question Is PayPal's "send money to a family or friend" safe for selling domains?

[sixtoronto]

Is it easy to avoid a fraudulent chargeback if you tell the buyer to select 'send money to a family or friend' in paypal?

I know that if they select that they are paying for an item, then a chargeback is easy.

Can someone advise please? and feel free to recommend the methods that you use for safe LLLL.com domain name sales where the buyer cannot (or will have a very hard time) doing a chargeback

 

[inforg]

Friends and family is not a secure way to handle business transactions. That being said, for forum transactions under $200 I use it to pay the sellers, since I consider people on the forum to be more friends than just some anonymous person.

For any serious transactions or amount you would have a hard time absorbing a loss on, don't use it

 

[infosec3]

This is a good question. I use PayPal very often dealing with end-users. So far I have never faced any problems with these payments, but I know the possibility is there. I do not use the family button.

The other question is whether PayPal is okay with people using the family feature for business. I'm not sure.

 

[sixtoronto]

Yea, the question is in the perspective of the seller.,,, mainly to avoid a customer who wants to be a dick and tell their credit card company that 'they didnt receive the domain'

Doing a credit card chargeback is extremely easy. I learned this the hard way by selling on ebay, and getting screwed out of innexpensive items (luckily). It is as easy as the buyer opening a item not received case, and they will win almost 100% of the time.... no matter how much proof you send ebay. The buyer can even take a photo of the item, send it to you in ebay, leave a postitive feedback, .... and then later file an 'item not received' case and win. I am not even exaggerating.

 

[infosec3]

Yea, the question is in the perspective of the seller.,,, mainly to avoid a customer who wants to be a dick and tell their credit card company that 'they didnt receive the domain'

Doing a credit card chargeback is extremely easy. I learned this the hard way by selling on ebay, and getting screwed out of innexpensive items (luckily). It is as easy as the buyer opening a item not received case, and they will win almost 100% of the time.... no matter how much proof you send ebay. The buyer can even take a photo of the item, send it to you in ebay, leave a postitive feedback, .... and then later file an 'item not received' case and win. I am not even exaggerating.

I see what you mean. Although I have never had a problem with my domain sales to end-users using PayPal, I did suffer two chargebacks when I sold Litecoins on eBay.

On both cases, PayPal approved the chargeback and I lost about $250. Not cool. It seems as if for PayPal the scammers are generally or even always right.

 

[golan]

First, it's not a good idea to try gaming Paypal. If something goes wrong with the deal, one of the parties can snitch to Paypal that is was not really a family transaction but a business buy... And not only you lose any kind of Paypal protection in this case, but your score suffers a lot. It's just like your credit history. For example: if you have brand new Paypal account, you loose pretty much every dispute. But in my case, i have my account for many years and (hopefully) a solid score in their eyes - for the last couple of years I didn't lose a single dispute, being accuser or defender, even without solid document base.

So why to cheat them? To save a couple of bucks on their fees? Come on.

Another question - is the seller protection. And yes, Paypal is total shit in this sense. Unless you have a solid score, but imagine your buyer has even better score... Although i cant imagine how someone with a solid score would cheat with chargebacks. But anyway, i sell domains with paypal only to my return buyers or when the sum is low. For all other cases, if it's still not so high for escrow, i have my 2CO account. And 2CO is really fighting for seller's side. It's not so easy to chargeback from 2CO, if the seller provides all the proofs, virtually impossible. Yes it costs you a high fee, but it's totally worth it. And the buyer can pay them with paypal.

 

[sixtoronto]

Never heard of 2co but i will look into it.
I am not trying to cheat paypal per se, however, if a seller does use "send to family or friend", it is extremely difficult for a buyer to win a fraudulent chargeback. Here is my scenario

I bought a wholesale tangible item and paid with 'send to family and friends", and I had a really hard time to get my money back even though I actually was scammed...

