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Refunds and PayPal
Kaelaan21
Member UncommonPosts: 349
I'm kind of bummed out that TBW didn't meet it's goal. I have fond memories of Majestic and haven't played an ARG since then.
However, I am a little annoyed about not being able to get a full refund for a service that wasn't delivered. The reason why I put in $125 is that I wanted the offered service of an involved online experience. When a refund is offered for goods or services that are not delivered, retailers and publishers are not allowed to pass any of the merchant account fees back to the consumer. This is regardless of what ever EULA or policy the retailer has because of the agreement that is made between the merchant account services and the retailer or publisher.
I'm not going to chase anything down over $3.13. However, if it were more than this, I would skip contacting Human Equation and go directly through PayPal and do my own credit reversal informing them of passing retailer surcharges back to the consumer.
If $3.13 is not much for me, little more than a cost of a cup of coffee, then why does it annoy me? Because it makes me more hesitant to invest in kick starter or similar campaigns. Putting money into escrow, even if it doesn't come with any promised services (which TBW was doing), should not place the burden of merchant account surcharges or bank fees of those who would normally benefit in the investment back onto the investor.
I don't think that the publisher of TBW is doing anything questionable. It's just that it seems a little irresponsible.
Comments
The disclaimer that using PayPal would incur a 2.5% surcharge in the event of a refund - and that this was entirely on PayPal, nothing to do with HE - was stated quite clearly when picking which service to pay with.
It is unfortunate, but I doubt it has anything to do with the choices HE made - other than making PayPal available - and more with the way PayPal operates.
Either way, I understand the slight miffed stance towards it - but again, we were made aware of it when we chose payment options, and HE are - as far as I'm aware - not the ones in the wrong; otherwise the same would've held true for Crowdtilt donations, which are refunded in full.
Yup - this is nothing to do with HE, and everything to do with Paypal. And yes, it was clearly shown beneath the donation buttons.
So yeah - it's a little loss for us individually, but hell, it's only some change. However, I have managed to get a TBW Hoody out of it, so I'm not sore.
At least, not until I encountered that demon in Egypt. Now I'm sore.
---Kendall 'Mintcake' Anderson
--Somwhere between Wolverhampton and Ealdwic
-http://twitter.com/hungry_book | http://hungrybook.tumblr.com/
From the PayPal site and the displayed on the receipt when purchased:
Rate of Exchange: If this transaction involves a currency conversion, there will be an exchange rate shown above. This exchange rate includes a 2.5% spread above the wholesale exchange rate at which PayPal obtains foreign currency, and the spread is retained by PayPal. If and when the Recipient chooses to withdraw these funds from the PayPal System, and if the withdrawal involves a currency conversion, the Recipient will convert the funds at the applicable currency exchange rate at the time of the withdrawal, and the Recipient may incur a withdrawal fee.
MA residents only: PayPal holds a Foreign Transmittal Agency license in the State of Massachusetts - License Number FT3345.
So the issue itself is a currency conversion fee. For myself, a Massachusetts resident, there was a transfer from American to Canadian currency, a 2.5% surcharge is applicable to the consumer and not the retailer.
Again, not questionable - it was not clearly spelled out. No where does this disclaimer say anything about 2.5% on refund. It is referring to a currency conversion on refund. It doesn't say that there will be one - it simply states IF there is one. Since the dollar amount was given in USD, it didn't dawn on me to check to see that the publisher was located in Montreal.
I'm more annoyed at myself than HE or the situation. It makes myself, and others, less apt to invest in projects like this in the future.
EDIT: Maybe this is a good thing. Maybe it will force me to pay attention a little more.
Hi Kaelaan21!
This is the message you had when you choose your payment method:
I am sorry if 2.5% REFUND FEE wasn't clear enough but as it was said. this is not in relation with exchange rate. Exchange rate is between you, your bank and Paypal and we have zero control over that. (Either you pay with yen, euro or US dollars)
Refund fee is between you and us, and we try to warned people that PayPal are forcing us a 2.5% fee. In fact, not only we have a 2.5% fee but we have to manually refund each individual. Hence the delay for the refund...
You had also the option to go with Crowdtilt that had no refund fee. (And let us refund everyone with one process)
This is why we originally went only with Crowdtilt but many players wanted the option of Paypal even if it had drawbacks.
PayPal does not charge the seller or the buyer a 2.5% refund fee. https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=xpt/Marketing/bizui/SendRefund-outside
The 2.5% that you are referring to was on a page designed by HE, not PayPal. It was not mentioned anywhere on the PayPal page itself, because PayPal does not charge consumers for refunds. The reason why I am guessing they are doing this is that PayPal charged HE a 2.5% fee against any funds they withdrawn from PayPal into HE's bank account.
