posted on March 7, 2005 05:53:28 PM new
I had a payment show up in my eBay's seller's account as "PayPal payment pending," with an hourglass, but there was no record of it when I logged into my PayPal account.
I called PayPal on Saturday night and they said the error was that my email address was missing from the "send to" line. Therefore, the payment went nowhere - to tell the buyer to cancel his original payment, which was "unclaimed," and resend it. So I sent the buyer an email, explaining the situation and forwarding the instructions from PayPal.
I didn't hear back from him. So tonight I called him. He said he did everything as outlined in PayPal's email this morning, and he had an email from PayPal confirming that the payment had been completed, and he would forward it to me, which he didn't do. No record of it in my PayPal account, and another call to PayPal confirmed no new activity.
Meanwhile, it's still listed in my eBay's seller's account as "PayPal payment pending," and PayPal says they can't cancel that because it's eBay, not PayPal.
What that means - if I don't get a payment, I can't issue a UID, not if there's a PayPal payment. The page for that auction has a legend: "Your buyer has paid with PayPal. Payment is pending."
The buyer just sent me an email, that he'll send a money order instead.
I'm not shy about calling people because I work from home and I have unlimited LD.
But there doesn't seem to be any way to purge the "payment pending" info from my seller's account, though I'm going to email eBay as well.
This buyer has perfect feedback so maybe he's just lost somewhere in the PayPal maze, and will make good on it. It's not a big ticket item.
But I see a real potential problem here.
Someone could delete the email address from the payment form, send the payment nowhere, but eBay will still list it as paid via PayPal - and I'm stopped out from issuing that IUD, or even threatening the buyer with an IUD.
posted on March 7, 2005 06:05:17 PM new
I see this as more of a problem for the buyer,not the seller.
Why would any buyer want to do this deliberately,to screw the seller out of the ebay final value fee refund??
He would be more worried of losing his money.
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[ edited by stopwhining on Mar 7, 2005 06:06 PM ]
I don't know what's going on here yet re the buyer.
But I see a real problem with eBay and PayPal not reconciling their data.
As far as eBay is concerned, that auction page now says: "Your buyer has paid with PayPal. Payment is pending."
He's now saying that he'll send a money order, but if that doesn't come in, I can't issue an IUD. The rules specifically state that an IUD can't be issued if payment has been made via PayPal - and PayPal is clear on the fact that no payment was processed.
In my email to this buyer, I was going to throw in a gentle reminder that under eBay's rules, payment must be completed in 10 days (which is this coming Thursday), or it can result in an IUD. Then I checked the doc's on the new IUD process - which I haven't yet used - and discovered that eBay won't let me file an IUD so long as eBay is showing that "paid with PayPal" legend.
And there doesn't seem to be any way to get PayPal and eBay to talk to one another, to get that removed from my seller's page. I got a blank from the PayPal rep.
posted on March 7, 2005 07:26:37 PM new
I think I read somewhere ...If the payment is still pending (unclaimed), it will cancel itself after so many days (10 I think). Does anyone else remember seeing this ?
posted on March 7, 2005 07:55:02 PM new
toasted, I dont remember reading that anywhere in reference to ebay, but most systems have a build-in whoosie-bobby [ dont know what you call it ] where a pending will drop off record if it never passes over to processed. I believe it's part of the check and balance sort of way payments are credited correctly. I'm not sure this applies to ebay & paylpal's system, but one would think so...but then again with ebay..maybe not. lol.
posted on March 7, 2005 07:58:21 PM new
roz, have you checked your auctions? what paypal email address to you have payments sent to? Is it the same as your wbn email address? Did you have one and change or drop another? I would check your paypal account and see what addresses you have listed as accepting payments, then check what you have in your ebay account.
He can't. And I have no idea of how or why the email addy was left off. I send a lot of payments as a buyer, and I've never had that problem. I called PayPal twice - there's no system-wide glitch that they know of.
Toasted,
That's good to know.
The buyer has since succeeded in cancelling the payment. The "view payment status" form was updated with a date of 3/7 and when I click through to PayPal, there's a message: "The payment you are trying to view has been cancelled."
He says he cancelled the first and tried to resend, but he got the same "unclaimed" message - and this time, he realized it hadn't gone through - so he cancelled it a second time.
He now says he's going to send a money order.
But eBay is still showing it as "PayPal payment pending," with the hourglass.
