Sellers:

Ok first thing I am going to tell you is its basically impossible to win a Paypal dispute against a buyer if

1. You don’t have a qualified Verified Business or Premier Account
2. You ship to an unconfirmed address
3. You ship with out tracking
4. You ship without signature receipt on items $250 or greater

You don’t follow these 4 steps and you have no chance what so ever consider your item and money history! Maybe you get away with it for 1 or even 100 sales but it only takes 1 chargeback from a buyer of a $200 item to teach you a valuable lesson. I had almost 800 sales before a buyer using a stolen credit card ripped me off. It was only $30 but sometimes I am selling comics for a few grand! Just imagine getting ripped off for $1000. THAT’S GOTTA SUCK!!!

#1 Rule of Paypal for me is drain all the money I don’t need in there. If you leave your money sitting around and Paypal flags your account for some reason your entire account can be frozen. People have lost a lot of money this way. It has wreaked peoples businesses and lives. Make sure you take your money out on a regular basis!

Ok so go to Paypal right now and setup your account to a business or premier account. Its simple to do and I believe is mandatory to accept money from Ebay with a Paypal account.

Next go to the My Accounts - Profile – Selling Preferences - Payment Receiving Preferences. Select the option Block payments from U.S. users who DO NOT provide a Confirmed Address. This deals with all the U.S. buyers who don’t have a confirmed address. In fact it will even walk them through confirming their address. Which any honest buyer will do. From this point you can also block all international payments too. This is because both Canadian and English buyers can confirm their accounts. I do let other international buyers know that I don’t accept Paypal from unconfirmed addresses in my auctions. If they are honest buyers its not a problem for them to get a money order, cashiers check or do a wire transfer. If they do a wire transfer make sure you find out from your bank how much it will cost and include that in the total amount due.

All the major shippers offer tracking and signature confirmation. Also I would recommend insurance. I have mandatory insurance for anything over $50. That’s simply because that’s about the point when it is to much for me to lose.

So you followed all those steps and now a buyer files a dispute against you. You now have to respond to Paypal with in a period of time. The seller has 10 days to respond to the buyers dispute. If you DO NOT respond you lose automatically.

You have 3 options agree, resolve and disagree. Unless you are at fault choose disagree. If you are at fault you shouldn’t be trying to win a dispute against the buyer because I can guarantee you have no chance of winning against any buyer who know how to win a dispute. Paypal always sides with the buyer as long as the buyer gives them information proving their claim.

You have the option to give the buyer a partial refund at this point. Do not do this. There are a lot of buyers who are con-artists. They file disputes just to get a partial refund on items. Basically they have no problem with the item they just want to save more money and find it easy since many sellers will just cave into a partial refund just to get Paypal to release the hold they place on their money

Now you need to provide Paypal with details of your transaction including tracking, signature confirmation and anything else. Anything info you can provide to disagree with the buyers claim is helpful right now. Photos of an item that is undamaged, certificates of authentication anything that you think will be in your favor. If you can’t provide the details you lose.

At this point a Paypal Dispute Resolution Specialist is assigned to your case. The specialist will request information in the from the buyer. Usually this involves a expert in the field of whatever item the dispute is about. If the buyer can’t provide the information with in 10 days (well I think its 10 days but I am not in a dispute at the moment so I can’t say 100%) then you will win the dispute.

As long as the buyer provides information backing up their claim chances are you will lose. So if you sold them a fake pair of jeans or a comic book that is in Very Fine condition that you said was in Mint then you are screwed you have no chance to win unless the buyer gives up. Which if the buyer is anything like me and pinches all his pennies you are totally screwed!

If the buyer wins they must now ship the item back to you in the condition received. At this point you should have some photos of your item ready just incase they try to pull a fast one. Like swapping your comic that was in great condition for one that is all tore up or a fake pair of jeans for your real ones. If this happens immediately contact Paypal. Take photos of the new item and get ready for a huge drama.

Now I know maybe this didn’t help you much as a seller because you are now thinking its impossible to win. Well no its not. The way a seller wins disputes is not by trying to fight the buyer after the fact. Sellers win through prevention. If you follow all the steps listed above and are selling quality items you don’t have anything to worry about in the first place. Except those occasional crazy buyers who want to try and tell you the item I received is a different color then you described. Ask them what color it is and they might say something like no color or metal.

That concludes this lesson. Class dismissed.