If this is to cover the cost of a transfer fee between HE and PayPal, HE does not have the option of passing this fee onto the consumer - because the 2.5% fee was against a service provided from PayPal to HE, not between HE and the consumer. PayPal even specifically outlines this to the seller when they sign up for PayPal services for sellers. If HE didn't want to absorb the 2.5% fee themselves in the event of a failure, they shouldn't have accepted PayPal as an option.
PayPal also has very specific guide lines for presale policies. https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/brc/presale-policy-and-reserves Since HE attached services to the pledge amounts, these place values on the services themselves and this is not considered a "gift". HE is not allowed to withdraw any funds from presale purchases that are made more than 20 days from delivery. I am assuming that HE did not report these transactions to PayPal as presales as they should have been. This would be the only possible approach of why HE was charged 2.5% from PayPal on collected funds. As the funds were released immediately to HE - which shouldn't have happened in the first place. If the policy was followed correctly, HE could have been able to do a 100% refund with PayPal users in the event that full funding wasn't received. It was a simple mishap that is penalizing the buyer for the HE's mistake.
I prefer to use PayPal in situations like this for three reasons. It prevents insecure storage of my credit card details from an insecure/unknown retailer (happens more often than people realize). It prevents future, unauthorized transactions without my consent. If I have an issue, I can do a charge back through PayPal and receive a 100% refund just like any credit card. PayPal isn't perfect, but for me it offers additional control when compared to a credit card.
EDIT: I am going to further assume that the funds collected by PayPal, were transferred from PayPal and then back into Crowdtilt via an administrator deposit on HE's end. This way, all of the funding collected could be displayed in one place. However, this does violate PayPal's seller agreement, and the funds should have been reported as a presale and wouldn't be allowed to be transferred. This would mean that when the combined goal was reached, PayPal would have released the funds to HE. If a refund needed to be issued, the refund would be returned at 100% and only 30 cents would have been charged back to HE.
This does pose a problem with CrowdTilt though. CrowdTilt won't release funds until the goal has been met. So, the proper thing would have been not to transfer the PayPal money until the balance of the CT and PP funds were collected to form a combined amount over the goal. BUT - This gives the impression that not as much was collected through CrowdTilt and give a false impression to the community that not many of your peers have faith in the HE. To do this correctly according to PayPal's agreement, would have meant HE would need to have maintained two separate sources of funds.
My suggestion - don't use CrowdTilt in the future unless you drop PayPal as a funding source. It poses a problem when not being provided or partnered with the funding source. Even if HE met their goal, if a few PayPal contributer's complained, all transactions that were made could have been reversed; immediately deducted from HE's bank account without warning (i.e. via multiple charge backs).
If PayPal wasn't an option, I would have still contributed. Since it was an option - I chose it. I realize that HE placed the disclaimer next to the PayPal link. However, a disclaimer does not excuse a company to avoid following their bank's own policies. In the future, I will not be contributing to any company that is under the misguided belief that they can bypass consumer protection laws or policies by placing a short phrase underneath a button.
You assume wrong. You can see on Crowdtilt that the amount raised for the campaign was 16 412$.
https://division66.crowdtilt.com/the-black-watchmen-inception--2
We had 2 source of funding and we added the total on MMORPG. Also when you register at paypal as a crowdfunding campaign, they frozed all asset so we can only withdraw money if the campaign succeed.
http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/paypal-updates-crowdfunding-policies-help-nonprofits-entrepreneurs-nj
Second line on paypal page: Refunds are available only for transactions involving the purchase of goods and services. Sadly, PayPal do NOT consider crowdfunding a goods or a services.
Aside from your 404, we did had this discussion with PayPal and crowdfunding do not qualify either as a presale, a group buying or a gift. Crowdfunding is crowdfunding and they have specific rules for it.
If you feel those rules were not respected, the best I can say is to open a ticket at paypal when you will received your refund. On our side it's not like we put your amount - 2.5%. It is automatically taken by PayPal.
PayPal was quite clear on crowdfunding and this 2.5% fees when we talk to them 2 months ago, this is why we clearly added the warning so people will be aware of this. It's not like we hide it in some long legal terms and agreements.
If in the meantime they change the policies and you have a full refund, it's great. But I cannot control what paypal will charge you. And to be honest, this thread is exactly why we didn't wanted to deal with paypal in the first place. It's a huge waste of ressources for us since all refunds need to be done manually and everyone get charged extra fees...
