"Same post as most of the time. Someone takes money through Paypal for a product that does not (yet) exist, without reading Paypals terms, then money gets frozen, then people start to cry."
I've got a client who does this every year - he starts taking pre-orders for the new version of his book in September, gets his PayPal withdrawals suspended in October, ships his books late December, and gets his money around the end of January. He's happy to keep doing it that way, 'cause he's using the pre-orders to accurately gauge demand and to decide how many copied to get printed, rather than as a way of pre-funding the production or printing costs.
(The fact that it's played out identically for ~4 years now also includes the bit where he gets a bit drunk over xmas/newyear and rings up any PayPal phone number he can find and swears abuse at whoever answers… It's much more likely to be that which ends up getting him banned from PayPal than the $20 or $30k of transactions who's funds they get to hang on to for 3 or 4 months every year)
I've got a client who does this every year - he starts taking pre-orders for the new version of his book in September, gets his PayPal withdrawals suspended in October, ships his books late December, and gets his money around the end of January. He's happy to keep doing it that way, 'cause he's using the pre-orders to accurately gauge demand and to decide how many copied to get printed, rather than as a way of pre-funding the production or printing costs.
(The fact that it's played out identically for ~4 years now also includes the bit where he gets a bit drunk over xmas/newyear and rings up any PayPal phone number he can find and swears abuse at whoever answers… It's much more likely to be that which ends up getting him banned from PayPal than the $20 or $30k of transactions who's funds they get to hang on to for 3 or 4 months every year)