Canadian loses $20K in phony eBay sale’
There is an interesting website http://www.aboutpaypal.org that every eBay user should read.
How many users actually audit their eBay and PayPal accounts? After finding discrepancies in my PayPal account two years in a row I had to make a decision to either go to court or severely limit my use of both eBay and Paypal. I chose the latter and have peace of mind, rather than getting my life tied up in knots for a very limited gain at most although, in a class action, the loss to PayPal and its owner eBay could be in the millions.
The crux of the problem appears to be that eBay and PayPal act like a bank but they are neither regulated like banks nor do they allow their customers to deal with their mistakes and misdeeds in an effective manner.
After finding those problems, I started by removing my bank and credit card information from PayPal and then made purchases until my balance was insignificant. The next time I made an eBay purchase I used my credit card via PayPal without any problems. However, when I tried that again the transaction was redflagged with "For your convenience, PayPal saves your credit or debit card information so you don't have to enter it every time you shop at eBay, or anywhere PayPal is accepted. Learn More
https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/pop/purchase-learn-more-outside
It turns out that the term "for your convenience" is deceptive because, whatever I tried, I could not use PayPal anymore unless in fact I was willing to entrust my credit card information to them again, the very thing I did not want to do.
Perhaps, I reasoned, this problem is tied to my still having a PayPal account so next I set out to close the account. Yes sir, you certainly may close your account and we will send you your check for your $2.77 balance after we deduct a $1.50 fee but *first* you must give us either your bank account or credit card information.
This maddening circular problem would drive someone with lesser control to go berserk and get notions of taking the law into ones own hands. Fortunately writing this is a much better solution.
I believe that both eBay and PayPal can continue to play a legitimate role if they are willing to recognize the, mostly monopoly type, problems that are of their own making and that eBay and PayPal know most of the crooks that ply their trade on eBay but don't care as long as users eat the losses and eBay continues to reap the profits. When these facts start dawning on enough honest participants that whole segment of the www could come crashing and burning down and lots of good honest people and businesses will be hurt in the process because, unlike a bank, PayPal's deposits are not federally insured.
My suggestion is to seek out eBay sellers who have a merchant credit card account because credit card fraud protection is so much greater than any protection that PayPal can ever offer. If an eBayer is selling lots of items over ten bucks for an extended period of time and is unable or unwilling to get a merchant credit card account and/or is not collecting sales taxes for the state that they ship from, one has legitimate reasons to shy away from those sellers
Henry Keultjes