Issues paying with PayPal

Folksy Site Issues
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Hello everyone!

I’ve been trying to buy a Father’s Day card for the last week, but every time I try to pay with PayPal (after entering my credentials on PayPal and being re-directed to Folksy) it comes up with an error. Today I finally decided to pay by card as I was running out of time, but I never like to enter my card details anywhere on internet.

Does anyone know why this is happening? My PayPal account is working fine so I am assuming it might be an issue with Folksy?

I tried to see if anyone else has experienced the same problem, but I can’t find any recent topic here about this.

Thanks in advance!
Anna

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Yes I had a problem paying with PayPal too! I clicked to pay by card but was offered the choice to pay by G pay and as my card is set Up with Google pay I used that and it worked fine.
@folksycontent

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What does the error say, and does it give an error code?

It’s really hard to guess why it might be happening without knowing the message they’re giving.
Sometimes PayPal give a code number, and if you Google that it’ll give you a few possible reasons that could be the cause (unfortunately even with the codes it never seems to narrow it down to one exact cause).

Sometimes it might be on the buyer end, sometimes it might be on the seller end… sometimes it might be PayPal deciding that particular item violates their user agreement, even though there’s nothing obviously unusual or wrong about the item. In those cases, you can either pay by card if the seller has it enabled, or use the link for you’re having problems paying and ask the seller to send you a money request. If it is something like PayPal have decided they don’t like the particular item, then a PayPal request should still work because the item will no longer be associated with the payment.

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Hi Kim, thanks for your reply.

As soon as I closed the page I thought “damn, I should have taken a screenshot of the error message!”
I thought to give it a try here anyway just in case somebody else was having the same issue and would recognise tif without the error message.

Just to make things clearer though, the error message was on Folksy, not PayPal. So after I’ve entered the credentials on PayPal and after authorising the cost, I got re-directed to Folksy (as normal). I got the usual message like “your payment is being processed” and after that it said something like “the payment could not be processed please try again.” Then it said something else that I can’t remember because it didn’t make any sense. :laughing: It then worked when I paid by card.

It’s not a big deal, especially if it’s only me having the issue. I’ve also tried to buy only from that seller, so as you said, it could be that particular shop having problems or only me :blush:

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Is it possible that the seller was not correctly set up on Paypal and it was from her side the rejection was coming ? Has the seller had many sales (that would probably rule that out) or is she new in which case could easily be them not you. x

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I had a couple of automatic emails from Folksy the other weekend say a buyer was having trouble checking out with Paypal - obviously I know it’s not a problem my end since I’ve been here forever one way or another, but I’ve never had anything like that before - is it a new thing or have I just been lucky? There was no sale in the end so presumably they gave up :frowning:

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Hi Joy, the seller had more than 700 sales, so probably not an old issue. The mystery continues…… :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Oh no, I’m sorry to hear that the buyer gave up!

I almost did too, to be honest, and that’s why I thought to mention it here in the forum: if it’s an issues that many people are having, that could mean less sales or potentially lower reviews.

Did Folksy explain in the emails you have received what the issue could have been?

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@Popys Screenshots are always great, but if you can remember the date and time you attempted, that can sometimes be a help too. Occasionally we’ll get notifications in to support to let us know that a payment failed due to whatever PayPal error code. Unfortunately we don’t always get buyer and seller details along with that information, so we don’t actually know which attempted sale it relates to, unless someone also messages support to let us know about the failed order.

@HelenSmith Those aren’t new. I don’t know when they started, but they’ve been here at least for the 5 years I’ve been on Folksy. You’re just lucky!
When you go to checkout, if you look at the bottom of the page there’s a little link for if you’re having trouble paying. If you click on that then it takes you to a form to fill out your details, and lets the purchase go through without payment (sending the seller the email saying the buyer’s having trouble paying).
Sometimes it might be because the buyer’s having problems and PayPal won’t let them pay, but other times it might just be because the buyer really doesn’t like PayPal and just doesn’t want to use them (although you offer payments by Stripe, if they’re trying to buy from more than just your shop, the option to pay by card won’t show). The only way to know is from the message that the buyer leaves you.

Once you get that email, the best thing to do is to send a money request to the buyer’s email address, through PayPal, Stripe or whatever other payment processor you like (such as some sellers like to use SumUp). Don’t forget to add on the postage cost, because that gets calculated when the buyer enters their address in PayPal, so it’s missed from the estimate.

When you get confirmation they’ve paid, you can just go to your order, click “mark as paid” and then carry on like any other order.

https://folksy.uservoice.com/knowledgebase/articles/1129579-i-ve-got-an-email-from-folksy-saying-a-buyer-is-ha

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This sounds a bit like an issue I had some years ago. I was trying to buy some cards, did all the stuff on paypal no probs but then the payment would stall and the sale wouldn’t go through on Folksy. If I looked on my paypal account I could see that the money was being debited and then a few hours later it was being refunded back to me. Seller had no idea this was going on until I dropped her an email and said hold these items for me as paypal is playing up (I’d bought from her previously so knew she’d do this). After conversing with paypal support who sort of admitted that there were some of the words she’d used in her description that were on paypal’s black list and they thought I was buying something to fund something dodgy (no elaboration as to what but could make some guesses). This was pre stripe so in the end I paid her by bank transfer, to me this sort of thing highlights the importance of having another payment option other than paypal.
Someone in the Clubhouse on FB had a customer having issues with paypal so I’m wondering if paypal have updated their black list to include a word crafter’s use a lot.

