The Wholesale Forums

[alexis24]

I am about to make a deal for some mobile phones is an order for about 100 to 200 phones. This order would be pre-paid by my customers what would be the best way to pay and how a buyer is it secure to pay with paypal or credit card ?

[tapeandlabel]

As far as I know, Paypal can secure both buyer and seller.
I do not know credit card because I never use it till now.
FYI
Peter

[alexis24]

Thanks for your reply. How paypal can secure me. If the items are not was supposed to be how
paypal will secure me ?

[Anthony]

If you are using your customers money that is extremely dangerous territory. What if the deal goes wrong? Have you thought about the consequences of potentially having to find the money to re-pay your customers?

PayPal will not secure you for that sort of quantity of order.

[greedyboy]

I second that. If you are using someone else's money you better make sure the supplier is 100% legitimate. FOr the sake of making a couple of grand can you really afford to pay back tens of thousands if the supplier runs away with all the money?

Originally Posted by alexis24

I am about to make a deal for some mobile phones is an order for about 100 to 200 phones. This order would be pre-paid by my customers what would be the best way to pay and how a buyer is it secure to pay with paypal or credit card ?

If you need advice on tha above I would suspect that the deal is beyond your scope.

[tapeandlabel]

Paypal is just like a kind of Letter of Credit. It can not avoid bad products or bad service.
The process of paypal is: the buy send the money to paypal and paypal company keep it first; the seller send the products to the buyer; the buyer confirm receipt of goods; the paypal company release the money; the seller get the money.
But i did not use paypal ever. I use alipay which is very similar to paypal

[pablow123]

If you use PayPal pay using a credit card then you always have the option of charging the payment back if all goes wrong.

But again if your using your buyers funds be very careful as Dean and Anthony said you have to make sure the supplier is legit and even if you have used them 2 or 3 times that doesn't say their legit because i know of people who have bought of a suppliers 3 or 4 times using a credit card then they felt safe enough to T/T them on the 5th order and guess what they vanished.

So there is a big warning to all members.

[nratlos]

if you go prepay, than you run the risk that the cell phones are **** and that you lost your money.
With a letter of credit you can ask the seller that he present some test certificate from a neutral source before the bank will pay him. If you have questions in regards to letters of credit, I found that letterofcreditforum.com has some smart people who are willing to help.

anyway, go to your banker, I believe you are better off with an LC, even if it costs you a little bit, you have a great insurance against goods lost while being shipped, goods not being insured, quality of phones etc. ...

[Jabong82]

Holy crap, no offense but I have never seen such garbage information given in one place!!!
No offense, but OP you are clearly a newbie and shouldn't be handling such large amounts of money if you don't even know that Paypal IS NOT secure. You are about to lose your a$$ here.

For anything really over sample orders or ebay, Paypal is trash. Paypal IS THE #2 scam payment of choice (of course behind western union) because so many people ignorantly believe its safe. NOT TRUE!!! Let me explain.

Lets say you are dealing with a dishonest seller here. You Paypal him the money. All he has to do is withdraw his money to his bank account and shut down his Paypal account. By the time you realize you have been scammed he is long gone!

So when you finally realize you are scammed, what will paypal do? Not a damn thing! The process will go like this.

1. You file a dispute with paypal saying you are scammed.
2. After a long and tedious process, paypal will say that you have won your claim.
3. Paypal will say that despite you have won your claim, there is no money they can retrieve from the seller's account (as it has been withdrawn), so Paypal can't do anything for you. The only thing they can do is freeze any NEW MONEY coming into the account, but of course no new money is coming in because the scammer has shut this one down and will just open up a new one.


Furthermore, for a transaction of 100-200 phones, paypal will EAT ALL YOUR PROFIT.

Using my logic, if your supplier can profit from eating these paypal fees, either you are getting hugely overcharged or you are about to get scammed.

With regards to letter of credit, for this level of transaction its not even worth the hassle. It is a rather tedious process.

I am guessing the $ value is somewhere between $10k-100k for this transaction. In this range deals are usually done by wire transfer, escrow, or local pick up. To even consider Paypal is just stupid (and impractical because of the fees).

