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Technically I must accept PayPal - how do I steer buyers away from PayPal payments?
 

HI:
Several Members have asked me what kind of letter do I use to "help" the customers accept using ccnow, versus straight Paypal?
I thought I would share what I send to them.

I hope this helps some folks :))

Anyhow- I basically tell them this.. (I have a note that goes with the 1st invoice, then another with the more difficult customers>>

Dear Customer:
Atatched is your link to pay for your purchase via our Merchant Acct. You can pay with PAYPAL or ANY Credit Card. Your choice. The link will take you through our merchant acct, CCNOW.
CCNOW is 100% Secure, as with ANY online purchase.
CCNOW, happens to be owned by Digital River Corp., who is also involved with Big Name Software Developer, Symantec Corp, i.e. Nortons Anti Virus,
So, Rest Assured.. your payment is SAFE.
So- if you want to use PAYPAL.. not a problem, just follow the link choose Paypal.
We ship the SAME DAY as your pyt is recd.
Best Regards,
Jane, Customer Services :))

P.S. By the way, several customers have asked us about a DIRECT paypal button/link like most of the smaller sellers use on Ebay.
I am HAPPY to say, that we do NOT have a Personal Paypal acct. We have a Regular Retail Merchant account, just like Walmart.com, or Sears..
Thanks again for your Purchase +
Don't hesitate to contact us for any concerns.
Here is our main telephone number:
1-312-213-1000.

good info as usual.

And do you really offer telephone support? Even listening to voice mail that some of my customers leave using the virtual phone number on my business paypal account drives me crazy lol

HI, LOL.. They dont call me.. I usually get Complaints from too many emails to them.. I dont give em a chance :) The first sign of dissatisfaction, Im on it.. I'd rather refund them up front, than even waste the postage., I can usually tell when theyre gonna be a complainer..
--They get 3 emails to pay me, then another after pyt, then 2 with tracking info, (1 from me, 1 from ups), then another the day the shipment was "left on doorstep", or delivered, then another reminding them to lv fb. :))
--It makes me laugh when I get the emails "ok, enough is enough" ..stop SPAMMING me!! :))

Do you ever have a problem with customers not paying attention and they just pay you directly through Paypal anyway? This would happen to me all the time when I tried using CCnow.

Koalawash, for some customers you could help them press the right keys for anything but paypal and they will still hit paypal. It's the brainwashing and going out of their known square.

That was my impression too. I find it hard to believe anyone could keep their sanity for very long taking Paypal through CCnow on eBay.

HI- You force yourself.. :)
When that nice "chunk" comes rolling in every 15 days, you forgot about...it's nice ! :))

--The first month, you refine your skills, get better at answering their objections..they "used" to be able to tell me.. I never recd it.. so now they get it 3 times from me.. all within 5 minutes.. then again the next day, and the next ,,etc.. They Pay or they get the 7 day unpaid item...
--Then whatta u know..on day 8--They found the email!!! :))

The other thing I was worried about is, doesn't Paypal charge you a fee to refund a buyer? I don't know what you're using to type in the Paypal email address field, though.. do you just use an email that has no Paypal associated to it?

HI:
I dont see any extra fees?
i.e. if the sale is $100, the net to me is like $94.50, so if i refund, the $94.50 is all that comes from me..
--as for paypal, the accts are older than 11/20....Authorized for merchant acct acceptance...
Otherwise, theres a private section in members only area to address it ...:))

Weird, I could have sworn they used to charge me a fee.. Is it a personal type Paypal account, or premier/business?

Hi- my accts are Prem/Bus..but I don't think it matters, as ccnow is using Their pp acct,not mine..Unless I misunderstood your question? If so, I'm sorry...;)

Oh yeah, sorry.. I'm not talking about refunding through CCnow, I'm talking about the issue of having to deal with buyers who are too stupid to read the auction and so they use Paypal directly through whatever Paypal email that eBay forces you to always list. Thus you are forced to refund them through your "real" Paypal account..

I turn off the "ebay checkout" page so they can't try to pay me via paypal from there.