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@SashaGarrett Thanks Sasha, that’s good to know and helps confirm my suspicions.

It’s not always that particular code, but I’ve definitely noticed the “violates PayPal user agreement” one come up a few times. As I mentioned, a lot of the time there’s not enough information to go on to work out which item it failed on, but for the couple of times I could work it out, nothing stood out from the item title (and those have been regular sellers so it doesn’t make a difference if they can normally accept PayPal sales).
I’m going to have to keep a closer eye on them, and for any I can work out, have a good look at the description to try to work out what words might be triggering it.

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Hi Kim thanks for looking into it.

I tried to pay with PayPal on the 11/06, just after 4pm. A few minutes later, I paid using my card.

It sounds like it could be then an issue with the item title, but looking at it again, there’s nothing that stands out to me as wrong. :woman_shrugging:

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I suspected that it was the words ‘flaming’ and ‘french’ that were causing me issues because it was around the time of some terror attacks in France. But obviously paypal would neither confirm nor deny that. I was buying multiple cards and the suspected trigger words were in different listings.

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@konyskiw mine just said that it was a failed transaction, it was an order from just one shop, I did use an alternative payment but it’s the first time I have had a problem paying with PayPal. It seemed to me to be a problem with either PayPal or the Folksy site.
I was buying fabric from @MaisyMuffin and it was Sunday 12th

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@JOYSofGLASS I had problems paying with PayPal on Sunday and have previously bought from the seller before with PayPal and have been with PayPal for donkeys years.

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I have had problems for 2 days, trying to buy a small item from another seller, the transaction was cancelled and went back into her shop so I tried again 3 times this morning. Folksy did get back to us both quickly and said it was a paypal issue but i have bought from other websites on both days with no problems.
I have just sent the seller the money direct via paypal and asked her to mark it as paid in her account. She looked to be a new seller so I wanted it to show in her sold items, to be honest if I had encountered the problems on another wensite I would have just abandoned the order as not worth the time messing about and emailing for an item worth a couple of pounds but being a seller myself I didnt want her to lose the order. I was buying from Lost in crafts, her only payment option was paypal. I did fill the form in.
Just reading some of the comments above…intersting, I’m going to have a look at the listing I bought to see if I can find anything that may have blocked it going through.

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Paypal “payment received” failure over the Bank Holiday weekend -

My issue is resolved, but I thought this maybe useful for others.

Hi all, resurecting this old thread rather than posting new, as some of the comments above are relevant to what happened to my shop over the weekend.

I had a message on Saturday from a buyer saying they couldn’t pay for an item in my shop and wanted to let me know in case there was an issue at my end. Luckily it was a from a fellow shop owner who posts on here regularly (the lovely @ccbandatp), so I knew the email was legit and not a scam :laughing:

They kindly gave a bit more detail about the error message they received (it said policy violation :flushed:) and I went onto Paypal to investigate - and yes the payment was sitting there as “failed”. My OH, also did a couple of test prichases (I have a £1 item I keep hidden just for this purpose) - he was able to pay via Stripe, but had the same failure and policy violation message with Paypal.

I had no issues paying with paypal, and no emails/notifications from them. So I contacted them via chat on Sunday morning - they responded very quickly and said they didn’t think it was an issue their end but they would investigate further. (I’m still waiting to hear back!!!)

In the meantime, I went into my Folksy account and checked my Paypal link was still there - it was. But I decided to delete it and save as an empty field. Then went back in and retyped it in again from scratch - I didn’t use the autocomplete prompt, and saved again. OH retested, and it worked :grinning:

So, I don’t know whether it was a faulty disconnect between my shop and Paypal that was sorted by me resetting it, or if tPaypal did press a button to clear the log-jam at their end - I still haven’t had an update from them - but the amounts were returned to the buyer and my OH.

Either way, I shall be regularly testing my connection with paypal. I have no idea whether I lost other sales over the BH weekend, or how long it would have taken for me to realise people couldn’t buy from me, and I’m hugely grateful to Anne for contacting me.

ASIDE: When investigating possible “policy violation” issues, I found out that Paypal do block sales for items that they think breach their policies, or they think your sales are abnormally high for your typical pattern. I’ve had a couple of good month but nothing exceptional, but I did realise that my listing title may have been a trigger.

It’s a slow stitching kit with raw silk, and I had used the colours in the title - Copper and Rose Gold. Maybe Paypal thought I was now trading in precious metals - bit of a change from cotton bunting and felt playmats!!! - and that triggered a block.

So I changed the title before the buyer went back in to order :laughing:

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Thankfully all resolved and no lost sleep! I did try to use stripe first but that didn’t work either. Gremlins!

You mean I’m not getting precious metals! :rofl:

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