Now with regards to using a Credit Card to fund a Paypal account, that does not necessarily protect you (it may or may not, depending on your CC company). Remember your Credit Card company has not paid the seller that scammed you, IT HAS PAID PAYPAL (3rd party involved). Your CC company may claim that your charge is a LEGIT TRANSACTION BECAUSE IT WAS MADE TO PAYPAL, and PAYPAL DID NOT SCREW YOU, so CHARGEBACK NOT VALID.

Tapeandlabel: You have no understanding of what Paypal is. The process you described in your post is payment via an Escrow service. With Paypal, the buyer sends the money first, the seller can then if he is dishonest just take the money and run. Paypal does not keep the money until confirmation that buyer has received the product. That is an escrow service like escrow.com.


To the original poster, do not send that money. DO NOT SEND THAT MONEY!!! You are clearly inexperienced and about to get screwed. Clearly you do not know the seller because you are asking if "Paypal is safe", which means you have never used the seller. If you used your seller before, a T/T would be no problem. But obviously this is a first transaction and you are playing with fire.

My suggestion to you would to use escrow or ask for a pick up. Letter of credit will take too long to make, and escrow is basically the same thing. If you have any more questions let me know, it sounds like you are about to get screwed.

[jayjrc]

Originally Posted by Jabong82

Holy crap, no offense but I have never seen such garbage information given in one place!!!
No offense, but OP you are clearly a newbie and shouldn't be handling such large amounts of money if you don't even know that Paypal IS NOT secure. You are about to lose your a$$ here.

For anything really over sample orders or ebay, Paypal is trash. Paypal IS THE #2 scam payment of choice (of course behind western union) because so many people ignorantly believe its safe. NOT TRUE!!! Let me explain.

Lets say you are dealing with a dishonest seller here. You Paypal him the money. All he has to do is withdraw his money to his bank account and shut down his Paypal account. By the time you realize you have been scammed he is long gone!

So when you finally realize you are scammed, what will paypal do? Not a damn thing! The process will go like this.

1. You file a dispute with paypal saying you are scammed.
2. After a long and tedious process, paypal will say that you have won your claim.
3. Paypal will say that despite you have won your claim, there is no money they can retrieve from the seller's account (as it has been withdrawn), so Paypal can't do anything for you. The only thing they can do is freeze any NEW MONEY coming into the account, but of course no new money is coming in because the scammer has shut this one down and will just open up a new one.


Furthermore, for a transaction of 100-200 phones, paypal will EAT ALL YOUR PROFIT.

Using my logic, if your supplier can profit from eating these paypal fees, either you are getting hugely overcharged or you are about to get scammed.

With regards to letter of credit, for this level of transaction its not even worth the hassle. It is a rather tedious process.

I am guessing the $ value is somewhere between $10k-100k for this transaction. In this range deals are usually done by wire transfer, escrow, or local pick up. To even consider Paypal is just stupid (and impractical because of the fees).

Now with regards to using a Credit Card to fund a Paypal account, that does not necessarily protect you (it may or may not, depending on your CC company). Remember your Credit Card company has not paid the seller that scammed you, IT HAS PAID PAYPAL (3rd party involved). Your CC company may claim that your charge is a LEGIT TRANSACTION BECAUSE IT WAS MADE TO PAYPAL, and PAYPAL DID NOT SCREW YOU, so CHARGEBACK NOT VALID.

Tapeandlabel: You have no understanding of what Paypal is. The process you described in your post is payment via an Escrow service. With Paypal, the buyer sends the money first, the seller can then if he is dishonest just take the money and run. Paypal does not keep the money until confirmation that buyer has received the product. That is an escrow service like escrow.com.


To the original poster, do not send that money. DO NOT SEND THAT MONEY!!! You are clearly inexperienced and about to get screwed. Clearly you do not know the seller because you are asking if "Paypal is safe", which means you have never used the seller. If you used your seller before, a T/T would be no problem. But obviously this is a first transaction and you are playing with fire.

My suggestion to you would to use escrow or ask for a pick up. Letter of credit will take too long to make, and escrow is basically the same thing. If you have any more questions let me know, it sounds like you are about to get screwed.

i tend to agree with this guy, you will only be refunded on paypal if it is an ebay transaction, otherwise paypal will not help you with this at all, i think he has given you some good advice there take it and use it wisely is what i say