I have used Paypal many times and no problems!

Wow! just start talking about money and look at how much discussion there is. :) This has been informative and for the majority it looks like there are few problems with PP. Right?

We have used Paypal for years....owned by Ebay. If you ship from USA to overseas, it is super easy for crooked customers to reclaim the money they sent for the item. Seller is out item + foreign shipping costs....there is no protection there. We no longer ship out of USA...therefore, no problems. Never had a problwm receiving items.

they do NOT get your PP account info...they only get a notice saying your money is now in THEIR account... do some reading on PP and find out what you are missing!!

aint it the trueth..we have a plant nursery here that charges one price for cash, another for CC and yet another for Debit card...the latter two are illegal proceedures for here in OK, but some how they are still doing it..I quit doing business there 2 years because of it!

My DH signed up for a paypal account and bought some stuff on ebay that was expensive junk. PP would not help him get his money back. We have PP tied to a credit card and we tried to go through the credit card company to get our money back. We found out something scary.

If you have problems with PP transactions, or if you have bogus PP charges on your credit card you are on your own. Because of the agreements PP has with credit card companies, you have to rely on PP to do the resolution and they are not governed by any law. Anything they do to help you is out of their generosity and they can change their policies in a blink of an eye.

We use PP only rarely and only when there is no other choice and it is something we can't get elsewhere.

I am glad for all of you who have good experiences, but I view them with a lot of caution and am very wary of what I buy.

In our webstore we use Paypal as our merchant services processor, as do many web stores and other outlets.

Basically, whether you use mastercard, visa, amex, discover, or any other cc or debit card on our site, or whether you use paypal or paypal express, you are going through paypal.

We get charged two levels of fees -- the fees for USA transactions are the same to the seller whether you use a credit card or paypal account. The fees are slightly higher if it's an AMEX transaction, and about 1% higher if it's an International (OUS) transaction. Because of the weak dollar, we also get nailed in foreign currency conversions.

So basically, if we sell something to you and you're in the USA, we'll pay about the same thing if you use a credit/debit card, or use your paypal account.

There are no piled-on or double charges when you use your credit or debit card with Paypal -- the fees for merchant services with paypal are about the same as most merchant account providers, a little higher than some, a little lower than others.

This is true if you are using a paypal account with a credit card tied to it. However, if you just use a credit card on paypal without logging in to a paypal account, you still have the credit card company protections. I would recommend using this route rather than having a CC tied to a credit card, for that reason.

Likewise, if you use a credit card direct (not using paypal to pay) on a website that uses paypal as its merchant services provider, you're still protected directly by your credit card company.

It's really not true that paypal isn't governed by any laws -- they are regulated the same as any other merchant services provider. And their policies heavily favor the buyer in any dispute. As they are a highly automated company, it may be hard to get to the right people to help though, but once you do, they are generally pretty helpful.

In any case, I would urge everyone to read the fine print in your account agreement, and read their policies to make sure you can live with them before opening and using a paypal, or any other financial account.

There is a provision within paypal that you do not have to have an account if payments to someone are under 5,000.00- inquire about this is all I know about it.Paypal can be used for many things like buying selling payi cash witng bills etc. IT is a more secure way then a check or cash as it can be tracked. It can be a good thing but we have made exceptions for some of our customers letting have know the item will be shipped upon reciept of payment meaning a much longer lag time.

The nice thing about PP is that they don't know any of the bank or credit card info. The money is put from your source into your PP account and then is transferred to her PP account. I have used it for years and have even transferred funds to my DD in New Zealand at a fraction of the cost that the bank charged me.