The Elton hour edited : PayPal Q&A highlights

15/02/2008 at 18:56

Earlier today, PayPal Pink Elton answered some members’ questions on the P&P Board. It’s a pretty long thread, so here are the highlights.

Why do PayPal not make it possible to block payments from unconfirmed addresses?

we’re resolving to eliminate confirmed addresses completely and extend seller protection to any address in 190 countries.

Stay tuned for announcements on this in the coming weeks. UK PowerSellers will be the first to benefit from this expanded seller protection, but *my personal opinion* is that this will eventually be available to everyone this year.

That’s good news. But what about echeques? Sellers hate them and buyers don’t understand them. What are you going to do about them?

e-Cheques are absolutely the bane of our existence at PayPal. I guarantee you, we hate them far more than you do.

e-cheques take a long time to clear because of the way the banks verify the payment behind the scenes. Unfortunately it’s something we can’t make dramatic improvements on, but we’re looking into some solutions that may bring it down by a couple of days. Even still, e-cheques are broadly up to the bank of orign and the bank of destination and how those systems communicate with one another.

We’ve never done a good job at making buyers know they’re paying by e-cheque.
… We’re VERY aware of this and it’s one of our top priorities to fix. It’s just ended up becoming a monster problem to solve. I wish I had a more positive response. I apologise on behalf of PayPal and totally acknowledge the lousy experience.

And why don’t you help stop echeques by telling buyers their cards are about to expire?

Our customers should always receive reminder and alert emails from PayPal when their credit cards are about to expire.

I’ve had these, so I believe this part. I think it might be nice if buyers were encouraged a bit more forcefully to update cards though, and told why it’s necessary; the number of echeques I’ve had over the last month or so has gone through the roof. But why do PayPal not tell sellers when echeques fail?

We definitely contact a seller to let them know if their pending e-cheque payment has not cleared

Sorry, you don’t. Just last week I had one fail and the first I knew about it was when the buyer paid me again. *That* more than anything is the reason I hate echeques. Fingers crossed for their demise.

Thanks so much for your questions. I aim to do this as often as possible.

Thank *you*, Elton. Hope to see you again soon: it’s good to talk.