enough that you received the notice. Ask the winning bidder to cancel the payment and resend. Have him or her cut and paste your email address.
posted on October 10, 2000 11:28:54 PM"I received the usual notice from PP that the money was in my account, but there was no money, that is there is no money from this buyer."
mcjane,
I agree with outoftheblue, the problem is most likely an email address error on the part of your buyer. Check very carefully the email saying "you've got cash" and see if it mentions signing up for an account to collect those funds. If the buyer made a mistake in your email address you should see that in the email.
posted on October 11, 2000 03:46:06 AM
When it happened to me it was sent to a .net address and mine was a .com address. They just had me add the .net address to my account and the money went right in.
posted on October 11, 2000 05:42:26 AM
It's probably the famous PayPal "email glitch". PayPal has been given numerous suggestions which would virtually elliminate this problem, but they choose to ingnore them. I guess it's much easier to lay blame on the user for making a typo in the email address. God forbid they make a small programming change to make things easier on their users.
posted on October 11, 2000 06:17:25 AM
Yup, heaven knows that none of us should ever be held accountable for an error, no matter how small, and asked to correct it personally.<bitter sarcasm>
I have to agree with the majority of respondents. If you look at the email and check the "account" info carefully, you'll probably see that there's a "." at the end of it or that the buyer substituted "net" for "com" or vice versa. This is easily fixed, if you can get in touch with your buyer. If you don't find such an error, then it could be that you do have a buyer using phony notification emails. Without making any accusations, contact your buyer and let him know that there must be some problem, as your PayPal account doesn't show the funds as received. I've had one case where I wondered--the buyer swore up and down he'd sent the money each time I emailed, but it wasn't credited to my account until the 3rd or 4th try. I'll never know if it was user error (not actually completing the "Send" process) or someone trying to scam me.
BTW, thanks for NOT making this an "OMG, PayPal is trying to screw me" thread, as another user did under the same set of circumstances. (Speaking to mcjane, of course, not the originator of this thread)
Edited to specify that to whom the above comment was addressed.
[ edited by pickersangel on Oct 11, 2000 06:20 AM ]
posted on October 11, 2000 06:54:39 AM
The PayPal email glitch gets me in a couple ways and it could be fixed so easily ...
1) I have an email address the has 2 n's in the middle and a lot of time people just send it to the wrong address. It causes confusion but these tend to get worked out. However I had over 500 positives when I received my first negative and it was because the bidder sent the email to the wrong address never contacted me and neg'd when after a week and 1/2. He felt terrible and posted a response but still there
2) sometimes emails don't get through period for what ever reason. I've had from time to time an item slip through the cracks because I didn't get the email from paypal.
Paypal should in this case notify the bidder by email when they get a returned undeliverable email. Seems simple enough makes you wonder why it hasn't been done yet.
The fact is there are consequences to these paypal problems and they seem more intent on working on new ways to charge us for the service than they are at customer service or fixing their system. Bottom line is I think they are proving to be way too risky. I'm considering not offering them as a payment option at least until they can get stabilized or they go out of business. There are other choices and I hate to say it but maybe billpoint would be the least risky if you have to pay for a service. For me I've already added payplcae and infact recommend it over paypal to my customers and the response and service has been good so far.
posted on October 11, 2000 07:35:07 AM
I just had this same problem that mcjane had and that was discussed in the locked thread "What the he** is up with Paypal?"
I have started a thread in the Partners section on this as well.
This is NOT a problem of a customer sending the payment to an incorrect email address.
Afterall, the notifications themselves are being delivered to the correct address.
But the notifications state that you need to sign up for a new account to claim the money.
But these are already address that are associated with an account. It's not a matter of just adding the address, because the address is already added.
At this point, it is pretty clear that someone has sent me money, but there is absolutely no way for me to reach it.
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As an FYI, the notifications would state that you would need to sign up for an account because the email address it was sent to was not registered in our system (for the typo).
posted on October 11, 2000 11:33:53 AM
Thank's to all for your help & information.
Because of this I was able to find out what the problem was.
Paypal did indeed ask me to sign up for an account in their email. Now I know why, the buyer had my address as .com & it is .net
I just sent her a third email & in this one I told her what she had to do to correct the problem. Funny thing is she has not answered any of my email. I would think after the first one telling her that the money was not in my account she would be concerned enough to at least answer. Now what I can't understand is how the email from PP got to me in the first place with the wrong address.
posted on October 11, 2000 11:39:52 AM
So Paypal has the ability to send me a notification to the correct address even if there was a typo in the address that the buyer entered?
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posted on October 11, 2000 11:47:57 AM
Good question amalgamated2000, that's what happened to me, so how do they do it & if they can do that then why can't they also put the money in out accounts ?
posted on October 11, 2000 11:52:36 AM
"So Paypal has the ability to send me a notification to the correct address even if there was a typo in the address that the buyer entered? "
Not really, ISPs are far more forgiving than pay service accounts, put a period on the end of the email address, replace net with com or com with net and the email will still reach you most of the time. Pay service accounts have to be an EXACT match and aren't as forgiving, that's why you'll sometimes get a payment notice saying you have to sign up to collect it.
If you try and pay [email protected] and his email is really [email protected] the pay services will think "[email protected] doesn't have an account, we will leave it unclaimed till he makes an account and inform him by email" Well the [email protected] & [email protected] will be viewed as the same person by the ISP, so the mail goes to the right person, but asking them to set up a new account.
