Using Paypal Wisely

I think it is important to post a sort of warning thread about Paypal. It is kind of a necessary evil if you want to use Ebay. Paypal is not seller friendly, if there is a conflict they tend to act towards the buyer.

The biggest suggestion is to keep a very minimal balance in your account. Currently there is a story of a charge back and this has been reported many times and you have little to no recourse when the money is pulled out of your account. Paypal can not take funds directly out of your bank account or your credit card, so if there is an attempt to pull money out of your account and there is none, there only recourse is to freeze your account. Obviously a pain in the ass but better than the alternative.

Lee

Unless their policies changed, they can take money from your bank account or credit card. That happened to me when I bought my CJ Plank. They double dipped me. First taking money from paypal account, which fully covered the cost of the card. Then they took the same amount of money from bank account. Somehow I managed to get a real person at paypal and they even acknowledged that this a known problem, that people were getting double dipped on purchases over a dollar amount.

The best thing you can do is tie your paypal account to a savings account that you keep a minimal balance in. At my bank, I only need to keep $1 in the account to keep it active. When I buy something, I transfer money from my checking to savings, then to paypal. When I get money it goes the other direction. PayPal will never be able to get more than couple of dollars from me if they try and double dip again. It's a bit of a pain, but it is a lot better than getting hit with overdraft fees, etc.

Jay

wait i don't understand what you're saying jay. say the plank is $500, they took $500 from your pp balance and $500 from your bank account? or 250 here and 250 there? pp's never withdrawn anything directly from my bank account without my consent. one time i used the paypal card for a purchase and had a -.89cent paypal balance, it stayed that way until i paid it.

Here is Paypal on this issue:

10.2 Reimbursement for Your Liability. In the event
that you are liable for any amounts owed to PayPal, PayPal may
immediately remove such amounts from your Balance. If you do not have a
Balance that is sufficient to cover your liability, your Account will
have a negative Balance and you will be required to immediately add
funds to your Balance to eliminate the negative Balance. If you do not
do so, PayPal may engage in collection efforts to recover such amounts
from you.”

I would think that Paypal would get in huge trouble if they started accessing accounts without consent and this seems to say you will have a negative balance until you take care of it.

Lee

They took $500 from both accounts. What I really wonder about is that if I wasn't diligent about monitoring my accounts, would have just kept that extra $500?

When PP first started, your account was linked to a CC or bank account. In the fine print, you agreed that they could access those accounts to cover any shortage in your PP account. Apparently enough people bitched and filed enough lawsuits that they had to change this practice.

Still doesn't make me feel any better about them since a buyer can still make a bogus claim about a bad description, etc and get their money back and keep the item.

Jay