PayPal Integration or similar - need advice

I am working on a site, and the people its for are asking about a way of
collecting money online. Doing an onsite shopping cart is not a
possibility right now, so I'm looking towards PayPal (or similar)
integration. I've read up on PayPal's site about integrating their API
and suck, but as of yet no practical experience. Has anyone out there
had experience doing this? Is it the best bet? Successes, failures,
anything would be appreciated. Thanks, all.

//LBG4

Lunchbox G4 wrote:
> Has anyone out there
> had experience doing this? Is it the best bet? Successes, failures,
> anything would be appreciated. Thanks, all.
>
> //LBG4


Well, I have not had any integration experience. However, let me pull up
my soap-box reguarding Pay"Pal", and it's seller protection.

I do freelance work, like alot of ppl I assume in this newsgroup.
Depending on the type of product your client is selling, (mine is
software) They are most likely not going to be covered by Pay"Pal"'s
seller protection plan.
I found this out the hard way. I did some work for a client, he paid me
via Pay"Pal" account transfer, and all was good. Or so I thought. It
seems that he paid me with a stolen credit card.
Ok. So what, I'm covered under the seller protection plan, Cause I have
a Verified Business Account. Right? Wrong. At the time I found this out,
I recieved a chargeback to my account of $250.00, meaning, My account
was then -$230.00 or so.
Alright, So I missed some fine print in the EULA(which by the way is
about 20 pages of actual print. I know, after this fiasco, I printed it
all and took it to my Lawyer.) Fine. But why Charge me? I mean in the
United States, isn't it innocent until proven guilty? I mean, you know
who stole the credit card. Go after him. Not the guy trying to make an
honest buck.
Well I made a phone call to Pay"Pal". after being put on hold several
times and waiting for almost 75 minutes, I finally reached a supervisor,
who did help me recoup some of the money. It turns out, that I was
charged not only for $250.00(the ammount of the transaction) But, also
$10.00 for the chargeback Fee.
So then, some time goes by, and my account holds 2 automatic monthly
payments to my webhost provider. Well, because they are going to make
this payment automatically for me, which I did agree to, and because my
Pay"Pal" account was a negative ammount, They took it upon themselves to
withdraw an ammount equal to my negative ammount, plus my monthly fee.
They did this 4 times! Because the 2 payments fall on different days,
and each was resubmitted. All of this occured Before I recieved ANY
email, telling me that my Bank account had insuficient funds. Well, No
DUH! Christmas was just here. Of course I'm broke almost! So I call
Pay"Pal" again. This time it's almost 1 1/2 hours before I get a
supervisor. This time they refuse to recompensate me for the $80.00 in
NSF Bank Fees. Alegedly I authorized them. As I mentioned before, I
printed out stuff for my lawyer.

I guess the moral of the story, is that you should always have a lawyer
handy when entering into an agreement with anyone, especially if it
requires agreeing to a 20+ page EULA. My attorney also happens to be my
father, so it makes it easier for me.(Wish I would have listened to this
moral before hand)

Enough of this. I'll get off of my soapbox now. Thanks for reading.
Hope this helps you decide.

"Ronald Chaplin" <rchaplin@t73-softdesign.com> wrote in message
news:41df82bc$1_2@newspeer2.tds.net...
> Lunchbox G4 wrote:
> > Has anyone out there
> > had experience doing this? Is it the best bet? Successes, failures,
> > anything would be appreciated. Thanks, all.
> >
> > //LBG4
>
>
> Well, I have not had any integration experience. However, let me pull up
> my soap-box reguarding Pay"Pal", and it's seller protection.
>
> I do freelance work, like alot of ppl I assume in this newsgroup.
> Depending on the type of product your client is selling, (mine is
> software) They are most likely not going to be covered by Pay"Pal"'s
> seller protection plan.
> I found this out the hard way. I did some work for a client, he paid me
> via Pay"Pal" account transfer, and all was good. Or so I thought. It
> seems that he paid me with a stolen credit card.
> Ok. So what, I'm covered under the seller protection plan, Cause I have
> a Verified Business Account. Right? Wrong. At the time I found this out,
> I recieved a chargeback to my account of $250.00, meaning, My account
> was then -$230.00 or so.
> Alright, So I missed some fine print in the EULA(which by the way is
> about 20 pages of actual print. I know, after this fiasco, I printed it
> all and took it to my Lawyer.) Fine. But why Charge me? I mean in the
> United States, isn't it innocent until proven guilty? I mean, you know
> who stole the credit card. Go after him. Not the guy trying to make an
> honest buck.
> Well I made a phone call to Pay"Pal". after being put on hold several
> times and waiting for almost 75 minutes, I finally reached a supervisor,
> who did help me recoup some of the money. It turns out, that I was
> charged not only for $250.00(the ammount of the transaction) But, also
> $10.00 for the chargeback Fee.
> So then, some time goes by, and my account holds 2 automatic monthly
> payments to my webhost provider. Well, because they are going to make
> this payment automatically for me, which I did agree to, and because my
> Pay"Pal" account was a negative ammount, They took it upon themselves to
> withdraw an ammount equal to my negative ammount, plus my monthly fee.
> They did this 4 times! Because the 2 payments fall on different days,
> and each was resubmitted. All of this occured Before I recieved ANY
> email, telling me that my Bank account had insuficient funds. Well, No
> DUH! Christmas was just here. Of course I'm broke almost! So I call
> Pay"Pal" again. This time it's almost 1 1/2 hours before I get a
> supervisor. This time they refuse to recompensate me for the $80.00 in
> NSF Bank Fees. Alegedly I authorized them. As I mentioned before, I
> printed out stuff for my lawyer.
>
> I guess the moral of the story, is that you should always have a lawyer
> handy when entering into an agreement with anyone, especially if it
> requires agreeing to a 20+ page EULA. My attorney also happens to be my
> father, so it makes it easier for me.(Wish I would have listened to this
> moral before hand)
>
> Enough of this. I'll get off of my soapbox now. Thanks for reading.
> Hope this helps you decide.
>

My moral for your story - keep it simple and work with small organisations
where people take personal responsibility.

I have done a paypal intergration with mysql. It pulls items from the
sql database and with php it creates a paypayshopping cart. I'll see if
i can dig up the code for ya.... If I don't send it to you by
tomorrow.... email me reminding me to do so :-p

thelobster@gmail.com

Lunchbox G4 <lunchboxg4@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>I am working on a site, and the people its for are asking about a way of
>collecting money online. Doing an onsite shopping cart is not a
>possibility right now, so I'm looking towards PayPal (or similar)
>integration. I've read up on PayPal's site about integrating their API
>and suck, but as of yet no practical experience. Has anyone out there
>had experience doing this? Is it the best bet? Successes, failures,
>anything would be appreciated. Thanks, all.

It's a bit verbose, but it is easy and flexible. You can have them track
the shopping cart piece by piece, or you can put the whole thing together
yourself and ship it all to PayPal in one chunk. If you have addresses,
you can even send those to prepopulate the forms for people who do not
already have PayPal accounts.

Their fees are just about the same as for a normal merchant account.
--
- Tim Roberts, timr@probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.