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At one of my old jobs I remember Paypal closing a dispute in favor of the buyer, who had claimed the goods were never received, despite the fact that we supplied a copy of said buyer's signature from when he accepted the delivery...

Things like that would happen on a pretty regular basis.

I'm always curious about this. How would you know that's the right person's signature?

Usually the FedEx/UPS guy asks what your name is when you sign. It goes into their system as "Delivered at 123 Address by 'John'" as a two part 'proof' that it was delivered to the correct address and by a specific person.

My ID has my signature on it. I suppose driver licenses or whatever Americans use have that information, too.

It seems like anyone can file a paypal chargeback and win 99% of the time.

On other hand I've heard of scams in "sellers" sending an empty box.

O.K. I'm not a huge fan of PayPal. My biggest gripe is they just got big and stupid. (Holding funds for weeks until a customer gives positive feedback on ebay? I have had mixed results on customer service.)

That said, what product are you selling that you require a picture of the customer? I see this trend popping up and don't like it.

While I have had problems with PayPal practices-- PayPal employees who don't care, etc., when I have given PayPal a receipt from UPS, or Fedex that proves the package was delivered, I did not have a problem with a dispute. (I don't trust usps when I have a gut feeling a customer will file a dispute.)

So what are you selling? I would never ask a customer for a picture ID. Maybe it's just my generation(grew up in the 70's--80's, but I see this trend of mandatory photo ID popping up lately; and don't think it's the right road to go down. Map the IP--fine. Have a gut feeling the customer won't pay ask for cash(leave it up to the customer on delivery of the cash--wire transfer?). I would not ask for their ID, unless I strongly expected fraud.

If I have to give some company, besides a bank my picture; I don't shop there. Asking for anyone picture is beyond rude these days, along with any Photographer taking my picture without my consent. This whole people picture taking thing is done, because of the Internet, and image databases like Google, and have Bing have developed. I see stores putting up "Happy" employee pictures, and it is just rude, an invasion of privacy, and should be abolished? (I have a friend at Costco who is mortified the company wouldn't take down his picture of him doing his job. It was one of those customer appreciation pictures.) Oh yea, you don't need a Costco card to use the pharmacy.

I looked into buying stoptakingmypicture.whatever and the com is taken. I'm not sure I want to take on another cause; especially because most of you don't seem to care who snaps, asks, or posts your picture? I go on FB, and no one seems to care?

Yes--I understand the need for ID at DMV, Airport, and passports, etc.)

To any store, or company(Home Depot comes to mind) some of us are really tired of the proliferation of cameras, and don't go to your establishment like we used to.

(Plus--most identity thiefs I have run across(just one so far), sent me a perfect scan of her Drivers license without my asking. I didn't place the order, and never heard back. It is so easy to fake an ID these days. I would be suspicious if any customer sent their ID, even if I asked for it.)

Let me start by saying that I agree with most of your points 100%. I am an advocate for privacy, and I think it's crazy that businesses need to ask people for photo ID to make fairly simple purchases.

I sell digital goods for online games. This means I do not have shipping receipts that will make me eligible for seller protection. The reality is that more and more businesses are providing services and products which are intangible. I'd imagine more than 50% of PayPal transactions these days do not involve shipping labels, yet their entire claim system revolves around them.

What I've noticed in the past 5-8 years is that Paypal has really cut down on real fraud. When I started doing business in 2007, there were kids who couldn't have been older than 15 years old buying stolen PayPal accounts on sketchy forums, and using them to buy digital products like MMO currency. We'd get hit quite regularly with real fraud.

Today, it seems that there are much less of these stolen accounts in circulation. Paypal has clearly cleaned up their act and put a bunch of security measures in place to prevent unauthorized access to people's funds. Nonetheless, unauthorized claims and chargebacks still happen. These days it's just people who spend a bunch of money, and decide later to try and get it all back, everyone else be damned.

There's not much you can do to screen for them placing those disputes. All we can do is collect as much information as possible, from all our buyers, to make sure that no real fraud gets through our systems. I do feel that if we did not have security measures in place, the stolen Paypal accounts might show up again.

