I’ve played with all of PayPal’s new toys such as PayPal Check In and PayPal Here and although PayPal Check In was great for buying beer I’ve never really had call to use PayPal Here for real. That is until last weekend.
I went along with a friend who was doing a car boot sale, more to keep them company than anything else but I took a few bits and pieces along to sell as well. However at the end of the day there was a fellow hanging around the stall who’d already purchased earlier in the day and obviously wanted to buy something else but had spent all his cash.
It turned out he was waiting for his wife in the hope that she might have some money left. I asked him if he’d like to just make a card payment and he was amazed we could take cards at a car book sale, but as soon as I said I could take his card with PayPal he jumped at the chance.
I didn’t have a PayPal Here Chip and Pin reader with me, but you can still take card payments without is so long as you’ve downloaded the PayPal Here app which of course I had. All I had to do was tap in the amount (£10), his card number, expiry date CVV and his Post Code and there was a tenner in my PayPal account (Less the PayPal fee of 54p). After he gave me his mobile phone number his phone pinged to say he had a text message receipt from PayPal and the job was done.
If you’ve haven’t already, download the PayPal Here app to your smartphone (for Android or Apple) you should do so today. Although this was only a tenner it was a tenner more sold and without PayPal it probably wouldn’t have happened. If nothing else it paid for the bacon butties and cups of tea for the day!
15 Responses
I don’t think I would be happy giving my card details to a car booter -even if they told me it was completely safe…
The difference is that the seller is completely transient – you can’t go back to them and have no way of establishing their reputation as a seller as you can in the examples that you gave. For example: You give the car boot seller your payment details for a sale of, say, £10. You discretely pass the details to your nearby ‘colleague’ but don’t enter them on your smartphone. He sends the buyer a text (claiming to be from Paypal) for the £10 payment and off the buyer goes on his trip home. 30 mins later the seller enters the same details but this time for £150. Off he goes. Fait a complis.
Tamebay informed me (in one fairly recent article) that it was safe to use ‘Proof of Posting’ for posting articles up to £250 in value – and that Paypal would accept that. This is completely incorrect. A buyer on EBay said he had not received the goods (£10.99 value) – I had the ‘proof of posting’ and sent a copy to Paypal. I also re-sent the same order with a ‘free gift’ (for the inconvenience) to the buyer’s given address at an Oxford,UK University – again with ‘proof of posting’. The buyer then issued a ‘charge-back’ on his credit card – which was allowed by Paypal. Paypal then charged me an extra £14 for handling the appeal. So the story is: I sent out 2 orders for a low-value item plus a free gift and with Paypal’s ‘handling charge’ I am hugely out of pocket. I have even contacted the Oxford University to see what might have happened to my deliveries – with no reply so far. Is this fair on Buyers? Any ideas?
App downloaded
By that i assume one can take payments over the phone from ebay/amazon/website customers
I must admit that I would be very concerned about using a Credit Card at a Car Boot Sale. So far nobody has mentioned that over the years Car Boot Sales have been a very happy hunting ground for Trading Standards and the Police.
After all it has often been stated that much of the smuggled Tobacco and Alcohol is sold via Car Boot Sales.
Probably the majority of Car Booters are honest and Decent. But when you are wandering around the field looking at the stalls How do you pick the Honest ones from the Crooks?
Over the years I have attended an estimated 550 Traction Engine Rallies and similar with my Book Stall. Again probably the majority of the Stall Holders at such events are totally honest. But just occasionally there is a Crook. I have been at events where the organisers have had complaints about one or more stall holders and have thrown them off the site and banned them.
So if you are wandering around such an outdoor event TAKE CARE. After all if it is a Bricks and Mortar business you can go back a few days later with a possibility if not a probability that they will still be there. But after the Car Boot or Traction Engine Rally all you will be greeted by is a field.
So my advice would always be unless you are desperate for the item always take enough cash with you and pay cash for anything that you want.