A) Crowdfunding and presale policies are one and the same for PayPal. PayPal doesn't care if it's a contribution or for a product that isn't ready to ship for another year. The only exception is for non-profit agencies which HE is clearly not.
If you are stating that HE did in fact register the service as a pre-sale, when you click on the refund link that is on the PayPal management console, a full refund will refund the full amount, unless you change the refund amount to a lesser value. The 2.5% currency conversion fee is only applied to consumers that do not reside within the same country as the seller. Which means if you are a resident in the same country as HE, the customer gets 100% of the money back. Since I am not in the same country, I will be receiving a 2.5% hit. But - this has nothing to do with the refund, it has to do with the fact that I am using USD as currency and HE is not and would be completely transparent to HE. Because of this, Canadian residents should be receiving a 100% refund.
All you had to say was, if you live outside of Canada, you will be charged a 2.5% currency conversion fee on refund. No big deal. That was expected and even put on the receipt from PayPal. However, if you stating that there is a 2.5% fee for a refund in addition to the currency conversion fee, then yes - I will be filing a charge back request because I will not be paying 5% for a mistake made by HE. I guess I'll wait and see. I'm hoping that that this is just a case of poor communication.
Pal, I don't know how to explain it more clearly. 2.5% refund fee, not exchange rate. not conversion rate. That's what PayPal told us when we register the crowdfunding campaign with them and this is what we clearly communicate.
If any of you loose sleep over it, feel betrayed, violated, cheated: just write me at ceo@humanequation.co and I'll personally send you the 2.5% from my account... Does that help?
Anashel,
When you call someone "Pal", which is extremely condescending, it shows people how unprofessional how you handle issues that can arise. Your attitude towards others that have had any contrary opinion to your own, tends to be on the negative side. I am not referring to this post - I am referring to the way you appear to represent HE in each of the threads you have commented on within the past 2 weeks. It has even gotten to the point where people having discussions with you have asked you to take it to private message. This is not how customer service should represent a company. You are appearing to be a shill rather than a CSR.
As for the quote you gave above, this has nothing to do with PayPal. This is a link that was posted from HE and is not on PayPal's site. If my company posted that I would charge a 50% refund fee on PayPal purchases, I would expect that PayPal would either cancel my account or forcibly refund any transactions made through my account as part of a fraud investigation. 2.5% or 50% doesn't matter - you aren't allowed to do it. Period. End of Story. If you don't think PayPal checks up on this, at one point I used a credit card of my own on my own storefront which flagged me for a fraud investigation - because the name on my credit card matched the name on my PayPal account. They wanted to make sure I wasn't funneling money through a credit card into cash. After an explanation, they quickly cleared my account I went on my merry way. So, yes, I am very clear on their policy and practices.
At this point, like I said.. it's $3. No big deal .. Even if it's 5% .. I'll probably not waste my time. In fact, I regret wasting the time that I have already spent having any form of conversation with you. What I can say, because of the your wonderful customer service skills, I know that myself and several of friends in the area that were looking forward to an ARG - will not be contributing or signing up for any future endeavors from Human Equation, Agence Media Equation Humaine Inc. or any company that has a direct relation. Now, judging by your previous responses, I am sure you will simply scoff. However, judging that we contributed slightly over 1% of the entire funds that were collected - it should be taken into consideration.
Again, I don't feel violated, more of your lovely customer skills at work here, over $3. You clearly missed the point of why I questioned this and it clearly shows me that you are not ready to receive any additional contributions for future projects. In the future you may want to appear less condescending, patronizing and arrogant to investors or contributors. There are other ways of having a disagreement and holding your stance on fees of failed campaign.
I'm primarily adding my own comment here, because it seems you're refering to my previous comment in another thread, asking that the discussion be taken to private chat, rather than filling the forums.
That comment was not aimed at Anashel, nor was it aimed at either party in that discussion.
On the topic of your concern, however, a quick search on google yields many other sellers using PayPal, who are also subject to PayPal taking 2,5% cuts out of the refunds, as opposed to the previous practice of actually including the full refund.
So, despite I am not intimately aware of the agreement either HE nor you - as I assume you are familiar with the processes of using PayPal as a seller, given your arguments - might have or have had with PayPal, my understanding is that this issue is not exchange-rate related, nor caused by any fault of Human Equation.
It is, in fact, a new procedure taken up by PayPal - from the looks of things since earlier this year.
