Paypal expanding Buyer Protection to cover intangible purchases

[wordpressdesign]

Starting July 1st Paypal will expand its buyer protection to cover intangible purchases, such as digital goods (like I didn’t get enough chargebacks before!). Up to 180 days to file a dispute too!

Now my buyers (I only sell digital downloadable items) will simply say that they did not receive the file(s), and get their money back!

Paypal says: As a seller, you will now need to respond should a transaction be disputed. Please provide compelling evidence that you provided the item.

I know I am asking the moon, but is there any way with eStore to provide proof that an item has been actually downloaded by a specific buyer? (I keep all my files with Amazon S3).

Thanks!

[wzp]

As a former IT auditor, I’ll tell you the following:

1. Each download link is unique.
2. If you email a link to the email address associated with the PayPal account; the onus is on PayPal for making sure the email address belongs to the buyer.
3. Because you emailed a unique link to a particular email address, verified by PayPal, once the email leaves your server; you’ve fulfilled your due diligence obligations.
4. Your argument will be that, because each link is unique and you have a record of who got what link; it’s not your problem if the buyer shared their link.

• For the buyer to claim otherwise, is like buying an ice cream cone from McDonald’s and then claiming you never received it, because the dog ate it, before you did!

5. You will have to keep the debug logs turned on, in order to capture the exact timestamps of when a unique link is generated, and then emailed to a buyer.
6. You must be able to “reasonably prove” there is nothing wrong with your SMTP server.

[wordpressdesign]

Thanks, I will copy/paste your answer and keep it handy in case it happens!!

However, having been dealing with Paypal for so many years, I know very well that if they say ‘provide *compelling evidence* that you provided the item’, none of your arguments (although they make sense to ME, and I will try) will suffice.

In particular:

>because each link is unique:

they won’t give a cent about that, if the buyer says he did not get the file.

>you have a record of who got what:

they want PROOF otherwise it’s my word against the customer.

>it’s not your problem if the buyer shared their link:

sharing is not the problem, the problem is that the customer makes a purchase, gets the file, and then – up to 6 months later (!) – he can say that he did not get the download link (because apparently according to Paypal morons it’s ok to realize that the link didn’t arrive six months after the payment lol).

I will now turn debug on, thanks for that tip also!

[wzp]

The problem is; the Internet has never agreed on a standard for mandatory email delivery receipts; otherwise eStore would be using them. If we were talking physical products, the signed delivery receipt would suffice.

If you’re really that paranoid about having undeniable proof of delivery, send them a physical letter, with return receipt, containing the printed download link.

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