PayPal vs. Others

[littleindiangirl]

I've read a lot of horror stories with Paypal, and I will admit I'm not a fan. The way they handle claims on both ends, the freezing of accounts horror stories, and not to mention their horrid user panel (my own bloody war with them). I can say I am definitely not a fan, especially with our past experiences with a scammer.

It's unnerving to me that everyone uses Paypal, and it's getting to the point where people ONLY accept Paypal.

What other reasonable options are out there? Google checkout is the only other things I've heard of.

How do you prefer to deal with buyers and sellers? Anyone as untrusting of Paypal as I am? Or am I paranoid?

[Reediculous]

I've read a lot of horror stories with Paypal, and I will admit I'm not a fan. The way they handle claims on both ends, the freezing of accounts horror stories, and not to mention their horrid user panel (my own bloody war with them). I can say I am definitely not a fan, especially with our past experiences with a scammer.

It's unnerving to me that everyone uses Paypal, and it's getting to the point where people ONLY accept Paypal.

What other reasonable options are out there? Google checkout is the only other things I've heard of.

How do you prefer to deal with buyers and sellers? Anyone as untrusting of Paypal as I am? Or am I paranoid?

I'm doing a deal with somebody right now..... He will only accept money orders because of the whole paypal thing! I thought paypal was #1 until he told me some stories!

Scammers all over the place! YUK!

[Stewart_Reptiles]

I have been using Paypal for years as a seller on Ebay and as a buyer.

I have opened 3 claims and they have all been resolved by Paypal who refunded my money.

There are good and bad stories everywhere but out of the millions of people that uses Paypal I am sure they only represent a minority.

I think the bottom line is definitely to know who you send your money to in the first place.

If you do have a problem and they do not satisfy your claim you still have recourse with your credit card company.

Note: The only thing I would never do is use Paypal to transfer money directly from my bank account to pay for goods.

[littleindiangirl]

That's true. I opened a paypal account a long time ago, back when I was fresh in highschool and I had a lot of good transactions, but the last one left a bad taste in my mouth.

[jglass38]

I've been using Paypal for years as a buyer and a seller. I've been a part of the horror stories (account frozen for no real reason and a claim not coming out in my favor), but there aren't many alternatives. I have my accounts linked to it and pay for items with debits from my checking account mostly. Haven't had much problem there. For ease of use, I'll take the occasional bad with the mostly good.

[kc261]

I have been using Paypal for years as a seller on Ebay and as a buyer.

I have opened 3 claims and they have all been resolved by Paypal who refunded my money.

There are good and bad stories everywhere but out of the millions of people that uses Paypal I am sure they only represent a minority.

I think the bottom line is definitely to know who you send your money to in the first place.

If you do have a problem and they do not satisfy your claim you still have recourse with your credit card company.

Note: The only thing I would never do is use Paypal to transfer money directly from my bank account to pay for goods.

I think Deborah makes a lot of good points here. If the horror stories made up anything close to a significant percentage of Paypal transactions, they would not remain as popular as they are.

I will add that I would only use Paypal with an actual credit card. Debit cards may seem like the same thing, but most of them do not have the same protections built in that a credit card has.

Also, I'd be at least slightly more hesitant to use Paypal as a seller than as a buyer. Buyers can research sellers much more easily than vice versa, and have some idea if the person they are dealing with is a "good guy" or not. And as long as the transaction goes the way it should, and/or any issues are resolved between the buyer and seller, then there is no need to worry about Paypal. But if a seller runs into problems with a buyer, and Paypal decides in favor of the buyer, then the seller has nothing like the credit card company to fall back on. So it does seem much more risky for the seller. Note: I've never used Paypal as a seller, so I'm just saying what seems to be true based on what I know about how it works.

[NightLad]

I've been using PayPal for years as both a buyer and seller. My only minor issue happened years ago when I first started eBaying. In hindsight it was my n00b fault, so to speak. I bought an item for $10 from a guy with very low rep. He never sent it, so I tried to make a claim against him, but I was told that PayPal only issues claim tickets for items over $100. My bad luck. Other than that, I've had no issues what-so-ever.

There have been attempts by other parties to create alternatives to PayPal. ThunderPay was one. They've all been short lived. Personally I don't want to have to create a whole new account with another company, submit my CC info again, etc. and then hope that somebody will be willing to do the same for the sake of conducting business off-PayPal.

Not to play devil’s advocate, but PayPal does deal with millions of users world-wide, and all the scammers that come along with them. If they were not aggressive in stopping out potential fraud, they might as well close shop. It sucks when innocent people occasionally get caught in the cross-fire, but with any big-business things slip through the cracks. Of course, I've never been in the cross-fire thus far, so it’s easy for me to say.

[bsd13]

There are several alternatives to paypal but they are all just as bad if not worse. The safest bet if you intend to do online business is to open a merchant account with a real bank. At least then you have some protection should something go wrong.

[WaRocker]

I wish I could tell you about how I really feel about PayPal but that would get me kicked from the boards. So with that said I will stop now

[TooManyToys]

I have used Paypal for many years, with a lot of activity. I have never had a problem.