Then I have an automatic invoice from Auctiva that tells them to "please wait" that I will be sending them an invoice shortly from CCNow where they can pay via paypal or credit card.

So far so good, I've only had one buyer who claims they just couldn't figure it out..not sure what the heck she was talking about so for that customer I sent a google checkout link and she paid that way.

Thanks Ebayhateluv for recommending ccnow..it's great!:p

With auctiva now, sometimes when the auctions over and doesnt show thats its closed til its a few hours later. Is that when the email is sent to? Or is it sent instantly once its closed?

Is it possible to somehow integrate CCNOW with eBay or at least to generate a link which a buyer could use to fill out all his information himself and pay without me sending invoices manually each time? I sell 50-100 items a day, and it's absolutely not realistic for me to send out invoices manually :(

HI, Stepjunk:
Not that I know of.. You will get fast at it..
Keep your ccnow window open, minimize your email window, min. your ebay window,
I can do 1 in less than 2 minutes... (copy/pasting).. :)

p.s. now one of the Smart guys here, who can program,etc, most likely can figure out a better way, but for now.. this i what Ive been doing since August.

If you have windows Vista you can click on the window with ccnow in the bar at the bottom. Click on the window with ebay while holding down the control button. Right click on one of them and select show windows side by side. Makes it much faster!

Technically I must accept PayPal - how do I steer buyers away from PayPal payments?
 

Say you are forced to offer PayPal in your listings, in theory you could state in the listing that you will only accept PayPal if the listing stays under $xxx.xx? If it goes above say $200.00, you will only accept bank transfer or another payment method?

God I wish I could do that. Unfortunately using Auctiva as a "first time" ebay user would probably raise a ton of red flags everywhere so I don't use it. People still attempt to pay me by paypal despite what I say in my auction. I turn off checkout but it's pointless because they still get the pay now button at the end of the auction so it looks like I want them to pay that way.

There may be a problem. In the 'Thou Shalt Not Do', it says that you can not
list " I only accept paypal if the amount is over $15.00" so if you try to qualify
your way they may object. Their terms of agreement say the transaction
must be in accordance with policy or we will hold payment etc etc.

yeah, ebay wil cancel your listing if you use any wording like that. i just had some cancelled because i used the words other online payments, ie., my merchant account.

I have several people saying they cannot "turn off" that Paypal button.. its keep re-appearing..
Ebayvictim.. any chance u can isolate exactly what 2 sub categories the buttons are in? (I cant log in from the ip im at.. ) Thanks! :))

I do that, never had a problem...However, people will still send it to your paypal address anyway, because they don't read as normal.

Because sales are much stronger when paypal is used. It's easy and convenient for users, and they have the insurance which is what they seem to love.

Under my ebay....my account....preferences....selling preferences....payment from buyers. Use checkout 'no'...offer paypal on my listings 'no'...display paypal preferred on my listings 'no'! Under auctiva....disable automatic emails or customize your email to tell them to WAIT on an invoice. Disable checkout in Auctiva.

That's what I've done and so far it works for me. Only problem is half the buyers don't READ! LOL

Hold on a second there modee, are you saying that this new "law", does not apply to pre 11/07?

Well I am selling in a very competitive market, I don't believe that if people saw my listings and realised I didn't accept paypal, they wouldn't go elsewhere.

For not so competitive markets, yes, not accepting paypal would be a wise option.

What are you going to do if all your old accounts are dead some day?

Screw paypal!!!!!!!!

How are you using PP, mantisinc? Are you using the same old account with all the real info or do you create a separate PP for each eBay account? I really don't know how it is possible to use PP accounts without giving them SSN and at the same time I'm getting paranoid to continue using my own old PP account because of linking risk. And using merchant accounts totally sucks in my case...

yes thats what hes saying exactly this is why pre 11/07 accounts are gold, no they are platinum wrapped in diamonds

If you have to accept paypal, here's my plan
 

If you have to accept paypal, here's my plan. Note, this is just an outline with summaries in parenthesis and comments in blocks. It may not be worded to sell, but it's just an outline you can work with.