As for the whole derogatory term thing - I apologize if I've seemed offensive, and while I can only say so much on Anashels behalf, I hope you'll forgive me - and that Anashel will forgive me - for pointing out the fact that non-native speakers of a language might sometimes use conventions that come out wrong when heard by a native-speaker - I should know, I study Japanese for a living.
That's the point where one must use a bit of "theory of mind", and judge whether or not the speaker was attempting to be derogatory. That, I can't say with complete conviction - I'm not Anashel - but my own experience is that there's never been an intentional bad word from him, and misunderstandings we've had have been quickly and politely resolved.
Hi Santiak,
I'm sorry - I didn't mean to misinterpret or make you feel in any way that you needed to be wrapped up in this. The issue I take with Anashel is more about written demeanor. There is a clear difference between your own and others postings here when compared to Anashel. I am more than aware of language barriers as I am a second generation American myself who's parents moved from the New Brunswick area. Although most people there are bilingual, there are some that I have to pay attention to so I can fully understand what they are saying.
Quite frankly, Anashel was acting quite unprofessional is more than likely because he thought I was being a jerk myself. I wasn't asking for a complete refund, I was simply making an observation. Apparently, he didn't like what he heard and that's when it turned into a pissing match. What surprised me the most is when I re-read his email address and basically claiming to be the CEO and monitors support for the ARG. Which makes me wonder. Does that mean that Anashel is claiming to be Andrea or Nathalie? Not sure, because LinkedIn is claiming that Nathalie is CEO, while gouv.qc.ca is reporting that Andrea is CEO. Either way, anyone that high up and involved in marketing agency should know that they do not leave a contributor or an investor with a negative experience. The key would be explain the situation politely and leave it at that. If I continue ramble on.. let it go. Trying to have the last word will simply push the contributor further away.
I'm done discussing the PayPal policy. Although, you may want to re-read the link you posted because it was about sellers being forced to absorb fees which is along the lines of what I was saying all along. PayPal does not allow you to pass the fees along to the buyer and the response to the post was if you don't like it, don't accept PayPal. etc etc. Luckily, I don't use PayPal much at all anymore on the business side as I now accept check via normal merchant account channels and I have never used PayPal for credit cards. But merchant accounts do the same. Why? Mostly because of tax liabilities and consumer protection laws. The merchant accounts tend to revolve around buyer protection regardless if you have established annex within territories outside of your own state or province.
Anyway, sorry to anyone reading this thread, if I sounded like a jerk myself. I really did like the concept of the ARG, or my friends and I wouldn't have plopped down as much as we did. However, I found it odd that a marketing agency specializing in gaming and innovative marketing concepts would have not met their goal. I also find it odd, as a business owner myself, that a company that is currently employing over 40 industry experts needs a crowd sourcing platform. They should already have the infrastructure to set up an online prelude to a true ARG with service based subscription model - Using those funds as a platform for the true out of box experience. I'm sure they have their reasons for this style of approach. But, this blurs the borders of crowd sourcing with pre-paying for services.
No worries.
I appreciate the fact that you too admit that some things might have been said in the heat of the moment, on either side of the discussion.
I know it's a "small thing" to point out; but I think the frustration basically stems from two things;
1. HE prophesized these issues before the funding began, which is why they opted out of using PayPal to begin with. I won't pretend I know anything about PayPal policy, but I've personally never been fond of them.
2. As you mention, PayPal does not allow the seller to pass along extra fees to the buyer, so whichever way it's viewed, Human Equation can not be held responsible for the surcharged fee, can they? (I'm not asking rhetorically, by the way - another example of a phrase that might have been misconstrued
). Regardless Human Equation was aware of this fee, on top of the extra work it would require from them to give backers the option of using PayPal, but chose to do so anyway - for us - and added a disclaimer about the extra fees.
If this in some fashion was an underhanded move by HE, it would alos have applied to Crowdtilt, I'm sure. If it was something that could have been avoided, given the extra work it would already put on HE staff, I'm also quite sure they would have opted to avoid that approach as well, or at the least countered it if they could.
Either way, I agree the discussion has reached a point where there really isn't that much left to discuss.
On a semi-final note, I suspect part of the reason for the crowdfunding is, that while Human Equation certainly is a big company, ARGs are far from their only avenue, which can either translate to more capital to funnel into any ARG project, but also conversely less funds, as there are more expenses elsewhere.
The Crowdfunding project was an attempt at gauging how viable the project was, I suspect.
And ultimately - and this is my personal opinion - a much more fitting way of launching an Augmented Reality Game; even the games creation is based on our interaction with the reality of the game
In any case - and on a final note - I do hope that you appreciate that even people in high places are still human - and not all adhere to the "90% of all people in leader positions are psychopaths" statistic. More so when also managing an ongoing ARG (You did get the mail, didn't you?
