Wedding photographers - Fraud via paypal?

shphoto32 wrote in post #11179341
I like google check out over pay pal. I just send my clients an invoice via google check out if they wanna pay by credit card. Works like a charm.

I will give it a try. Thanks!

I have had a lot of experience with Paypal reversals and I think that it would be a good idea for me to explain why I would personally not accept Paypal as a form of payment for any gigs worth more than $100.

Let me begin by telling everyone that I run a web store that sells digital downloads. Most of the money that I make comes from these downloads, and it's something I've been doing for a couple years now. Over those 2-3 years I've had to deal with several Paypal reversals, and it has always been a HUGE pain in my neck.

When you are dealing with intangible goods (ex. digital downloads) or services (ex. photographing an event) Paypal will not treat you the same as someone selling tangible goods. So lets say that someone pays you $500 upfront using Paypal for a wedding gig. You do the wedding, edit the photos, and deliver your goods to the client. At this point the client decides that they want to scam you out of the $500, so they issue a Paypal claim. Paypal makes filing claims really easy and unless you are able to provide Paypal with proof of delivery (via a mail tracking code) there's not much you can do about it. I think that the only way that you could protect yourself is to mail an item to the client with a tracking code so that you do have some form of proof that you delivered goods. I've lost probably $1,000 in sales of my own items from false reversals and it really angers me.

To sum things up, if you use Paypal try to mail an item to the client with a tracking code to protect yourself.