Seller Beware! PayPal Buyer Chargeback Refunds

You've sold your item.  Your buyer paid via PayPal.  You shipped the item but the buyer said they never received it.  You wake up one morning and check your email and you get that sick feeling when your PayPal account is drained of all your money.

What happened?  Well, either the package is still in transit, lost, stolen or your buyer has ripped you off.  I Know, it happened to me!  I sold and shipped an item worth about $395 to England via Air Parcel Post.  I had told the buyer to be patient because it may take 2-3 weeks.  He was a real nervous guy and after only 14 days he filled a chargeback with PayPal for the full amount of $395.  All of a sudden there was no money in my PayPal account and they told me to promptly deposit the shortage back into my account.

How could I defend myself?  I couldn't.  Why?  Because I had used a shipping service that did not provide any tracking.  What is the lesson here?  If you ship overseas and you want to protect yourself you must use Express Mail which has tracking or one of the other services such as FedEx, UPS or DHL. 

It can happen in the USA too.  If you use the US Postal Service (USPS), you must use Express Mail that has tracking information or at the minimum Delivery Confirmation that many times only shows up online after the package is actually delivered.  But guess what?  Delivery confirmation does not show who it was delivered to, only the time, city, state and zip code.  Luckily for me I sent a $219 item recently to Grand Rapids, Michigan and used Delivery Confirmation.  A day or two after it should have arrived the buyer emailed me asking where her item was.  I checked online and found it had been delivered.  But to who?  There was no way to tell who got it or their address. 

How can you protect yourself.  To really protect yourself you can insist on Signature Confirmation with USPS or Insurance which requires a signature.  You can also use FedEx or UPS.  My favorite is FedEx because they are faster, less expensive and settle claims in two weeks more or less.  UPS can take a month and forget the USPS as they recently took over 3 months to settle the first insurance claim I had with them in over seven years in business.

I will be writing more guides and if I get enough response I will ge into more detail in an advanced guide to shipping safely and how to avoid PayPal chargebacks.

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