PayPal Payment Issues

Mark Rosenberg

This discussion was created from comments split from: Payment Problem!.

John John H. Talman

This past month I have had two buyers, that I know of, having difficulty paying for their lots thru Pay Pal. Meanwhile other buyers have no problems paying by Pay Pal and we tried to follow Hip Stamps instructions to try and make sure there was no problem at our end. We also accept payments by cheque and would hope that where there is a problem thru Pay Pal payments that buyers might consider paying by mail with a US or Canadian cheque. As mentioned above Pay Pal made a change in July that affected payments. Have they made any changes in Jan., 2018?

John John H. Talman

Today I spent over an hour on Pay Pal to find out my account is in order and they noted that over the past month I have received many Pay Pal payments, including some from Hip Stamps buyers, with no problems Things are in order at my end and Hip Stamps says everything is in order at their side. Pay Pal told me to ask the two buyers to contact them to see if they could help with any problem. I have requested the two buyers to contact Pay Pal. In the meantime we have paid the fees to HIp Stamps and spent a great deal of time on this. Where there is a problem one might think that buyers could simply send payment via some other means while any Pay Pal problem was being cleared up. Cheques, money orders and cash was a regular way to make payments a few years ago.

Mark Rosenberg

Hi John,

When paying with PayPal, it is possible that an issue may prevent payment, such as a mismatched address (state vs zip, etc.) However, in almost all of these cases a detailed error message is provided to the buyer to allow them to resolve any such issues. In some rare cases, there could be a specific reason why PayPal would block a payment, due to an issue with a buyer or seller's account, but that's very rarely the case.

In general, we monitor the level of failed payments to ensure there are no wider issues. Currently, there's nothing out of the ordinary. For example, in the last 7 days, we have had thousands of PayPal payments made, and the only failures were due to mismatched shipping addresses, which were then corrected by the buyers. That being said, if you continue to see what you believe is a higher than ordinary issue for yourself - let us know.

With regards to paying by check or money order, this is an option we offer. You're already using it. It's our Pay Later feature, which allows pre-approved buyers to checkout with you and pay you by check. When using this feature, buyers who purchased items with you through auctions or offers can also print an invoice to pay you by check or money order at any time from their Members Area (in addition to paying by PayPal).

John John H. Talman

Hi Mark: I have had no continuous problem with Pay Pal payments thru Hip Stamps. I have tried to clear the above problem up thru your office and brought it up in this thread. Despite the fact we have no problem with Pay Pal thru us and Hip Stamps say they have no problem on their side we have still not been paid for 100% of our sales on Dec. 30, 2017 and about 14% of our sales on Jan. 2, 2018. Meanwhile, I understand you have your money for your portion of the sales at that time which have been brought to the attention of the Hip Stamp office. Since we have paid the Hip fees it would seem that buyers could simply send us a money order, cash or a cheque. You mention something about Pay Pal blocking a payment due to a buyers account. Pay Pal could not tell us of any problem in this regards. I don't think this problem should just die after all the work we put into this problem in the New Year. You also have your fees and my understanding from comments in the Forum say it can be quite timely to get fees back. Time has also been spent listing items, having them off sale, poor customer relations, etc. Lets get to the bottom of this problem and perhaps see that it doesn't happen to other sellers. Please see if you can find out what the real problem is and since we have apparently paid the Hip fees why payment by other means could not be made, John H. Talman

Mark Rosenberg

There are two sales you're referring to.

The first one, the buyer indicated they had an issue paying through PayPal, and then asked to pay you directly via your PayPal email address, which it looks like you provided. If they had paid you directly via PayPal, it wouldn't automatically show as paid on HipStamp (since the payment would have been made outside HipStamp). This is fine, but you would just need to check your PayPal account to confirm the payment was made. You can then manually mark the paid status accordingly on HipStamp, and send the stamps.

The second order, the buyer asked that you cancel the order several weeks ago. With regards to Final Value Fees, you can easily request a refund for the fees you paid. All you need to do is go to the Members Area > Account > Account History page, locate the order in question and click on the "Request Refund" button. These are generally processed within 1 business day. If you need a refund on the fees for the first order, just do the same.

As you have the Pay Later / Pay by Check feature enabled, either of the buyers could have paid you by check if they wanted to - it does not appear that they wanted to do so. There's nothing that would have prevented them from doing this.

John John H. Talman

Mark: The reason he told me as I recall that that buyer wanted to cancel purchase was that he couldn't pay via Pay Pal thru Hip Stamps. I certainly didn't want the only sale I made that day on Hip Stamps cancelled without an explanation of why the system didn't work for him. Why didn't the system work on these two occasions over New Years? The other buyer has not indicated that he paid me by any other method but I will spend some more time on this and see if in fact he did pay this way and not any other way. Sellers want to make sales on Hip Stamps and I am only trying to find out why these two buyers couldn't pay as normally over the New Years period. John Talman