PayPal Expands Consumer Protections to All PayPal User Beginning 1st Nov 2010



PayPal is the faster, safer way to pay and get paid online. The service allows members to send money without sharing financial information, with the flexibility to pay using their account balances, bank accounts, credit cards or promotional financing. With more than 87 million active accounts in 190 markets and 24 currencies around the world, PayPal enables global ecommerce. PayPal is an eBay company and is made up of three leading online payment services: the PayPal global payment service, the Payflow Gateway and Bill Me Later. The company's open payment platform, PayPal X, allows developers to build innovative payment applications on multiple platforms and devices. More information about the company can be found at PayPal.com.

* PayPal protects shoppers when they don’t receive the items they ordered in all 190 markets where it operates. Beginning Nov. 1, 2010, PayPal will protect shoppers on merchant sites if the item they receive is significantly different than described in all markets except Belgium, Brazil, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain.

The expanded protections will cover shoppers on merchant websites if they don’t receive an item they purchased, or if they receive an item that is significantly different than described by the merchant.

PayPal will extend these additional benefits to shoppers in nearly all of the 190 countries* it serves.
PayPal provides protections for both buyers and sellers in addition to the safeguards that are built into the PayPal system:
• Because PayPal never shares a buyer’s financial information with sellers, privacy is built into the service.
• PayPal provides zero liability for eligible unauthorized transactions on PayPal accounts.
• PayPal has one of the most sophisticated anti-fraud models in the payments industry, which gets smarter and stronger with every transaction that goes through our system – and PayPal has processed billions of transactions in the past 11 years. With this technology, PayPal often detects and stops fraudulent activity the moment it occurs and before it ever reaches our customers.

PayPal has offered buyer protection on eBay (Nasdaq:EBAY) since Oct. 2003 and has steadily increased the coverage it offers. Last year, PayPal began offering purchase protection on merchant sites for select purchases, if the buyer didn’t receive the item. Today, PayPal’s buyer protection policy covers eligible payments on merchant sites if the items are not received by the buyer or when the items arrive but are significantly different from what was described by the merchant.


Tips for Sellers to Avoid Buyer Claims
Buyers have told us that they’re much more likely to buy from PayPal sellers when they have more confidence that their purchases are protected. We think that by offering buyer protection for merchants on and off eBay, it can help to level the playing field for smaller merchants who might not have the same brand recognition as the largest stores on the Web.

At the same time, we know that you want to do everything you can to avoid buyer claims, especially claims about the quality of the merchandise you sell. We spoke with a few of our top sellers about how they avoid these claims. I thought their insight would be helpful for you, too. Here’s what they suggest:

1. Under-promise and over-deliver: Be clear and detailed in describing the item you’re selling. If the item is used, detail every scratch or flaw. You want the buyer to have zero surprises. Provide lots of close-up pictures.

2. Be proactive in your customer communications: Let your customers know you take their satisfaction seriously, and you won’t rest until they’re happy. As soon as you know your customer has a concern, respond. Be friendly and focus on solving the problem. If your buyers believe that you’ll take care of them, they’ll see no reason to file a dispute. Then you can work it out in a manner that’s optimal for you (e.g. send a replacement item vs. issuing a full refund).

3. Be creative: Sometimes all a buyer needs is a replacement part, some education about how the item works, or a small partial refund to have the issue resolved.

4. Understand that some exposure is inevitable. Most businesses factor returns and claims into their budgets up front. Unfortunately, it’s a fact in retail that some buyers can never be satisfied, and it does little good to fight them because of the risk to your reputation. Better to accept a return and move on than to waste valuable time when you could be selling other items. We’ll do our part to monitor for buyer abuse, and we also provide seller protection in cases where a buyer claims they didn’t receive the item and you can prove otherwise.

We’re excited about this expanded protection and think the trust it creates will be beneficial for buyers and sellers alike. Let us know what you think!

View our FAQs page about SELLER DISPUTE RESOLUTION and BUYER DISPUTE RESOLUTION.