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Comment by kalleboo | Hacker News Reader

So. Say you wanted to put PayPal out of business with better service.

I guess for this specific instance, they can conference call GoDaddy and have the third party vouch for things.

But how do you rule in a he-said-she-said situation? If a customer says they received a ceiling tile instead of an iPad? For other digital goods like in-game characters?

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Frankly, if you don't want to put yourself out of business, you don't refund your client in situations where the client cannot reasonably argue they didn't expect the listing to be fraudulent, especially not assuming the money isn't sitting in an account at the other end waiting to be transferred back. You probably don't want your disputes department providing an adequately detailed explanation of the reasons they reached a particular decision either.

> But how do you rule in a he-said-she-said situation?

I forget what the scheme is called. With digital things the buyer and the seller put 100% of the value of the transaction in a bag. If either disputes the transaction you burn the bag.

For quite a few digital good you could check. The problem in this case was more that PayPal couldn't be bothered. Dunno with the ceiling tile thing unless you got an intermediary to inspect it. The delivery company perhaps?

Yeah Paypal had refused to call my Godaddy rep because the seller had already provided sufficient proof that the transaction happened and was legit.

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