PAYPAL seller protection is a corn maze. The business rules around the protection program have more holes than swiss cheese. I have documented them and am building a web site,
www.safe-pal.com that will allow sellers to input the details of the transaction and find out exactly what their coverage level is, how to maintain complaince with the seller protection program, look for obvious signs of fraud that Paypal can't even discover on their own.
As a large volume seller, I have had so many transactions go bad, where I lost merchandise and money, because of the flaws in the Paypal fraud detection software and the holes in the seller protection program.
It got so bad one Decembe, I was calling Payapl to tell them This transaction was fraudulent, and that one, and the other one, and one by one they began reversing transactions.
But what do you expect from a company who last year purchased their fraud detection software from a chinese company!? This has got to be the most stupid thing any one company has ever done. Why not give the wolves badges to guard the hen house?
I found a security flaw (many actually) that allows fraud to take place through paypal undetected. As a software quality assurance analyst and developer, it took me about a month to nail down the procedure to defraud a seller using these gaps in security.
Thus safe-pal.com was born but is still under development. It will be a free service available to sellers who will want an independent third party fraud detection system that surpasses the crappy and irresponsible way that Paypal handles fraud. As well as automate the business rules surrounding the PP seller protection plan.
I saved myself ... thousands of dollars in lost money and merchandise once I was able to identify the security gaps in the PP software. Its sad when you have to call them and tell them that they missed a fraudulent transaction and then 5 minutes later watch as transaction after another reverses before your eyes.
I feel like I'm doing a better job than they are at their own business.
Now Paypal is no longer going to be the preferred method of payment on Ebay. Ebay is opening the door to three other forms of payment processing services.
But I've got Paypal by the balls. Once I'm up and running, the true statistics about how they have failed to detect fraud (IP and geographic opposition is NOT fraud detection) should become known.
Keep your fingers crossed. that box of dog shite I sent to Ebay is about to hit the fan.
Mike