Before you get out the ropes and try to lynch PayPal for this be warned. I've tried this with other pay services and it's a problem common to all I've tried.
posted on October 11, 2000 12:12:10 PMNot really, ISPs are far more forgiving than pay service accounts, put a period on the end of the email address, replace net with com or com with net and the email will still reach you most of the time.
Periods, yes this might be the case. But as far as .net and .com, it just doesn't work this way.
As far as a DNS server is concerned, .net and .com names are in no way related to each other. For mail to be delivered to a domain, that domain must have MX or MXE records configured in its name server. The only time that an email address to a somewhere.com would get to somewhere.net (or the opposite) is if the same entity owns both domains and has configured them to work that way.
And the only way a typo in the initial part of an address will be correctly delivered is if the server is configured to send all non-existing accounts to a particular address.
I personally configured my nameservers and mail servers for this domain, so I know how they are configured, and there's no way any address but my own could be delivered to my email box.
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[ edited by amalgamated2000 on Oct 11, 2000 12:13 PM ]
posted on October 11, 2000 01:01:40 PM
I believe that many of the public use domains do own both the .net and .com version of their names, and they are configured to work together. I've seen at least one other instance on the boards where this was the reason for the glitch where the email notification shows up, but the money doesn't end up in the account.
posted on October 11, 2000 01:04:03 PM"Periods, yes this might be the case. But as far as .net and .com, it just doesn't work this way."
Contact me at [email protected] I'll give you my real email address and you can try sending to either .com or .net. I just double checked and sent myself email from Yahoo and AOL using net and com I recieved both. I'm not saying this works on all ISPs but it works on a lot. Regularly I've sent email to a friend using earthlink.net, and I type .com out of habit, he'll still get those emails.
posted on October 11, 2000 01:13:04 PM
Looks like half the statements on this thread are wrong. Hard to know which half to believe.
Also... "The fact is there are consequences to these paypal problems and they seem more intent on working on new ways to charge us for the service than they are at customer service or fixing their system. " ... Gee, that sounds just like Ebay!!
posted on October 11, 2000 01:16:56 PM
I'm not saying .net addresses are never forwarded to .com's. I'm just saying that if it does happen, it is not because the ISP is more forgiving, it's because the domains have specifically been set up to work that way.
In my instance, I my domains are not configured that way. I'm sure of that.
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One option you have is to register the .com email address as one of your PayPal email addresses. The next time someone types in .com instead of .net you'll still get the payment to your account.
posted on October 11, 2000 01:24:55 PM"if it does happen, it is not because the ISP is more forgiving, it's because the domains have specifically been set up to work that way."
I apologize for my wording. Yes, you are correct.
In your case the period at the end of the email address would be my first guess then.
posted on October 11, 2000 01:30:38 PMI'm not saying .net addresses are never forwarded to .com's. I'm just saying that if it does happen, it is not because the ISP is more forgiving, it's because the domains have specifically been set up to work that way.
Either way, it hardly seems fair to blame PayPal for this. They've had their problems, to be sure, but I don't think it should be their responsibility to take an incorrect email address supplied by the buyer and figure out what it should have been any more than it is their responsibility to verify that the buyer has sent the correct amount of money to the seller.
posted on October 11, 2000 01:54:31 PM
mrpotatoheadd
"it hardly seems fair to blame PayPal for this....I don't think it should be their responsibility to take an incorrect email address supplied by the buyer and figure out what it should have been."
No they shouldn't have to take an incorrect email address supplied by the buyer and figure out what it should have been, however, they need to devise a system that lets the buyer know when they input the email address whether it is a valid account or not. Pop up a little screen saying: You are about to send money to (account holder's name) or You are about to send money to a non registered email address. Would you like to continue? This would give anyone with close to average intelligence a clue where the money is going.
[ edited by outoftheblue on Oct 11, 2000 02:01 PM ]
posted on October 11, 2000 02:09:38 PMoutoftheblue-
I agree, that would be helpful. Although they already have a confirmation page, which shows the amount of money and to whom it is being sent, from reading previous posts here at AW, I know that this is not enough to keep people from sending the wrong amount, or to the wrong address.
On the other hand, at some point, users have to take some responsibility for assuring that they are entering the proper information. I'm not sure just exactly where that point is though, and regardless of what I think, I'm sure others will disagree.
posted on October 11, 2000 02:12:13 PMI don't think it should be their responsibility to take an incorrect email address supplied by the buyer and figure out what it should have been
I totally agree. But, in my case, the point is that Paypal was able to deliver the notification to the correct address, but they were not able to deposit the funds in the correct account.
With the domain name exceptions above, which were not the case here, I don't see how this could be anybody's problem BUT Paypal's.
Of the solutions suggested, the only one I haven't ruled out is the period at the end of an email address. If that's the problem, it IS Paypal's fault, as far as I'm concerned. Paypal has been made aware of the problem, and it would be easy to fix.
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posted on October 11, 2000 02:21:04 PM
I've always been concerned about what would happen if ...
Let's say you wanted to send $10 to johnr@wherever.com but accidentally sent it to johnt@wherever.com. Johnt is also a registered PayPal user, so PayPal sent the money to him, and doesn't show the incorrect address as being "unclaimed". You don't realize what happened until a few days later when johnr writes and asks where his money is.
What would you have to do to get your money back from johnt? Would it be a matter between the two of you, with PayPal not becoming involved? And what if johnt refused to send the money back?
I guess you could do a chargeback, but it seems that there should be some sort of safeguard to help prevent this from happening. I know you can enter the last name to make sure it matches up, but doing that is optional. How many people actually do that?
Just one of those things I've always wondered about.
(Speaking to mcjane, of course, not the originator of this thread)
