artists_beware | Entries tagged with company-paypal

genkigami.livejournal.com

Current Mood: busy

While my post may be about collectibles, I feel it also applies to art and craft goods as well which is why I'm posting here.

I buy and sell collectible toys fairly often. Several times when buying a toy I've been asked to send payment as a gift (instead of goods which it should be) on Paypal. I've been on this comm long enough to know that A; it's against Paypal's ToS to ask your buyer to do that and that the gift function is not for goods, and B; if something goes wrong I can't dispute it.

When asked to send as a gift I send the payment as goods the fees on top so the seller gets the exact amount and so far nobody has been upset and in fact have been very polite about it.

When asked, do I tell the seller that it's against Paypal's ToS to ask that goods be sent as a gift? Tone isn't my forte so if yes, what would I say without coming across as "lecture-y" for the lack of better words?

catwithpen.livejournal.com

Current Mood: confused

I've been told that digital art is a service, and should be charged as a service if asking for payment with paypal.

Today I saw this: http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/4320715/

It says that 1. Paypal considers digital art to be "digital goods" NOT a service, and 2. you need to charge for it as goods, and specify that it's digital goods. ETA: They claim that by specifying *digital* goods, it clears up the whole needing to mail something issue.

So which is it? Goods or services?

I tried to find info on paypal, but kept going around in circles and couldn't find anything useful.

I'm wondering if it's a matter of custom work versus ready-made items. So if someone buys an existing ebook, they are buying digital goods, but if they commission you to write them a custom story, then they are paying for the service?

breakspire.livejournal.com

I got an email today from paypal saying that someone had initiated a credit card chargeback for an etsy order. It claimed that "this purchase was made without authorization to use the the credit card".

Since I hadn't shipped the item yet, I thought it was a bit weird but I would go ahead with it and cancel the order. I did so, and 5 minutes later got an email from paypal saying that their bank had charged them a fee for the chargeback, so they in turn charged me $20. So now I'm very annoyed at being out $20.

I hadn't been contacted by the "buyer" at all. The etsy ship name and address was the same as the paypal info for the person, and from thier feedback I could see they had made prior successful purchases on etsy. So I'm a bit skeptical that it wasn't fraudulent card use and just impatience. (my shop has a 14 day production time on everything, today was day 12 and I was about to ship it this morning). I should have checked with them first before saying okay to the chargeback.

So - if you need to do a chargeback on someone, ask them to refund you via paypal first. And if you get a request for a chargeback, refund via paypal instead of saying yes to the chargeback. Or else you'll be out $20.

breakspire.livejournal.com

familliaraver.livejournal.com

Never thought I would post here! This is the most amazing epic debacle I've ever seen in my life, and I need some advice. Technically I got burned out of money I was supposed to be paid, but more importantly at this point an entire convention of people are being burned out of money. I would like to leave names out for now, I don't want to put people on blast but I can later depending on what happens.

Can someone open a paypal dispute on an intangible object they paid for past the dispute period, like 9 months ago? If it's a large group of people *100-200 people* that open up a dispute at the same time will it freeze their paypal or will it not matter because they bought tickets in some cases a very long time ago. The fear is them taking all the money and running and the goal is to stop it.

The deal is a convention that was supposed to be happening next weekend was cancelled. A week ago. How/why/who was at fault for the cancellation is up to interpretation. The fact is they didn't fill the room block the said they would. Eventually I will encourage everyone involved to post an A_B on these people for the sake of future dealers/artists/attendees.

Any advice I can take to these poor people who I'm pretty sure will have to fight tooth and nail to see any money back would be really appreciative.

familliaraver.livejournal.com

fenris-lorsrai.livejournal.com

I've seen some artists using Paypal's Donate button when they do a donation drive for a specific need or for variable rate commissions as donations. This may not be a good idea...

This is blowing up on internet right now, but PayPal came down on website Regretsy for using the "wrong" button to collect donations to provide holidays presents to the children of crafters in need. Been picked up by Consumerist

Basic issue: payPal lets you use the "donate" button to collect money without vetting you are a charity... but then gets to decide if it really is a "worthy cause" or not and may shut down, freeze, or lock account... including funds NOT from the donation button.

post on Regretsy at initial limiting
Update after Paypal locked ALL funds (including ones not collected through the donate button) for six months

something awful had a similar experience with donations for Katrina

You probably won't have this issue with small donations... but large ones may catch their attention and put you in a similar situation.

EDIT TO ADD: bunch of open source projects that had donations frozen

EDIT #2 Screenshots and breakdown of PayPal's TOS and AUP, plus PayPal rep encouraging use of the donate button by non-charities

EDIT #3 (geez I am the edit machine)
Paypal issues press release saying they HAD unlocked the money... but issued statement before actually doing so or actually talking to Regretsy Paypal's not very apologetic apology (there were also repeated reports that they were deleting comments left on the blog. those are obviously hard to prove one way or the other)
and then another update!
Paypal does...something. maybe. we think
I honestly can't figure out, if they ONLY want the button used by vetted charities, why they offer it to non-vetted individuals at all! There is a difference between personal and business account features, this should be stupidly easy programming to only allow use of the donate button to vetted charities.

pleasenottoday.livejournal.com

Edit: I followed PayPal employee

snapcat's advice and brought it up to the commissioner. They said there was an issue with the bank and resolved it from there. Thanks for your time and advice, everyone!

Greetings, everyone.

On August 9th, I received an email from PayPal. My real name and the commissioner's email are replaced with X's.