I just had a long session with a live chat rep. PayPal said they had no control over the eBay seller's page - talk to eBay. eBay says the error occurred on PayPal's site and - no joke, he repeated this several times - it's the buyer's fault - talk to the buyer.
Gratefully, the buyer believes me that it didn't go through - I think.
posted on March 7, 2005 08:03:42 PM new
If unclaimed after 10 days, the funds will go into a special escrow fund. At the end of the year, the fund will be used to reward the Ebay employees who have made the most worthless and useless enhancements to the Ebay site. The employee who created the double billing to sellers feature last year won the entire pot.
A $75.00 solid state device will always blow first to protect a 25 cent fuse ~ Murphy's Law
I wish I had a copy of the "live chat" where the rep kept blaming the buyer. But when I closed that window, the usual "do you want a copy" legend didn't come up.
If it's showing up as "paid with paypal" on my seller's page, it's no doubt showing up as "paid with paypal" on the buyer's page. I can see where a seller could end up with a buyer who's convinced he/she has paid - and you'd have to ship the box. As far as eBay is concerned, the buyer paid with PayPal, so the buyer would have the right to file one of those "didn't receive an item" claims.
And eBay won't talk to PayPal to confirm it's "unpaid."
posted on March 7, 2005 09:31:40 PM new
The same thing happened to me when I changed my registered email addy. eBay sent the payment to my old address and I couldn't receive it because I couldn't get email there and had already deleted the address from my Paypal profile.
Your buyer's payment probably went to a "wrong" address. I wouldn't worry about it. Have the buiyer cancel it and resend to the correct address.
He tried to do that and succeeded in cancelling it, but when he tried to resend, he got the same "unclaimed" message, and cancelled a second time. He says he'll send a money order instead.
I just re-opened my business account, but I'm keeping the personal account as well.
So when the second account is live, I'm going to PayPal myself back and forth and see if there's a problem. From everything I can see right now, my email address is there in all the right places.
posted on March 8, 2005 10:01:29 AM new
send him a request money invoice directly. Check your email address on your auctions. I listed about 20 auctions all with a wrong paypal payment address. It was a pain. If it goes unclaimed it will be refunded after a while. It pretty hard trying to convince ppl they didnt pay you yet.
I invoiced him initially through eBay. But I can't take the next step - the 3-day notice - because so far as eBay is concerned, he's paid with PayPal.
So I called him last night, and from there, we just went the direct email route. He said via email that he was giving up on PayPal and would send a money order. I emailed him back that that was fine and repeated my mailing address.
I've been aware for some time that if you pay via PayPal, it can show up on PayPal as being paid while on eBay it's listed as unpaid. When I'm a buyer, I know that I go by what's in my PayPal account, not what's being shown on eBay.
But this is the first time I've seen it showing up the other way around.
Yes, definitely a real problem if people think they've "paid" because that's what's showing up on their eBay pages.
I'd hate to have to go through this with 20 different buyers.
If it's "unpaid" on PayPal, it should be "unpaid" on eBay as well.
posted on March 8, 2005 02:16:22 PM new
That's exactly what happened to me and the buyer kept insisting he'd paid, even after I explained several times that I couldn't get to his payment because it was sent to the wrong address. He finally sent a PP payment to another address not associated with my eBay account. He wasn't too happy about it but it worked out okay.
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posted on March 8, 2005 05:56:31 PM new
I kinda had something like this happen with me. I won something and while I was in PP paying stuff I paid for that auction too. Their TOS said that they only accepted MO or checks, something like that. All the while this payment was "pending". (they had a PP number of 3 or something). I kept emailing the seller every day for a week and told them they would have to cancel the PP payment before I sent any MORE money. I didn't want to send a MO and have that other payment go through.
I mailed PP and asked how could I cancel that PP payment and PP said I couldn't do it on my end, but that the seller would have to cancel the payment.
Never heard from the seller until I filed a dispute with PP. THEN it got canceled.
They "said" that the PP account belonged to their dearly departed Father and "OOOPS" they just happened to drop and break the item while they were packing it, so they were canceling the transaction. Right.
I've never come so close to wanting to leave a BIG FAT NEG in my life....but I didn't.
] where a pending will drop off record if it never passes over to processed. I believe it's part of the check and balance sort of way payments are credited correctly. I'm not sure this applies to ebay & paylpal's system, but one would think so...but then again with ebay..maybe not. lol.