Believe it or not, Paypal actually has a customer service hotline you can call!
and they can support English, Cantonese (lei kong mat yeh ah?) and Mandarin.
Paypal SEA Customer Service Hotline
+65 6510 4584
+65 6823 2061
Monday to Friday (9am to 9pm)
Saturday to Sunday (9am to 5pm)
We think this is a very good start. Considering Paypal has been trying very hard to hide their contact number (by providing answers to every imaginable questions might asked by idiot, genius or aliens – forcing you through all the FAQ and their rigid step-by-step automated system).
Who can blame them for doing that? Paypal got more than 150 million users… If every “customers” just call them once to Say “Hi, what’s up dude?” (cantonese:-Nei hou mah? Shek bao mei ah?) once a year, and ONLY once a year, the call centre boys and gals will go on strike!
It will be interesting to find out – Will your call be handled by robots with artificial intelligence that can “understand your questions” and reply with a solution? or Is it outsourced services answered by third party payroll? or would it be handled directly by Paypal employees? Share your experience if any!
From dresses to handbags, diamonds to music downloads, consumers in Asia are taking to Internet shopping as never before, making the region one of the world’s fastest-growing e-commerce markets.
“I like to shop for clothes online because no sales girls will pester me,” said Cecelia Wang, a 23-year-old university student in Taipei who said she spent about 1,500 Taiwan dollars, about $43, each month on Internet purchases. “For online shopping, all I need to do is sit in my room and shop, which is great.”
Internet retailing is increasingly making its presence felt in Asia because telecommunications infrastructure has improved and payment, a major obstacle to online shopping, is increasingly secure, analysts say.
Below is an official announcement from iPay88 to the merchants. It warns the merchants to take extra precaution of the order coming from a particular high risk countries.
Dear iPay88 Merchant,
You are advised NOT to accept any orders from the following high risk countries to avoid charge-back later due to fraudulent credit card transaction:
Great Britain, particularly the Greater London area
Netherlands, particularly Amsterdam (Hakfort)
Balkan states (former Yugoslavia)
Besides, the customer’s behavior could help uncover fraudulent intentions beforehand, so you should be on the lookout for the following warning signs:
A customer wants to pay the item using several credit cards (i.e. more than 2 cards).
( Our comment: Unless it’s huge sum that exceeds the limit of the cards, people don’t normally pay for an order using multiple cards. You don’t do that during the supermarket checkout and you normally would not do that online too. )
Same credit card number used by several name, email address or contact numbers.
( Our comment: Merchants are never allowed to keep the 16 digits credit card number, unless, if you are Amazon or Dell. However, merchant can see the first 6 digits and last 4 digits of the transacted Visa / Master card in the iPay88 admin. You will hardly see any 2 cards that coincidentally have the same first 6 digits and the last 4 digits number, this alone should raise an alert for extra checking.)
Have a record to use “Pick Up Card” or “Stolen Card”.
( Our comment: As we last check, “Pick up card = Stolen Card”, please don’t ask us which genius came out with the jargon “pick up card”, can’t they use some name which is easy to understand and straightforward? )
A new visitor to your online store and immediately buy from you in just a few seconds.
( Our comment: To track this you need a shopping cart that track the time an anonymous client first visit your site until it checkout from your cart. )
A first time customer buys from you in large quantity / amount.
( Our comment: So you are not dell or amazon and why would they trust you with such a large purchase? Double check on it!)
The customer immediately starts discussing problems, such as “If the card doesn’t work, I’ll send you my wife’s credit card number”.
( Our comment: This one should sounds an alarm as my wife never allowed me to touch her credit cards. )
Orders from your non-targeted market (i.e. You are targeting Malaysia market only but suddenly receive order from other country)
( Our comment: It’s only normal that you get International orders (come on, this is the Internet!), it means you are on the right track on your marketing! But don’t be too excited, cross border trade is tricky and it’s hard to determine whether the clients are genuine or not. Always be more careful until you find a pattern of your client buying behaviour.)
Please always verify your customer before any product / service delivery. If you have any doubt whatsoever about an order, do not carry it out; alternatively, you can contact our Fraud Control Unit at +6(03) 9200 5555 (ext: 245) for further assistance. Important: the issuance of an approval code does not automatically guarantee you payment.
Important: the issuance of an approval code does not automatically guarantee you payment.
As you can see, “Cross border” trade is more risky. I think you can understand the notion of not doing business with Nigeria (this guy beg to differ), but London also on the list? There’s gotta be a better way.
This is where Neowave’s Fraud Alert System comes handy. Safest sign of orders normally follow below simplified formula [ (billing address = shipping address ) Near To IP Address Range and NOT From (Free Email or Open Proxy)].
However, nothing is 100% Fraud Proof. But Fraud Alert System gives you better illustrated information for you to make a better decision that significantly reduce your risk exposed.
The bottomline is, if you ever in any doubt, call the clients (landlines) !
Dear valued clients, partners and friend. Please take note that the power box of our office block (not our office) caught fire and burnt into ashes (well, almost). Luckily, nobody gets hurt in this accident and the fire has been put off in time, else it could be much worse!
The fire took away our electricity supply, our phone line (thus call + broadband), and lift. The whole place smells like a over-baked Chicken BBQ.
For time being until the supply being resolved (probably takes weeks).
For sales enquiry: Please contact Ethan at +6016 238 6246 or Adrian at +6012 2187588.
