Remove resources if the OP has persistent PayPal issues

[ashleyyyy]

The title is kind of self explanatory but I found myself in a loophole of reading older scam reports, I kind of stopped myself from reading on when I found an infrequent topic kept appearing in multiple (few) reports.

The suggestion being; if an author (OP) has issues with their PayPal which hinders the ability for members to purchase and receive licenses for the resource, their post should be flagged and if they haven't been active in a certain period of time, their resource should be removed to prevent others from being "scammed". The scam reports I've seen have been dealt with in good compliance with the resource author but it shouldn't take upwards of 1 month for a refund/license.

 

[Harry]

We do already have principles in place to handle a situation like this in a relatively similar fashion. Whilst I don't believe we've ever needed to remove a resource for this reason before (or at least not in my time as a staff member), we do and have had to remove resources due to the author failing to provide support, failing to resolve bugs, and secondary licensing systems going offline. However, we'd only do such when the author is verifiably inactive by us opening up a conversation with them and requesting their cooperation.

The issue is that payment problems aren't always the author's fault - it may also be PayPal randomly putting the payment on hold, or the purchaser not having a verified account. I don't believe we could ever make an automated system handling this as a result.

The more important thing to me is how the author handles/responds to payment issues - and it's hard to justify removing resources if the author is active and responding to staff members.

 

[ashleyyyy]

I still think the most redundant waste of time comes from the fact that people have to wait 1 month+ on most scam reports for it to be resolved from start to finish. There's a few, not a lot, of scam reports involving users who have not received a licence for the product they've purchased and there should be a more time efficient way of handling this rather than edging the "scammed" user into leaving the site due to the lengthy wait times for a resolution, which need I repeat, could be resolved if the OP had a working PayPal.

If the issue is with deleting the resource, possibly add a banner that notifies users that the OP has had PayPal issues and if they are missing their licence, they will be directed to a ticket. Something similar to the banner that is on feedback if the OP was banned. I just think the response time on this site is not as efficient as it could/should be and something like a PayPal issue just comes off as you're getting scammed which obviously isn't the outlook anyone wants to have.

Edit: I also want to point out that although it's nice to request cooperation, there are multiple scam reports that have responses such as "You have 48 hours to respond" and the thread is still open for 3+ weeks. So the main issue is that I as a consumer (hypothetically), who didn't receive what I paid for, think that I will not receive the product and when I request help for it, it's a long drawn out process. Consider adding the banner because if I need a product badly, I'll likely take my chances given that I've read a preface to the product and it's availability but if I'm not in a rush for the product, I'd probably reconsider purchasing from someone with PayPal issues and save the stress of a scam report.

 

[JadeStudios]

If the only payment option is paypal, and almost always paypal places restrictions on sellers or suspends their account until it is verified, it means that many resources must be eliminated.

If only there were other types of payments like cryptocurrencies or stripe (I don't like stripe but it is widely used) I would support this

Today my PayPal can work and tomorrow I wake up and my account is suspended, also the creator must take responsibility and add the licenses manually if he has a problem with PayPal or give the confirmation, it would only take a minute of his time.

If they eliminate resources and paypal is the only payment method, I think the site will continue to die.

I see favorably a banner that notifies that the creator has problems with paypal and that he should first contact the creator to receive a response if he will get his product, the customer should also have responsibility when making purchases.

 

[Andrew]

If only there were other types of payments like cryptocurrencies or stripe (I don't like stripe but it is widely used) I would support this

It's something we are heavily looking into/working on for our migration into XF2 as we are aware only having one payment gateway is not something that can be used by everyone, while also recognising the issues a lot of people face with PayPal.

However I see where the thread is going and I do see how it could be beneficial to enforce something to ensure users are receiving what they have paid for in a timely manner. I am aware of multiple resources that face this issue and equally see how many users wait very patiently for an extended period of time to receive a product. Most of the time when you purchase a product you're looking to use it, if you then have to wait weeks due to the inactivity of a resource author I can fully understand the frustration of the users involved.

You are right that in 70% of the cases resource authors are quick to respond, provide a license and everyone moves on, however if a resource author is no longer actively using the site, the issue then lays with their response times to ensure that the buyer receives their product.

So from both perspectives, the buyers and the sellers, a system that would warn, not remove, may be the better situation. Such as a flagged system that simply provides a banner to state that the resource is known for issues relating to PayPal, then if the user chooses to purchase the product anyway they were warned and the process continues the same as it does now. You are right this may discourage some users from purchasing products however, verifying your PayPal account through a bank card (debit or credit) or through a bank account then solves this issue, it sometimes also occurs simply because the resource author has to manually approve currency conversion which has a setting to be automatically approved while this would not stop users from selling resources it would encourage them to work out their issues with PayPal and ensure that they have either verified their account or are accepting conversion automatically allowing users to automatically receive their license as intended.

 

[MarkElf]

Is this not what the report button, scam reports, reputation, and reviews are for? I want to add that for whatever reason, MC-Market didn't like payments going through my PayPal (and this is still an issue currently for my Spigot account as well) and it eventually fixed itself. Adding a flag like that could influence people's opinions negatively on a resource for something out of their control, especially the people who make MC-Market accounts just to purchase a resource. A negative review on the resource or reputation warning people that 'hey X is inactive and I never got Y support when I bought it' has the same effect.