Either way, I hope a bump in the road - because that's quite francly all this is from where I'm looking, not to downplay your opinion or feelings, of course - won't sour for you what will undoubtedly become a grand ARG.
You know .. looking back .. I was being a jerk. Sorry. :-/
To answer your question,
For any transactions made in the state of Massachusetts, it is unlawful to pass transaction fees back onto the consumer - regardless if the seller takes resident within another state or country. Believe me, Massachusetts is crazy when it comes to penalties, liabilities and taxes.. oh the taxes. The state goes after businesses in other states all the time and wins when it comes to not paying sales tax (multi-million dollar lawsuits on cars, furniture deliveries, etc on items sold in New Hampshire delivered to Mass). Basically, there is something called establishing annex which means that as soon as you deliver a good or service to location other than your own, you are held responsible by that territories local consumer protection and tax liability laws.
And yes, Massachusetts residents are liable for taxes for any goods or eligible services sold in Canada. If the foreign company has an established location within the States, then they are expected to collect the tax just like any other business located in the States. If they are not, the buyer pays what is called Use Tax. Which is Sales Tax that was never collected which is paid at the end of the year. Quite honestly, no one pays Use Tax, but business do and have to keep records of it and it's how to get caught up in fees and penalties when audited.
For example, each state that I do business in, if the customer picks up the product at our main office, we have not established annex and I don't need to incorporate their laws. However, let's say I do business with someone in Texas and I ship out the product to Texas. I need to start collecting taxes on items shipped to Texas and pay them to Texas revenue even though my business is located in Massachusetts.
Technically, due to the policy change made at the end of 2013 - since the ARG has a SaaS like offering it is applicable to sales tax. It's getting nuts. Every MMORPG I subscribe to now has monthly Sales tax included as well.
Annex is also often applied to consumer protection laws. About 15-20 years ago, a precedent was set where the merchant account companies forced the seller to absorb all of the fees as a cost of business (also known as swiping fees, but weren't limited to card swipes). For the past 9 years, retailers have been battling the big merchant account holders (Visa and MC, etc) and the retailers won. A very large settlement was issued, but this also allowed retailers to pass the transaction fees back to the consumer. However, there are 10 states that set up laws to combat the court ruling to prohibit this practice. Massachusetts being one of the 10. http://usa.visa.com/personal/get-help/checkout-fees.jsp . Reading the full statute, not listed on the Visa page but on the Mass.gov.us page is split between several statues that goes over seporate rules for credit cards, bank accounts, ATMS, checking, etc. Penalties, such as bounced checks, are still allowed to be passed to the consumer.
On the flip side, a retailer in Massachusetts can say ... 2.5% discount for purchases made in cash. This allows retailers to inflate the prices to cover the cost of the swipe transactions and reduce it back to what it was with a cash transaction discount.
At the end of the day, a foreign business can always say ... we don't need to abide by your rules. However, businesses that are based within the US, such as PayPal are forced to abide by the specific state laws, which is why the state license # for currency conversion was posted on the receipt from PayPal that I copied and pasted into the OP. If I purchased the $5000 experience and the retailer tried to pass the fee back to consumer on a refund initiated by the retailer (not the buyer), PayPal would most definitely intervene as it violates state laws. However, for $3 fee applied to a $125 contribution... no one .. not even the buyer (me) cares.
Kaelaan21, I apologized for sounding bad or rude.
Fact1: I try to explain the situation as I it was explain to me by PayPal.
Fact2: I offer you a full refund and any support I can give you.
Please do not assume anything else from what I try to do or what I don't do well in English. You can call me or come to the office any time, you will see that we care A LOT for everyone's experiences to the best of our abilities. Vismal came to the office this week, I hope anyone who had to deal with us in the last 7 years can vouch for our dedication to you guys and having the best experience possible.
So my deepest apology if you felt insulted in any way.
In case you paid with PayPal, you should get a "Refund incoming!" email for each purchase you made - which for me personally arrived on the 13th, and showed up on my bank-account 1 - 2 days ago.
In case you paid with Crowdtilt, a bit of patience is likely required, as no-one - to my knowledge - has received any refund notification or any refunds as of yet, but I'm rather sure they'll come along after they've processed all the PayPal refunds - which have to be done one order at a time, as mentioned.
All Pay Pal refunds has been done. Crowdtilt is having issue refunds. It should have been done already. We are keeping a lot of pressure on them as we found it not acceptable.