Someday -- just for fun -- take a verified business PayPal account and within a two-week period run it from $0 to $30,000.00 for a Group Buy with no immediate product shipment on the horizon.
SLAM!
Always, always, have multiple PayPal accounts. And always, always, have a bank account and at least one utility bill with the same name and address as the ones on the PayPal account.
Also, good luck sorting it out!
- Ron | samwisekoi
OK Ron I know you're joking about the scamming.
But if I were a group buy organizer, I would be freaking scared. Anything goes wrong, the funds could be frozen. Even if nobody complained and it was just paypal intervening for some 'administrative' reasons such as you moving house or changing bank account or some payment irregularity, you could have 30,000 locked up in the account and no way to get any money out.
Except that in extremely rare occasions the fund locks are temporary to verify you aren't committing fraud or money laundering. You contact them, give them requested information, wait, wait some more, learn a new career path, wait just a little longer and then you have an answer, typically.
Of course, I only dealt with that the first time I went from $0 to $25k in a month and after that everything was hunky-dory.
^^^ This.
I am not kidding, nor scamming. A GB means the collection of funds, then a wait of sometimes months before any physical goods are shipped to GB members. That is not a scam, that is just a normal GB timeline. However, as King Klaxon and I discovered, PayPal's first step is to -- in fact -- freeze the account until much documentation is provided. No scamming, no kidding, that is the nature of the system. Expect it.
However, as mentioned above, you should NOT use your personal PayPal account for something like a group buy or it will be frozen and you won't be able to buy or sell anything using PayPal while it is sorted. So, and legitimately, I have a personal PayPal, a business PayPal, and the "Samwisekoi Group Buy Service" had its own PayPal account, bank account, debit card, etc. Also its own -- legit and Government-Assigned -- tax ID. However, it did not have a utility bill at the business address it used. So THAT is why I suggest you make sure you have at least one matching utility bill and a business PayPal account if you are going to run (e.g.) a $10K+ Group Buy,
Also, and IMHO, a GB is a
service, not a
product. This is crucially important so PayPal doesn't freeze your account until you ship goods. If you collect GB funds and they are frozen before you can send them to SP, or GMK or whomever, then there won't BE any goods to distribute. Thus the "Samwisekoi Group Buy Service" offered the service of collecting money and forwarding it to (in the Retro DSA GB) Signature Plastics.
Even if you are running a GB without profit, you should think through all of the things an on-going, for-profit business would do and have, and then make sure you can provide matching documentation for all of it. (The really hard part of all of this is trying to create this document trail after the fact, so try to do it in advance.)
That way, as King Klaxon pointed out, the amount of time you spend interacting with the validation people at PayPal will be shorter than otherwise.
Also, treat the poor people who
work for PayPal with courtesy and respect and you will spend less time in the barrel. The people who answer your e-mails and talk to you on the phone are
not the people who make the policies. They
are the people who are trying to prevent fraud.
So take your anger out in places like this one. We won't be offended (probably) and we will have experience-based advice to provide.
Good luck!
- Ron | samwisekoi