We accept: credit card through visa, mastercard, (and whatever cards you accept) (explain merchant account, auctiva checkout and safety)

We accept: money orders, checks, (or depending on what you want)

We also accept PayPal: Like most people we do not accept paypal by choice, but ebay forces us. PayPal is a completely unsafe payment system for buyers and sellers. (explain www.paypalwarning.com and whatever your favorite sites) (Then explain how if a buyer pays via paypal and someone scams them, they won't be refunded because a true scammer would have emptied their paypal account.)

-----* For paypal, we use a third party service called CCNOW. [Or if you don't live where you can get CCNOW, then whatever you can use.] If you want to pay paypal, please tell us an CCNOW will send an invoice to your mailbox and if you have spam filters on, it'll go in your junk mailbox and if you use hotmail then hotmail usually refuses to receive any email at all not from hotmail. If you try to force a paypal payment through to our email address, it'll be unclaimed and not accepted because we don't have a paypal account. Using CCNOW to accept paypal through costs twice the fees as having a paypal account (takes about 6% of the transferred money) but it protects us from what paypal normally does, which is freezing funds in accounts and then holding it random for various illicit favors. PayPal can only do this because they are not regulated as a bank.

-----* For paypal, we only accept payments from a confirmed address and no PO Boxes as (address verification doesn't work with the street number portion PO Boxes). This is because if we ship to an address that isn't confirmed then the buyer only has to click a single button and gets the item for free no matter what.

-----* For paypal, we only accept payments from [note: I don't know how shipping works from the UK, but this is how it would be for the USA] the 50 USA states, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. Outside of this, the actual tracking with signature that is viewable online (as opposed to a return receipt mailed back to you) is Global Express Guaranteed that that costs at minimum $45 postage alone and that's just for something weighing a couple ounces. This is required because if we don't do this then the buyer only has to click a single button in paypal and gets the item for free no matter what.



(I also wonder about making it a requirement that the buyer's paypal account be verified, but I don't know.)

That could certainly work Jonas, in fact, I'm implimenting a very similar thing in my auctions at the moment.

However, I am actually saying that in my auction, how secure it is to pay by credit/debit card, and how it's in fact safer than paypal, as you are insured up to an unlimited amount.

I think this could work well, thanks for sharing!

I can't pesonally see listings lasting very long, with any hint whatsoever of knocking Paypal... anything in the slightest that suggests Paypal be unsafe, were forced to use Paypal etc...etc... may be fine at the moment, whilst Ebay are implementing the "Everyone Must Offer Papal" Rule.. but once they have there sh*t together, it won't be long before the bot's or self rightous reporting gimps will have them pulled..

Well there's lots of ebay guides saying paypal is unsafe and brand new 0 feedback accounts with ⊗⊗⊗⊗ info can make all the ebay guides they want.

Okay here's one that you could add:

* Also for paying paypal, it is required buyer must print out and fax/mail/email us a statement saying they agree to the auction listing's terms. This is necessary to help protect us from fraudulent paypal disputes since paypal ignores all auction listing terms by default in its dispute system even though ebay claims makes buyers click that "You are agreeing to a contract -- You will enter into a legally binding contract to purchase the item from the seller. You are responsible for reading the full item listing, including the seller's instructions and accepted payment methods."


http://www.k7.net can receive faxes for free.


Now you might want to ask ebay about this but if they allow it then that would both make paypal disputes a lot easier and secondly annoy buyers too much to use paypal, especially since if you use a third party service or even if your mail email isn't your paypal email then they can't really pay paypal until you invoice them.

Alternatively, just state that payment via paypal will mean a 5 day delay in postage, or something of the kind. People ususally want their items as soon as possible.

people pay me in personal checks though despite the 10 day shipping delay + delay of me receiving check.

Another idea, maybe ebay will let people say they have to have a certain amount of feedback to use paypal like how they let sellers say you have to a certain amount of feedback to bid.


Or what if you open the account in a country where you don't have to accept paypal and then move it all to the ebay site that forces paypal and you can bypass it that way?