LFingar Loc: Claverack, NY

Unless a local fellow comes through with his offer I will soon be listing a camera for sale here on the Hog. To facillitate the sale I wanted to open a PayPal acct. I know the it is a widely used service but just the same I am leery of providing my bank acct info to anybody. Any comments about experiences with PayPal would be appreciated.
Thanks

Terra Australis Loc: Australia

I use PP extensively and have never had a security problem. They do ask a lot in fees though.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I've been using it for years - no problem. When I get some money in there, I transfer it immediately to my bank. I don't want to have hundreds sitting there as they go out of business.

You are aware that they take a cut of whatever you get paid, right? I think it might be 3%, but it could be variable. Selling on ebay, I have to pay an ebay fee and then a PayPal fee.

Bob Yankle Loc: Burlington, NC

Paypal joined forces with eBay several years ago as an easy way for folks to pay for their purchases. I have been using it for years, as a Buyer, with nary a problem. Now I notice that it is appearing more and more on many online vendors as a valid payment method, and is SO easy to use (which is why people like it). It literally has become the defacto "standard". As mentioned before, though, they will take out a slice of your profits just to use their service, but that's the price of doing business on the Internet. I only wish that I had been the person who thought up that business and could sit back and collect thousands of dollars per day on transactions from an automated piece of software.

sb Loc: Florida's East Coast

They charge a fee, just like the credit card companies do, but the advantage is that anybody with a bank account can use it, and you don't have to put a cc number out there on the internet. I have used it, although not too often, for many years, without any problems. I wish more vendors would use it. For small companies and individual sellers it is the perfect solution to offer safe instant transactions to their buyers.

donrent Loc: Punta Gorda , Fl

I've used PP for many years with absolutly NO problems whatsoever.. I also will be using it to take charge cards at my store...

Indi Loc: L. I., NY, Palm Beach Cty when it's cold.

I like the protection offered with PP. I also have a PP credit card.
The only thing I don't like is reading their statements. I never know when that say "balance," if it's what I owe or what's in my account that they owe me.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Maybe I was grandfathered in with a PayPal account from many years ago? I have only a credit card linked to my account. As I write I'm thinking that I buy more than I sell... The few times I've had people pay me, I used that balance within PayPal to then make other purchases... If you plan to use the proceeds for online purchases, you won't (shouldn't?) need the link to a bank account. B&H for example takes PayPal and when you exhaust your PP balance, the remaining is applied to your CC automatically by PP rather than the merchant accepting the PP payment method.

marki3rd Loc: Columbus, Indiana

You don't have to worry about giving your banking information to PayPal, it is actually a safer way to do online transactions because you are never exposing your CC number to make payments and PayPal itself is 100% trustworthy. You may have noticed that most online vendors offer PP as a payment option because it is the securest and easiest method to pay and more and more people are recognizing that.

If you pay a vendor with PP there is no charge for the service to you, the vendor pays a fee. If you accept payments from a customer, you do pay a small fee but IMHO it is well worth it for the convenience and security it provides. Another advantage to bear in mind is that anyone paying you via PP has been vetted by PP and that pretty well eliminates the possibility of fraud. My advice is go for it.

Cattreasure

Paypal has worked well for me. I would rather hold them accountable for my cc and/or bank info than people I do not know. I sold a doll a couple of years ago. The buyer wanted it shipped priority and paid the extra for that. I sent him the shipping notification and left for the post office. When I got back, the buyer had cancelled the purchase. I was out the doll, packaging and shipping. I filed a complaint with paypay. Paypal said they would investigate and give me a decision within 180 days. One week later the money was in my Paypal account. I transferred the money to my bank account and it was there within 3 days. Totally happy with Paypal. Much safer way to go.

Billbobboy42 Loc: Center of Delmarva

I totally agree with all above comments. I've used PP for several years (purchase only) without any transaction problems. The only complaint I have had - and it's not really of any consequence to me - is their system will not allow deletion of a CC on your personal account that is expired or cancelled for a good amount of time. On three occasions, due to potential CC fraud (not PP related) I had to cancel and get a new card. So, to clean up my PP account I added the new card and TRIED to cancel the old one(s). The message I got was something like "you cannot delete a CC while there are pending transactions". Well, I looked at my transaction list and there were no active/pending transactions. In at least one case the last transaction was finalized months before. So, I emailed PP to ask what's going on (on two occasions) and received one of those dumb canned responses in which it simply repeated the error message I got trying to delete the old cards to begin with.

Thus, if PP does not care if their memory banks are littered with old data, it's no skin off my back. I was simply trying to keep things "clean".

I have heard a very few rumors, and that's all they are, of bank accounts being drained of funds. Can't factually substantiate that.

Bottom line : about as safe as it gets for conducting online financial transactions.

SpeedyWilson Loc: Upstate South Carolina

Been using PP for many years, with only one small problem. Someone tried to put through an unauthorized transaction against my account. But, PP quickly took care of the problem, and I never lost a penny.

However, since then I've put an extra layer of protection between my bank account and PP. I use an online checking account service by 360 ING. I only keep a small amount of money in the account, and use it to funnel money into my PP account when purchases are made.

LFingar Loc: Claverack, NY

Thanks everybody for your input. I was pretty sure that PP was as safe a way as any, and probably better then many, to do business on the internet, having seen it around for years. Still, doesn't hurt to check.
Thanks again.