In comparison, I have done ebay transactions where I sold items honestly, and the buyer won the chargeback just by saying 'the seller didn't send the item'..... I infact did send the item and the buyer was able to take my item, and get their money back ... regardless of the proof i sent, aswell as proof of the buyer asking me to leave feedback after they got the item.

It seems that sellers are more protected when they tell buyers to select 'send as a family or friend'.... and I am pretty sure that the person receiving the family or friend money incurs the 2% charge. I dont mind the 2% charge if it ensures that the buyer wont screw me out of a $300 domain and they get to keep the money.

 

[iowadawg]

I have received many payments via that option from buyers and have had no problems.
On many occasions I have used that option to pay.
Again, no problems.
It works great if the amount is small, like 1 to 10 bucks.

 

[inforg]

If you are requesting people to use family and friends, it is probably only a matter of time before PayPal hits you. I understand why you do it.

If you could charge a little more, it would make sense to go through some type of escrow like ecop, godaddy, Sedo, escrow.com, etc.

 

[DnEbook]

There is an on old saying, "only use paypal for the amount you are willing to lose" Having said that I happily do use paypal in my auctions here, if the buyer has a good trade rep I am normally happy enough

 

[golan]

I bought a wholesale tangible item and paid with 'send to family and friends", and I had a really hard time to get my money back even though I actually was scammed...

This.

What to even say about intangible goods. Such cheating may be bad for both seller and buyer.

 

[Charybdis]

No it's not safe and it's against the PayPal terms of service to use "friends or family" when paying for goods or services: https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/useragreement-full?locale.x=en_US#sending-money

"You must not send money as a personal transaction (often referred to as using the “send money to a friend or family member” feature in your PayPal account) when you are paying for goods or services."

Buying a domain name is a business transaction, not a payment between friends or family.

I am very upset because a seller here on NamePros wanted to force me to use the PayPal "friends or family" payment to avoid the transaction fees, but I told him that he is allowed to force me to break the PayPal terms, and according to the NamePros rules all prices include the transaction fee. That seller wanted me to pay extra if I don't want to use the PayPal "friends or family" option. This behavior is against the NamePros and PayPal rules.

Please read the NamePros and PayPal terms of services before attempting to sell a domain name.

 

[Charybdis]

I posted a new thread in the "suggestions and feedback" section about this issue here:

https://www.namepros.com/threads/pl...domain-transactions-here-on-namepros.1285545/

 

[forge]

PayPal updated their terms effective Nov. 15.

https://www.namepros.com/threads/paypal-changes-update-late-2022.1285059/

By the way, it's chicken sh*t that someone downvoted your above posts.

 

[Surya Giri Kurniawan]

That's why you need an Escrow. Use Escrow.com or special domain Escrow, like DAN. Using domain sending service in Escrow.com will be even better, just in case the Buyer want to say not accepted the domain, it want be happened. You send the domain to DAN or Escrow.com staff, and they push the domain to the buyer. After that they release the money to you. No chargeback will suck you. You only have to pay Escrow fee or DAN fee, but better than loosing your valuable domain, or the buyer loosing the money. There will be more convidence for buyer to close the deal.

No buyer wants to pay with Paypal Family/friends, because if you scam them, they won't be able to chargeback the money. But if you are paid by Service in Paypal, the buyer can chargeback you after accepting the domain.

I had once sold a domain through Efty landing page, and had linked to Escrow.com. The transaction was very smooth. I had WA with buyer, explain the process. Then he told me wanted to pay immediatelly. Not so long, Escrow inform me to push the domain, after that they release the payment through Wells Fargo wired. Not until 2 days the payment had been in my bank, minus Escrow fee.

 

[AEProgram]

It is a myth that a buyer cannot chargeback F&F payments. Amounts you are not ready to lose, you should use escrow or crypto (if you don't know what you are doing, avoid crypto, it's only a matter of time before you will fall for a fake escrow or other scam). If the buyer is someone you know well or has a great feedback history on here (and you know it's them 100%) you can use paypal etc.

 

[sixtoronto]

yea fnf can be chargebacked primarily through credit cards