[LGFarm]

Ohhh, I am so done with Paypal. I don't care if it means everything needs to be done by Money Order and check, I don't care. I just wasted another 2 hrs of my life on the phone with Paypal, because they don't know how their systems work! This is the 3rd time and these are big mistakes that shouldn't have happened. Okay, vent is done.

What other electronic payment options are there to Paypal. I like the idea of Paypal, but they have some severe issues with anything but sending money through their original system. If I need to pull money back or use them through a credit card or anything else, it seems that they can't get it right and then I need to spend hours calling at all different hours to get someone that speaks English and understands how their system works.

 

[AmyBoogie]

what is this for? You can get a regular credit card gateway. There is also amazon payments.

If you are taking cards in person, "square" is great.

 

[LGFarm]

How are credit card gateways being processed, same with amazon payments? If I do a payment to an individual through my credit card, it is processed through Paypal's Money Messenger service, this has been my latest unveiling of their horribly kept system.

 

[AmyBoogie]

Are you talking about sending or accepting payments?

Accepting:
We do use paypal (I've actually used them since they emerged on the scene) and I agree there is a lot lacking. They were pretty fantastic in the beginning because they put out a service that no one else had. They haven't increased that service much though. My husband is working with an account manager now to shore up some holes with them. Their entry level service is really not fun. They keep rolling out products that "bigger and better" but that are not supported making them worse than just using paypal entry level service. If you're not able to use their higher level services with an account manager, my recommendation is to just stick with their basic services. Most of their special products are not special at all.

Amazon Payments
http://services.amazon.com/amazon-p...GbrAPSOeTBC2&gclid=CJjT1cyc1bgCFRJnOgod4SIA-A
You can see if it will do what you need it to do.

We have had several different payment gateways over time. We use ones that integrate with our website and shopping cart. There are a billion different ways to set up an independent payment gateway. You could do a search online and find a ton of different ones with a varying range of fees. Your bank may even be able to set up something for you. But again, unless you're running through a lot of payments, all the fees and headache may not be worth it.

If you're talking about sending payments then the onus is on the seller to set up something for you to use.

 

[LGFarm]

No, I'm talking about Paypal and what seems to be all of it's services, not a payment gateway for a shopping cart on a website or a card swipe for a smartphone. We aren't quite to that size yet, just dealing with payments to things like eBay or a private individual for whatever that seems to eventually wind up going through Paypal, even if that isn't where the transaction started. Yes, paypal is severly lacking in support and development. Paypal can handle moving money from one person's account to another, but past that? They can not tell me why I see certain pages at one time of day and different pages at other times of the day. I have had money taken from an account, that while the account information was linked to that Paypal account, the payment had been set up to be drafted from different account. That caused bounced checks and overdraft fees that they would not take responsibility for, first time, it might have been me, second time in 2 weeks, I don't think so. So, now our Paypal account has no banking information associated with it, royal pain in the you know where, but what needs to be done to protect myself from overdraft fees and the like. This time, my credit card has an option to pay an individual using my credit card. I was paying for a goat that I was concerned that the papers weren't going to be sent, so not liking Paypal's way of handling things and wanting to be protected by something, I used that option on my CC. Wound up that I was right, no show on the papers, so I reverse the charges, that part went fine. But, then the seller surprisingly found the papers and the papers were in my hands with 4 days, so I called up my CC company and said to close the reversal and charge my account, everything was good. CC company did what they were suppose to, Paypal took the money from the seller's account anyway. Kinda justice for the seller, but cripes, I spent 2 hours on the phone between the CC company and Paypal, CC company is telling me that they have done everything that they can do and to have Paypal call them to correct. Paypal can't even find the transaction, after 4 other paypal employees that had absolutely no idea what I was talking about, it took the gal 20 minutes to figure out what a Money Messenger transaction was and where to find it and what to do with it. I am done with all forms of Paypal, they were great in the beginning, but yes, they keep adding things but can't clean up the issues that they already have. Is there any other options out there for basic individual to individual transactions?