Or as usual, get in touch with us via Emails:
Support@neowave.com.my for technical related issues and Sales@neowave.com.my for any sales inquiries. We will get back to you as promptly as possible.
Last but not least, all of us are still in one piece. So business as usual. As all team members are equipped with at least a laptop, they are now dispatched and now working in Mobile + SOHO mode.
As you can see, as we are internet based, such incident won’t have major impact on us. But those running retail is not as lucky as us, they are location-based and tied to all the stuff at their stores to run. Out of electricity + communication is a curse to them!
The good thing about doing an online business is, even if you migrate out of country, you can still sell stuffs from your website. So don’t wait, start off an e-commerce business now with webShaper.
burn baby, burn!
closer look, all wires are now officially turned into ashes.
Oops. Sorry for belated new year wishes. You must be wondering what we were up to! This blog is not frequently updated as it supposed to be, shame on us! (again, no excuse!!!). We have been EXTREMELY busy with new software development & project…
Below is a brief recap on the missing “2 month trails”.
–> After almost one year of hard work – We successfully deliver 2 enterprise class e-commerce projects – Big clients with well-recognized brands- AirAsia’s Redmegastore (Buy Tony Fernandez Famous Baseball Red Cap here!) and Telekom Malaysia TM Rewards eStore (The only place you can get iTalk with bonus credit!). Successfully pulling it off means a great deal to a small company like us as it says something about our capability, our product and our luck!
TM Rewards Online Store
The only place you can buy italk with special bonus
AirAsia made flights possible for the masses – buy AirAsia merchandize to inspire you!
–> New webShaper shopping cart engine v2.5 is being rolled out and undergo heavy testing now. It comes with tons of new exciting features like “Share product on Facebook” (think social marketing!), Customers Review & Rating (think user generated contents), even better SEO with improved automated keyword placement, enhanced security against SQL injection and more!
–> Working very hard on development of new hosted shopping cart service aka Software As a Service – Sign up now for pre-launch offer!
–> Google Adwords Beginner Guide we share on slideshare.net have had more than 3,300 views! not too bad considering posting was about 3 months time only.
I think you might well aware that for the last few months of 2008 we’ve seen lots of fiasco in the financial industry causing the word economic to go haywire.
We believe the only way to thrive is to innovate out of this slump, so you can in better position to reap rewards when turnaround happened (don’t ask, nobody knows when). We think it has never been a better time for business to venture into e-commerce. Don’t run e-commerce yet? Here’s Top 10 reasons why you should venture into e-commerce now!
Are you a small & mid-sized business looking at expanding your sales by selling online but don’t know where to start?
Look no further! Subscribe to our E-commerce SME Plan and Learn from our Google Adword Professional (Hmmm…it’s me, sorry for hard selling) on the fastest way to kickstart your e-commerce marketing. This courses comes Free for SME that subscribes to our E-commerce Plan for SME, from just RM299 / month only.
Below is the full slide of our Google Adwords Kick Start Course! (It’s not a preview! It’s full slide! and NO, we are not insane!) Feel free to download and share it.
Why do we do that? Well, there’s NO Secrets in the slide. In the end of the day – the testing, the execution, the creativity of your copywriting will determine whether you lose or win the Internet Marketing Battle (with the ultimate winner – Google, laugh all the way to the bank, of course)
Apart from Google Adwords, we will also reveal more on other means of Internet Marketing to kickstart your stores. Below slide is barely scratching the surface. In our complex world, you need multi-channel traffic strategies to hit the jackpot!
If your website is not ready, would you put it on your packaging? It’s so creative, it blows me away.
Of course it’s not a recommended practice to have your website not ready while you already start your business and actively selling in the market. But again, hey, at least they are honest “up-to-the-box-level”.
Then we visit their website on 8 – 10 – 2008. Yeah. the website as it says on the box, still “under construction”.
Then you must be wondering what keep them so busy….
If you have business like this, of course you won’t have time to do a website lah! hmm…wait a second. how about an e-commerce website which can take donut order online? we wil be the first to order!
Congratulation to our team member – Sunzi Lim, for successfully pass the test and now is officially a Paypal Certified Developer. This is another credential adding to neowave e-commerce team as we strive best to provide the best e-commerce solution to our business clients.
As you can see on the list, Sunzi, unfortunately, is not the first Paypal Certified Developer from Malaysia. Voon Chong has been a step quicker. Still, there’s only 2 Paypal Certified Developer in Malaysia so far and we know both of them!
Do you know Paypal is setting up their International Support (International means anything but US / UK) at Singapore?
So they are actually not too far from us in Malaysia. For those in johor, it’s even nearer. In the event Paypal block your account without any reasons, at least now you can take a cheap flight to Singapore and do something like this to them ( ;>
Disclaimer: We do not condone any violent act and we will NOT take responsibility for your “art work” as a result of reading this blog post. Bear in mind Singapore Cops are very efficient bunch.
Last but not least, we have news from paypal insider that Paypal might be able to supports withdrawals to Malaysia Business Bank Account in coming 6 ~ 9 months time (hopefully this time is for real…)! keep your finger crossed!
Interestingly, Paypal appear more and more “Visa” and “Mastercard” like. If their growth continue at such a fast-pace rate, especially in the International Markets, soon the below icon will become a standard at most of website that takes online payment. (i predict in 5 years time).
The apparent different is, with Paypal, you don’t actually need a card.
Don’t be surprised if you find Paypal in Malaysia Payment Gateways (Eg iPay88 & nbepay ) soon in not too distanced future (we hope).