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Comment by techaddict009 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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