But yes, long story short, I really wish there was a better way than collecting people's ID's. Unfortunately, we are in an awkward transition where it is very difficult to prove someone is who they claim to be, without requiring invasive evidence.

What is collecting pictures of photo ID supposed to do for you? Honest question.

Far as I can tell, it only means the scammer was able to copy the photo that was sitting on my computer (likely via the same malware they used to steal my other credentials to begin with). Why was it sitting on my computer to begin with? Because companies like yours demand a copy of my photo ID. Sure I could delete it but we both know most people won't. IMO its a poorly thought out policy to collect photo ID without verifying the person in the photo is in fact the person you're talking to, ala face to face conversation via Skype or similar.

I don't buy things from sites that demand photo ID without verification, I'm not saying you should change your ways, but you're losing customers like me by enforcing that policy.

In all honesty, we request a close up of the ID, as well as a picture of the buyer holding the ID up to the camera with their face in the picture, while holding a piece of paper saying they are buying from our website. It sounds ridiculous, but I know other companies who do this as well.

Why? Is the govt forcing you to do all of that, or is there another reason for it?

I'd bet it's somehow related to losing thousands of dollars per month in fraudulent Paypal chargebacks...

I would never go so far to purchase anything. If this is the situation, just stop using PayPal for payment processing!

picture is obviously not enough. How about a short video where customer clearly pronounces the authorization and makes his/her unique "signature" dance?

Why dont you quite them and use service like stripe?

Stripe isn't better. Dispute processes with digital goods are really hard. I'm fairly sure that the evidence that you submit (to paypal or stripe) is actually evaluated by the bank that the customer filed a dispute with. I don't think this kind of thing can really be held against the payment processor. Every bank probably has it's own processes and standards and every payment processor likely feels the same frustration that we do.

It used to really frustrate me when we would get stripe disputes. Now I have a collection of materials I go out and get, and then just send it out hoping for the best. I try to look at it more like rolling the dice than a business process. It seems to be consistent (in that sending the same materials for similar disputes yields the same result) but it is not at all transparent or an exact science.

Right, although I believe at Stripe, disputes must be initiated through the buyer's bank. The disputes I am describing are unauthorized claims placed through a Paypal account. Disputes placed directly at the bank are more difficult to initiate and usually result in temporary account closure.

They're a lot more work for the buyer. Filing an unauthorized dispute on Paypal can be done by pressing a few buttons online, and then just hoping for the best. Your bank accounts remain intact, and your Paypal account is restored within 24 hours.

To hijack my own post, there needs to be way more transparency on how these cases are decided. If merchants are given a set of rules to follow, and are told what information we must gather to prove payments are authorized, then we can go ahead and collect that information. If our customers refuse to provide that information, and we are faced with a dispute, at least we will understand why we have lost.

It's actually quite easy to get customers to provide proof of identity before completing a service. However, after a service is completed, it becomes basically impossible. If we know what to collect before delivery, we can collect it. And if we are confident that we have the appropriate information to win a dispute, then we can sell more confidently and increase our customer purchase limits through Paypal, thereby increasing the amount of revenue we accept through their service. It would be a win/win situation.

I'm definitely in agreement here. It's interesting the point you make about Paypal's dispute process being more "shoot from the hip" than a run-of-the-mill bank. I wonder if that has to do with organizational structure or exemption from some type of regulation.

I'd also appreciate clearer standards, and better due diligence from the disputer's end. It's not fun to get a "won't let me cancel my account" dispute when the 'Cancel Account' button is high visible and the customer never got in touch with anyone in the organization. It's just a mystery. Are they being dumb? Is our UI awful? Accounts are cancelled successfully every day -- what went wrong here?

It's nice to try to keep in mind that we very much live in the future, and although online banking and payments can be frustrating, I'll likely walk into a bank once a year maximum for the rest of my life.

Stripe doesn't accept every credit/debit card out there and can often cause charges to be declined for ambiguous reasons. In my experience, PayPal doesn't have this issue. PayPal is also a preferred payment option by a lot of customers and visitors, believe it or not. We still have a lot of customers who refuse to use any payment option other than PayPal, which is honestly really disappointing. Removing support for PayPal would mean losing a lot of customers.