Beware Pay-pal - not as safe as you think

[Guest]

Dear friends - :knight:

Just to warn users of E-bay when paying for an item

or buying / selling in general -

Pay-pal is far less reliable and safe than is commonly believed -

see www.paypalsucks.com

if you wish to see why -

My personal experiences have been the same , account frozen when they thought I was a Money-launderer ( I have sold 2 cars thru E-Bay )

also the fraudulent use of Pay-pal nearly resulted in me losing 3 Bismarck Postcard ( genuine ) when I demanded to have a full name , and delayed sending it out for a week - luckily I did as the payment was refunded as the payment was fraudulent !

and they can lose you not just your money - you find negative feedback when you can't pay or also send out the item - as seller

and try contacting them ! It is very difficult to get any sense out of them

the waste of time and stress is unbelievable

apologies if this is out-of-topic

but I can't seem to get my topic posted - due to what knows ?

regards David

If this helps one person , it will be worth while

:smile11:

[Guest]

I have always refused point blank to have a Paypal account. I think it is a rip off and just another scheme for someone to sit on thier rears and rake in money for doing absolutely nothing.

Bit like Ebay!!!

[wonwinglo]

David,how true your words are,a friend has for the past few months, who has a Pay-pal account has constantly had withdrawels of £20 out of her account, for no reason whatsoever and at regular intervals,attempts by both myself and her have resulted in no joy whatsoever,so far she has lost over £200 in those withdrawels.

And I too have had my account frozen simply because they suspected 'Money laundering' when I did ring them up ( in America from the UK by the way ) they informed me that over £2,000 had been deposited into my account ? however on checking this was not true,well at least from my very own account,but who knows if it had not been phlished ? you have to be very careful with Pay-pal,sometimes you go on for months without any bother,then suddenly it happens with months of misery,my advice is never to keep large amounts with Pay-pal,that way if anything does happen you are not faced with having large amounts of money frozen.

The other angle which has also come to light recently, is what happens to the account is something should happen to someone ? after all access to a long distance account to retrieve money by those other than the account holder would be very difficult.

It seems that there are more questions than answers,personally I would not use the system other than for small transactions,there have een far too many cases of hacking into Pay-pal to make it something to trust.

[John]

Paypalsucks was a website set up long before ebay bought it, at the time there were a lot of problems with it, I have 2 paypal accounts and have done for years and have never had any trouble at all

[Guest]

i do not sell on ebay apart from the odd little thing so i never have much money in the account. then when i buy something of ebay it is usualy more than i have in my paypal acount so it empties my acount and takes the rest out my bank so no problems there.

im sure there are thousands of people every month who have problems but if you think of the probable billions of people who use it and the millions of transactions that go through it every day its not that bad

well im saying that now anyway....fingers crossed!

[Guest]

I should have clarified that

I no longer have a Pay-pal account -

I decided a few months ago , that it simply was too much of a risk ,

and my bad experiences with the lack ( totally lacking actually ) of

customer care over the telephone , decided the matter -

I wonder where

the " Ebay bought Paypal sucks website " info came from ?

News to me , I don't believe this info , sorry .

Pay-pal sucks website - actually read just a few posts then decide

for yourself , fine don't take my word for it

Other point " I have never had a problem "

Hello , if you actually see some of the Not Official Ebay postings ,

regarding Pay-pal on the Ebay site -

The one where ordinary people have a Forum on Ebay then

you will get a truer picture , I am afraid , a lot of it negative/

I too , once had a rosy view of Pay-pal -

You say , You have never had a problem

(and say Millions have never had a problem ) true

but wait until they freeze your account , or money is stolen

or refunded for no reason ............

then you will find a different face to pay-pal

Sad , but true ..

______________________

:knight:

Another thing is - I once listed a luxury boat for sale ............

and I never knew I had until E-bay cancelled my listing ,

and froze my ebay account password .

My e-mail address was hacked into , and my Ebay password as well .

amazing but totally true -

This is the story E-bay ( and Pay-pal ) don't want advertised .........

You are at risk of losing serious money

enough said ....................

take it or leave it :smile11:

[wonwinglo]

Despite what E-bay say to the contrary,Pay-pal is owned by them,this is confirmed on the Auction guild website,Pay-pal were denied an office in England due to admin problems,they did the next best thing and set one up in Ireland,however contact phone numbers are closely guarded and change every few months as they are leaked.

The weak link with these online auction houses and pay sites is their lack of customer care,as you have found out,E-bay in fact have cut back on staff handling complaints due to a drop in business and spoof@ebay is handled by automated machines.

Take it from me the companies are linked although they pretend otherwise.

[Guest]

i too had my paypal account frozen as i had over £8k go through it in 18 months, i have a premium account for our ebay business....... where it really hacked me off is they accused me of money laundering, as i had this 8k go in and out and i was selling to internation bidders and i was also buying goods internationally....they requested information such as my passport details, copies of utility bills and similar- no wonder identity theft is on the increase !- i sent some information they requested but covered over some details ie the last 5 digits of my passport number and did the same with each bit on information they needed. once they had got all the details it took them 3 weeks to unfreeze my account, i sent a strong email to their customer support telling them what i thought, 3 weeks later i got a response .... i did not get an appology but they did then leave me alone and no funds were deducted ... so i did not loose money, just could not access my funds....GGRRR !

since thne unfreezing my account has been problem free...... so its a case of hit and miss.....

[Guest]

i would never give my passport or bills to anyone other that the govournment. (like the dsa or passport office)

[Guest]

like i say i covered up most of the sensative data, i did not care if they wanted to look at my mugshot !!!- i deliberately did not give them all the sensative data- that would be madness !

[Guest]

I use paypal but try not to leave much money in the account - transfer it to my bank acc when it's over £50 or so.

One thing which irritates me about Ebay/Paypal - Paypal charge a variable fee on each transaction something like 3-5% based on the final auction value. If a customer buys something and paying by paypal I usually ask if they can contact me first regarding those fee's and then add those to the final amount.

Supposedly it's against Ebay's rules to do this as they aren't getting final sale auction fee's on this additional percentage.

Most people just pay without reading the payment details and on an expensive item the additional percentage irritates me enough to ask people to send the additional amount rather than pay it from my own pocket.

[Guest]

Paypal's fees are supposed to be bourne by the seller anyway not the buyer.

[wonwinglo]

Golden rule with Pay-pal is never keep too much money in the account,as soon as it builds up either spend it on goodies or send it to your bank account,that way if someone does hack into it there will not be much to take out.

Pay-pal seem to have a thing about money laundering ? and they do freeze accounts that reach the £2,000 mark,and then you have the problem of un-freezing it,they send a release code after filling in forms etc.

A lot of people hate the high fees they charge for depositing money into your account.