 

[AmyBoogie]

In what happened to you because you didn't go to paypal for all the help is why it ended up that way. Once paypal starts something in motion like a reversal it doesn't stop. It's a little messy for sure. I try to only do simple things with them.

ok. in your case for a small individual transaction I would get a square account.
https://squareup.com/?gclid=CO_0muzK1bgCFcmf4AodfDAAWw
It has a little gateway that you can use an app on your phone but you can punch in CC numbers and it's just easy. The fees are easy and low too. Its far more straight forward than Paypal.

 

[LGFarm]

Will that allow me to access my account information from a PC? Will it allow me to pay a person based on their email address or is it all based on a CC swipe? Thank you for the info.

 

[AmyBoogie]

Its all based on CC type in or swipe. You can access from a phone tablet or PC. You cannot send payments by email.

If you want to send to an email address you need Paypal or Amazon Payments. Kickstarter uses Amazon payments but not too many people do. They require an account with them to access. Honestly, paypal has cornered the market on this type of payment. They've got a lot of flaws but they are the only option for a lot of people.

You may want to read the rules about their payment stuff and how it works. They aren't super helpful but they are manageable if you work within their guidelines. Even if their guidelines are flawed and don't do exactly what we want them to do, we need to work within them if we want their processing to work.

In your case that outlined above, you needed to cancel the paypal payment and not stop payment through your CC company. If you had done it that way, there would have been less issue. You wouldn't have been able to reinstate a payment but even the CC processors don't like to monkey with payments too much. They all like it to be cut and dry. On or off. It's all about trying to stop fraud.

Not that you were frauding anyone, just that everyone has buckled down the processing these days because there is a lot of fraud. I get my business card stolen about 1-2 times per year and we deal with about 400+ payments per month and several times per month we're dealing with people who have had stolen cards.

My best advice to you (if you want it) is to read through all the rules at both paypal and Amazon payments to see which one might fit you best. I think square is the most buckled down and easiest to deal with but you can't send email payments. Also, maybe sign up for ALL of them (free to have an account) and poke around to see what works for you.

One of the interesting things about square is that I have it on my phone as a business and a consumer. There are stores that I can go into (Starbucks is one and we are another), open my app, and authorize to pay with my phone. I don't have to pull out a card, everything is right there. So I'm saying that you might be able to have several different payment options that you have and use the one that is most available to based on the situation you're in.

 

[LGFarm]

Don't take me wrong, we like the idea of Square for now for our business, it's small enough that we can afford it, but big enough to handle the things that we are dealing with now for on farm purchases, "I don't have the $3. 26", "Not a problem, you can swipe your card". I have seen this app in action and we will be signing up for that, didn't realize the scanner was free.

But, I have to disagree, per both my CC and Paypal, my reversal and then the reversal of my reversal should have been seamless, my CC should have been able to handle it and they did, Paypal didn't do anything with third transaction. They had it. Once she got to the right system, she knew exactly what I was talking about. She even said that no, I should not have needed to call them at all, but why they didn't do anything with that transaction is in typical Paypal style.

I was not provided any information that Paypal was handling the seller side of that transaction, never got any emails or had any information that service was powered by Paypal. I kind of figured that it was, but my CC wanted to keep that hidden. It wasn't until I raised all sorts of noise that the CC said that I needed to call Paypal (excuse me? With what? I had no transaction id that Paypal could use and was told that Paypal needed to contact the CC company Merchant Services department, if there was an issue, (this was poor on my CC company's side, but my CC has caught more fraud on my card quicker then any other card I have and they have been good for the 18 yrs that I have been with them through everything I have done with them.))

Having programmed computers for 17 yrs in a corporate environment, the way that Paypal works would never fly there. I can tell by what I see on the screen that their servers aren't even in-sync with one another, that is basic networking 101. I understand that having 24/7 availability for these system is expensive, but dangit Paypal with their transaction fees are expensive also, they should have the money for basic mainentance. These transactions are simple and can and should be happening in real-time. There was a month between the first set of transactions and 2 weeks between the second. My bank can cash a check from 9 states away in less then 5 days anymore, why can't Paypal catch up.

Sorry, really dislike Paypal and have been trying to find a way to not have to use them at all going forward, will look into Amazon's option.