Paypal Resolution Fee

Is this standard practice?

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

I had a guy who bought a dwonloadable item costing £60 from my website. He did not follow the intructions and as a result he paid for it twice within 30 minutes. After he had done so he contacted me to say that he may have paid twice. I told him to let me know if this was confirmed and that I would refund one of the payments. He agreed but instead of doing so the eejit put a CC chargeback on both payments.

I have just had a communication from Paypal to say the problem has been resolved and that they have returned one payment to me but they have taken a chargeback settlement of £7.00. Is this standard practice and if so why should I have to pay for someone elses stupidity?

[jwolthuis]

It's a shame that it had to go that far.

I told him to let me know if this was confirmed and that I would refund one of the payments.

Upon his initial contact with you, did you verify his claim on PayPal's website? The whole episode should have quickly ended with a refund by you, immediately after recognizing the issue.

Regarding the chargeback settlement fee, the credit card company issued the fee (standard procedure for a chargeback), and PayPal simply passed-along the cost to you.

[piatkow]

When I compared prices of the main two UK small payment processors a chargeback fee was clearly written into Paypal's ToS. It was a lot more than GBP7 then and I promptly went for the other company despite some of their other features being more restrictive.

Customers don't realise that merchants pay a fee for chargebacks and UK consumer advice programmes tell them that the card company is the place to go for a refund. It is normally in the context of sellers failing to give valid refunds but it comes over as the standard route for all refunds.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Upon his initial contact with you, did you verify his claim on PayPal's website?

No, I was up to my eyes in it at the time and I left it for him to confirm his error. I see now that I probably should have done this but he issued the chargeback on the same day as he emailed me so it probably would not have made any difference.

Regarding the chargeback settlement fee, the credit card company issued the fee (standard procedure for a chargeback), and PayPal simply passed-along the cost to you.

I see this now and I have learned a lesson but it seems very unfair that the cost was passed to me when it was his error.

[jecasc]

I see this now and I have learned a lesson but it seems very unfair that the cost was passed to me when it was his error.

You can pass the charge on to your customer since it was his mistake that you had to pay the fee. But with £7.00 it't probably not worth wasting the time to argue with him about it.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

But with £7.00 it't probably not worth wasting the time

I agree and I won't be pursuing this but this was not about the money. It just seems unfair that in a straightforward case of customer error the vendor should have to pick up the tab.