One of the benefits online shopping brings is we don’t have to leave our homes when buying things. When buying, we mean choosing the item, paying for the item and receiving the item. For us to truly say that we shopped online, we should have been able to do all these three without leaving the comfort of our homes. I’ve only done online shopping once and I can’t say that it was successful. However, it introduced me to one way of paying online, which is through Paypal.
I was looking for a Playstation 3 game which was quite hard to find in local stores here in Manila. A friend of mine advised me to look for it on Ebay and I did find it there. The person selling the item accepted payments only through either Western Union Money Transfer or Paypal. If I chose the first one, it would be such a hassle because I would need to go out of my house and find the nearest Western Union branch. That is why I chose the latter because I only needed a credit card, a sample billing statement, an internet connection and a telephone (well in my case) to make an account and begin with the money transfer. First of all I don’t have a credit card so I had to really convince my mom that nothing bad would happen to her credit card if she let me use it. That was the hardest part of the process.
For the credit card, the information you’ll need are the billing address for the credit card, the card’s type (e.g. Master Card), credit card number and card verification number. Even if I wasn’t an experienced credit card user, I didn’t have a hard time finding these credit card details because of the instructions and illustrations provided by the website. After entering your personal and credit card information, the next thing that Paypal will ask is the Paypal Code found in the Billing Statement of your credit card. It is their way of verifying that the credit card is real and working. Paypal will charge you $1.95 so that the code would appear in the statement. In my case, I had to ask my mom to call up the Citibank hotline to get the code. Since she was a credit card holder, I cannot be the one calling up the hotline. I found out that some banks allow you to see your billing statement online if you signed up for their online service. The $1.95 charge would then be refunded after entering the code.
Now my account was all set. The next thing for me to do was to pay for the item. Paypal has this option for users to send money. Sending money in Paypal is just as easy as putting in the email address of the person receiving the money and the amount of money to be sent. I don’t know why, but I had a hard time sending the money. A transaction error kept appearing. I told the sender what had happened and what he did was he sent a money request to me. Yes, there is a Request Money option in Paypal too. That worked and so I was able to pay.
I was so excited for the item I was about to receive. The seller would ship it to my house, thus a complete online shopping experience. The next day I received a text from the seller apologizing that he cannot push through with the transaction because he found out that the item was damaged. He sent back the money to me through Paypal. It was sad but at least the seller did not run away with my money or rather my mom’s money, which I was afraid of happening. The money I received was converted to a Paypal Balance. It’s equivalent to real money and I can use it to pay for things in the future.
Although my online shopping experience wasn’t very successful, it showed me the convenience of having a Paypal account. It makes buying online easy and hassle-free. A lot of websites and people support this service and most importantly, it’s free.
Do you have your own Paypal experience? Share it with us!
By: Carl Co
Considering the fact that your contact person notified you about the flaw of the product prior to the transaction proper (exchanging of payment and commodity), I think that is one way of addressing one of the problems I have raised in Mr. Ellescas' post.
ReplyDeleteI highly appreciate the fact that the sales people are concerned with the quality their consumers are receiving. Generally, the responsibility to satisfy the buyers' demand for good quality products lies in the ability of the sales people. Not only they can maintain the sales person-consumer relationship but also to further expand their market.
I'm sorry about the PS3.
ReplyDeleteI have my own experience with ebay and paypal. To cut a long story short, I got scammed in ebay.ph using g-cash. I reported the illegal transaction to ebay and after 2-3 months i got about 3/4s of the money back. But through paypal. It was such a hassle to get the money in cash from paypal since the paypal used was international and not local. So I decided to use the money to buy premium memberships on different sites instead and purchase some things on ebay.com
ReplyDeleteI see paypal as the "credit card" of the future. Now if only Philippine ecommerce takes a cue and build up consumer confidence on ecommerce. As well as legislation protecting online buying to make it a safer place. Especially with the hassle of going out and braving the traffic and crowded malls and the blazing heat!