3rd party payment

I mentioned this briefly in another thread, but I am interested in how everybody deals with 3rd party payments. It is an issue that has been coming up alot for me, lately. You know the scenario: "my friend (boyfriend, wife, cousin, sister, uncle, whoever) is going to send payment via PayPal". Sometimes there is no mention of it, the PayPal account does not match the email of the person you are dealing with...or there is a different name on the check. For me, this slows the process because I feel that I need to find out who this person is; have some basic communication with this person to verify that they are, indeed, making this payment for the customer (does that now make this person my customer in this transaction?); etc. In the case of PayPal, I also insist that an email be sent to me from the PayPal email address verifying the sale. As previously mentioned, sometimes the customer is put off by this - it hasn't cost me a sale yet, but it has been close - BUT (to date) the person making payment has always been appreciative of my effort. Am I just being overcautious?? Do the majority of you just accept payment and complete the sale? Or is there something more I should be doing? Or an easier way?

When this has come up for me, I simply advise that buyer, that I will be sending a confirming email to the email account associated with the Paypal account. I tell them that I am simply trying to protect them and that I will not ship until I have received a response from that email account.

If everything is on the up and up, the buyer will have no problem with this and usually appreciates the fact that you are looking out for them.

In the case where something was not kosher, you'll generally never hear from them again.

Either way, problem solved.

On a side note, I appreciate the fact that you are running interference for everyone else with all the strange deals out there.

Mike, I like your method.

3rd party payment is complicated, but it really is becoming more popular for some reason.

I personally won't ship to someone who's paid by Paypal and isn't verified, or the addresses don't match up. I only offer Paypal as a convienence, but have found that scammers have a really easy time doing so with Paypal. I've had problems with people keeping the items and getting their money back as well in the past. As far as credit card payments, I will only ship when I spoken to the credit card holder first and they okay the address.

I'm with Kate on this one. Paypal is fast and convenient but not excent of the risks stated. Third party payments? I have accepted them and even done them myself. I even once paid for a snake with rats sent directly by Rodentpro. It worked perfectly as I asked Rodentpro not to deliver until I received the snake (in agreement with the seller) and when it arrived the shipment was released.

Regards.