A little bit of good news for Australian sellers from PayPal today: the . Paragraph 4.2.4 now reads “The Seller Protection Policy will not apply to a transaction if you combine eBay items purchased through separate PayPal payments into a single shipment”.
The UA used to say “seperate eBay transactions”, so that combining shipping fees for multiple items at least looked like it was against PayPal’s rules. (I don’t know if any seller protection claims were ever refused on this basis? Maybe one of our Australian readers could leave us a comment.)
It’s an important reminder for all sellers though, that if you want to be covered by the Seller Protection Policy, seperate PayPal payments have to have seperate proofs of delivery: bung two orders into one box and you are not covered.
2 Responses
G’day Sue,
The wording of the user agreement previously was:
“4.2.4 Limitations on the Seller Protection Policy. The Seller Protection Policy will not apply to a transaction if any of the following apply:
a. You combine items purchased through separate eBay transactions into a single shipment,….”
The wording actually meant that you lost seller protection if you sent multiple purchases in a single parcel. It was only introduced in late March (it was also introduced into the European/UK user agreement), and I do not know of the term actually being tested.
I first thought it was badly worded in the user agreement, but an Australian PayPal employee stated:
“To clarify, Australia Post is unable to look into a package with multiple items within it. Therefore, items need to be sent individually to ensure that Australia Post’s systems track each individual item. That way PayPal can have clear evidence in the unlikely event of a claim. Otherwise, there is no evidence that all individual items were in the same package.”
.
https://forums.ebay.com.au/thread.jspa?messageID=502727563&forumID=1001#502727563
Thus if I sold 10 brochures to one buyer for a total of $300, I had to send them in 10 separate insured parcels or waive my rights under “seller protection” – this at a time when Ebay is trying to push sellers into free or lower postage charges. My business is fairly reliant on offering multiple shipping discounts, and I should not have had to fight this policy idiocy for 6 weeks.
Coincidentally you linked to my thread on the Australian PayPal board. The announcement was made 2 days later.
Kind Regards, Kevin
Ah, thanks for clarifying, Kevin. I went to look for what the UA used to say, and that was the thread I found: I didn’t know the OP was you 😆