Hello X,

It has come to our attention that you may have received potentially unauthorized funds in your PayPal account. We have initiated an investigation into this event. In the meantime, we have placed a temporary hold on the funds in question until the investigation is complete. This temporary hold will show as a deduction in your available balance. In the meantime, you are free to continue transacting using your PayPal account.Transaction Date: Jul. 16, 2011 11:45:12 PDT
Transaction Amount: $30.00 USD
Payor's Email: xxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxx.xx
If you have questions, please reply to this email.

Thanks,

PayPal

( Read more... )

The transaction was for two digital colored sketches, if that is of any significance. There are notes documenting the commission's reception: one asking for a small change and another thanking me. These can be provided upon request.

This is my first issue with PayPal, and I am uncertain about what to do. I've emailed them twice asking for clarification (once on the same day, and once on the 16th), but have received no response. I know it has yet to even be 20 days, but I am getting nervous and I know nothing about what happened. I searched around for some answers and did not come up with much useful information. However, from what I gathered this issue sounds like it is on the client's side (correct me if I'm mistaken on this) and that I'm likely not to see the funds again.

I'm sorry if the solution is obvious. I would really appreciate some advice and people here tend to be quite knowledgable. Thank you!

pleasenottoday.livejournal.com

Edit: I followed PayPal employee

noiserut.livejournal.com

Hiyo~

Another one of those "advice" posts concerning artists and commissioners.

Looking through the paypal tag I swore I saw the topic of 'invoices' brought up but I must've dreamt it or something. There is one though it didn't highlight anything I was questioning so~

While I was revamping my terms and prices I wanted to ask about paypal invoicing[goes to the paypal site]

For artists:
1. Do you use it?
2. If not is there any reason? [Even "I just never considered it" is ok.]
3. If you do is it convenient or have you had any troubles in the process? [From your side or a commissioner's complaint?]

For commissioners:
1. Have you ever been sent an invoice for commission work?
2. Did you find it easy or difficult/troublesome?
3. If you've never been sent an invoice -would- you mind if an artist used this to get payment? Or do you prefer logging in and sending it yourself?

I'm sure there are other questions or things people can answer that should be considered on the topic, so feel free to say~

---------------------------------------------------
( And the personal gibberish for why I ask: )

Thanks for reading my gibberish~!

bambicandi.livejournal.com

trimblecat.livejournal.com

Hi guys, I'm looking for advice, and well, this is the only place I can think of to really ask.

I've been sort of poking around the idea of selling some custom plushies and digital art commissions, and I was looking at getting a paypal to use for payment. However I have heard a LOT of scary things about paypal.

The primary concern: People filing chargeback using excuses such as "I did not get the item" or "Item did not match description" When it is completely untrue.

I've also read some nasty stories where paypal essentially backs out and says "Too bad" and you loose both the item AND the money involved.

So I wanted to know, is this a common occurrence? Because if it is, and I eventually get around to selling big-ticket items, I don't want to get cheated out of a couple hundred or something because someone decided to file a charge back because "The fur is a shade lighter then dark mocha chocolate brown discontinued fur that I wanted but we agreed that I couldn't get even though we discussed and found an alternative." You know? Am I worrying about nothing? If I'm not, are there any good alternatives?

Thank you!

trimblecat.livejournal.com

astraldescent.livejournal.com

Okay, newish to this comm and asking for advice, since the original convo that confused me was found here. If you click the "company-Paypal" tag you'll see the one I am talking about.

I've recently begun taking commissions, and I have heard here and elsewhere that proper protocol for accepting payments is to ask the commissioner to use the payment owed option. However in the convo, it seems using that 'too much' can get your account locked, and other people also disagreed with it for some arbitrary reasons I can't discern?

Now, I don't often send payments through paypal myself and when I do there is an invoice so I don't have to really do much except click pay, but I am wondering, am I doing the right thing here? How should I recommend my commissioners send their payments to me if not via the Payment Owed option?

I know that you can NOT ask for payments via the gift option, and as far as I know the Payment Owed option is the only way to ensure that that person would have the ability to file a claim, which I hope never happens, but I want people to have the option to if they feel its necessary.

So, what is the best way to recommend your commissioners send money to you when using Paypal? I don't really care about fees since all my commission money is extra money not bill money as it is for some people, so that is not too much of a concern as long as they don't take like $5 a payment or something.

Once again: I do not care about the fees. I am not trying to get people to cover the fees. I don't know how people started thinking I am. All I want to know is what to recommend they do when they send money to me, and is what I am doing right now, asking them to send it as payment owed, okay.

astraldescent.livejournal.com

korsetkoat.livejournal.com

Current Mood: contemplative

This has already been been discussed in this community before- who should pay the fee, the commissioner or the artist? The general agreement seems to be, factor paypal fees into your initial commission price to cover it, because it is the artist who should pay the fees and not the commissioner, as by PayPal's TOS. However, there are many artists I've met who do not seem to have read/know PayPal's TOS and their prices are not factored for the fees.

What should a commissioner/artist do in a situation where, a commissioner sends money thinking an artist has factored in fees, but in fact hasn't payed what the artist was wanting (i.e., an artist wants 4.00$, they only get 3.58$)? It seems like one of those situations that could get ugly if not treated with care. Which is why so far I, as a commissioner, have been paying fees most of the time when buying a commission.

Would the artist have the right to withhold artwork until the full fee has been paid? Or does the commissioner have the right to the commission because it is the artist's own hindsight and ignorance that got them out of some money? I haven't had this situation myself yet but I feel as though this kind of thing will happen at one point or another. Is it a courtesy for the commissioner to send more money despite the TOS or should the artist, well, just suck it up because it is due to their own ignorance of the TOS?

Edit; I suppose the easiest solution for an artist who will not give you art until you pay more money is to open a dispute.

However, let's say you told them all this but they ignore your warning about the TOS. Should you report someone for breaking the TOS by making your customers pay the fees? Is there even a way to do so?