Question about Big Cartel

[Joan Marie]

So I had a look at Big Cartel and it looked pretty good until you get to the part where you have to give them total access to every aspect of your paypal account. They are authorised to issue refunds and lot of other things.

For example they require access to all transactions through the account including transaction history. That seems like highly personal information to me.

And a lot more. It's a very long list of permissions they require. When I read the details it was very disconcerting. Just the refunds alone seems strange to give them complete control of.

Does anyone have experience with this? It feels weird to give a third party such complete access to what is basically my "business bank" account in order to have shop on their site.

[Pen]

I went to have a look too - not to sign up with them but to see how accessible and easy it is to find the individual shops/types of things for sale and have a look around. There were a few given examples of shops, but I could only see some very slick modern photographs. Their website puts the number of shops at over a million, but I couldn't find one actual shop to browse. Does one have to sign up before looking to buy as well as wanting to sell or is it sheer ineptitude on my part?

[Tag Jorrit]

I opened a BC shop in April 2013. They didn't have their fingers in my PayPal acct then. I just looked at the account settings there, and I saw there is a 'PayPal Standard' option. There's also the 'New Seamless Checkout' that I don't think existed back then. That may be one of their, uh, improvements.

Something that they continue to have is a free Big Cartel store; if you have 5 items or fewer the shop is free. Some features are crippled but it's a great way to get started if you already have a blog or fb page where you can advertise your wares, particularly if you don;t have a lot of things to sell.

The paid stores have a good return on google searches but searches for the stuff in the free one that I started for my newer decks lands on page 2 of the google searches. So, clearly you aren't given high priority with the free shop.The really good thing about the 1st tier paid shops is that you can have 25 items and it only costs $10/month. Which is LOTS better than the pound of flesh that eBay, Etsy & Amazon get.

The good thing about the free store is that it is easy to set up, complete with cart and 2 images for each item.

There is no feedback on BC, either. Maybe they are changing their format to make it more like Etsy by putting the site between buyers & sellers. Currently, with my paid shop, there's only direct communication with buyers w/o BC intervention. Maybe because the shop is "grandfathered" in? My free shop is the same way -- no intervention by the site software.

Maybe you can still use the PayPal Standard option.

[Joan Marie]

Maybe you can still use the PayPal Standard option.

I don't think so. There was only one paypal option and it is the one I described. This was for a free shop. Sound like you have been grandfathered in before they started making these requirements.

[DuckSoupProductions]

Joan, can you link to the specific page where you found all those permissions? I'm not finding it. In fact, what I found pertaining to transactions is this:

"Your relationship with the electronic payment vendors is separate from Your relationship with Big Cartel and is governed by the terms and conditions contained in such vendor’s agreement. Such terms and conditions are available at the respective vendor’s website. Big Cartel is not responsible for the actions or omissions of any third party payment processor."

I'd like to be sure. I never heard of Big Cartel before, and will certainly consider using it -- but not if they really want to control the flow of all your information....

DT

[Joan Marie]

Joan, can you link to the specific page where you found all those permissions? I'm not finding it.

I didn't see it until I was most of the way through setting up a shop and went to set up the financial part. This was for the Free shop (5 items or less)

In order to proceed I had to okay for Big cartel to have some access to my paypal. They listed like 4 categories of access needed. I clicked "more info" (or something like that) and that's where I saw the detailed list and description of all the access they required. Not giving it was a dealbreaker for them and I was unable to set up a payment option through paypal.

Eventually I just deleted what I had set up so I no longer have access to that part of the set-up or I would copy and paste the message here, but it was super long. I was easy to read though and I read the whole thing and just felt very uncomfortable about it.

The giving of 3rd party control of your paypal is a thing. I forgot exactly what they call it, but I checked with paypal as I mentioned and they do offer the service but caution you about doing it.

The thing is, if you give the permission you can't go back and complain. For example, if they refund people (they have your blanket consent for that) you can't dispute it. It was things like that I found disconcerting. I prefer to handle things like that myself with the customer.

There were some other strange things in there. Something about being able to make paypal payments on your behalf for some travel agency for example. I wonder Doug if you had actually begun the process of setting up a shop (as I had) or if you were just looking in general information where they might not have had this detailed info..

[Joan Marie]

In addition to my post above, Here is a link to the page on paypal where they describe (broadly) the service called "Third Party permission" which is what Big Cartel was requiring.

https://developer.paypal.com/docs/class ... ird-party/

Here is a screenshot:

I admit I might be being overly cautious, but as far as I know, I've never had to give this kind of permission before to any other store service. I'd never even heard of it.

[DuckSoupProductions]

Wow. You are abso-tively right. That is a complete deal-breaker.

[reall]

I prefer to have full control over my paypal & this seems like unnecessary privacy invasion so I would avoid giving these sort of authorization to anyone?x,x like would you let someone reach into your wallet/purse & take your money without even bothering to ask & read your recipients & notes/info regardless pretense they use to do so?x,x roll