Originally Posted by l_m_g

The problem with Ebay is that it is monopolistic as it tries very VERY hard to ensure you only use its bought-and-paidfor PayPal payment service. As a new seller you can ONLY accept PayPal payments, and even with a feedback score of 104 (as of today) I cant decline to use paypal. Hows that for monopolistic business practises.

This is OK for the buyer, but as a seller this is a problem. The buyer can at anytime within 60 days of paying for the item "dispute" the transaction - either "the item hasnt arrived" or "its not as described" or "its damaged in transit" etc etc etc. As soon as the buyer files a claim, PayPal immediately remove the purchased money from the sellers account - irrespective of whether he is in credit with his paypal balance or not - then they start their investigation! In otherwords "guilty until proven innocent". More than 99% of the time PayPal finds in favour of the buyer and refunds their money and the seller is left out of pocket and without the item! For those sellers who say in their auction text that they "wont accept paypal" or "cash on collection only", if PayPal finds out about that text (and they even have automated search software bots to locate phrases like that) they will cancel your auction and mark a warning against your seller account as it breaches their monopolistic terms and conditions.

As said earlier in the thread, unless you absolutely have to, always use a creditcard with PayPal. PayPal is NOT as secure as you might think and the number of hacked pp accounts increases every day. You as a buyer have some protection is you use a creditcard but NONE if you have PayPal connected directly to your bank account. For those who have a points-generating creditcard or a cash-back creditcard like me, it also makes sense to use the creditcard for PP payments as you earn whilst you spend (just zero the balance every month because of the interest).

I believe there is a website called paypalsucks.com or similar. I use Ebay and therefore use PayPal to buy lots of items, but when I sell on Ebay its after I have tried local classified ads for forum-direct-posts. I am ALWAYS nervous selling and accepting PayPal payments.