MyBB Community Forums

Few days ago I made a Custom theme for a user here, He contacted me via Skype and some user from MyBB recommend me to him. So we talked about the theme and agreed on a price, then I designed a Mock-up for him which he liked and paid 15% of the total budget as advance payment, there is no problem with the advance payment.
Then after 7 days I gave him the demo which he liked and send me the rest of the payment. Later he also asked me to install the theme, some plug-ins and to set up his forum. This service is performed by someone from YuvaPix. For that service he also send a payment.
Now there is a problem with the last two payments, this morning I got an email from Paypal saying that "You have received a payment that we believe may not have been authorised by
the PayPal account holder.".
Currently those two payments are on hold. I have contacted the client he told me that he noticed some unknown transaction in his account, so he called Paypal and so maybe Paypal made all the payments disputed. But He got no idea how those two Payments to YuvaPix got disputed. He also told me that he is going to solve this matter and once his new card arrives, he is going to Pay me the money. So far he is cooperating well with me.
So from my side what I can do to solve this matter and what rules should I follow from next time so that I can have the upper hand in this disputed cases? Things I do right now:

# I always send invoices to the client and only take payment against it.
# I mostly use Skype to talk to the client not email.

This is the first Paypal dispute case I faced so need some help and suggestions.

Well start keeping logs(and or use email). But, in the end paypal offers no real protection for sellers regarding digital goods since there is no real way to show proof of the transaction.

Yeah unfortunately Paypal does an investigation on this themselves, so they won't ask you for proof.

If it was an accident that's all and well, if not most likely he'll win the dispute.

This happens to me quite often. If they contact their credit card provider and they contact paypal saying the transaction wasn't authorized they will get their money back 100% of the time when the item in question is a digital good. You have 0 sellers protection when selling digital goods I'm afraid.

Always secure your funds before handing over the files, even if that means waiting 24 hours.

Can you elaborate? People can start disputes well after 24 hours. I ask because I've had this happen to me more times than it's worth.

(2013-04-05, 07:13 PM)Jessie S. Wrote: [ -> ]Always secure your funds before handing over the files, even if that means waiting 24 hours.

Securing them in what way ? If you empty your paypal account that doesn't stop someone filing a chargeback. You actually have 40 days in within you cant start a charge back.

Securing funds won't help you. Your balance will go negative if it needs to go.

I once lost a $7 dispute (this is how people end up re-distributing my paid plugins) because someone downloaded everything they had right to and then claimed they didn't authorize the payment (I wonder how PayPal evens accepts this...). I lost it AND I tried to get it back just for the sake of it and guess what? PayPal charged me a fee to contact the user's credit card system (they didn't ask me if I wanted to but I'm guessing it's in their TOS) and I ended up with $30 negative. So I lost $37 in the end and a negative balance. They sent me an auto message telling me I had to put funds into my account otherwise they'd close it and since I receive payments often after a few days I'd be out of trouble.

This is was probably one of the three disputes I lost. I won a few others. I think it's kinda random, I always provide the same proof. That's funny.

(2013-04-05, 07:13 PM)Jessie S. Wrote: [ -> ]Always secure your funds before handing over the files, even if that means waiting 24 hours.

PayPal India automatically withdraw all the money to the linked bank account within 1-2 days of the payments, so when the chargeback filled my Paypal balance was 0 and now its in negative.

Approximately how much time it can take to sort out dispute cases?

I had only one paypal dispute in past and won it after i show them my email transactions. But as Pirata said, i believe its random.