OT: How many of you have Paypal accounts?

as being generally slow to embrace 21st century technology :-) I still do not have a Paypal account but seems to be a growing trend for purchasing items on line, for e-bay etc. Thought I would canvas board members as to whether the general consensus is an account of this nature has a low chance of being hacked, i.e. what the security risk is etc. I am considering getting an account as it seems to be the way to go for future transactions. Any comments/suggestions for minimizing credit card fraud or is this really not a concern to most.
Thanks,
George

i have a account that i've used a couple times with no problems

i have a paypal account i got for ebay so i can sell stuff

I have had an account for five years now and buy a lot of stuff on Ebay where a Paypal account is essential in my opinion. An alternative is called Nochex but this does not seem to be as popular.

There seem to be more retailers now who offer this as a standard form of payment too.

Been useing it for a couple years now, probably hundreds of transactions (prolly more like 1000 transactions), with no problem at all. It's a great resource. You know it's owned by Ebay, right. If you sell things on ebay it's the only way to go. They are integrated together and you can ship, pay for and track your ebay packages through the two sites. Makes doing business on ebay very, very easy.

I've had Paypal for 5 years. No problems.
It's great! Customer Service is very responsive. I use the Business account with Visa/MC Debit Card. Fees may be an issue but I'll trade that for the transaction closing speed.
You can recharge your account from any number of accounts/credit cards, and conversely transfer funds to those named accounts. When an ebay auction closes, I can receive payment, and ship in hours.

with no problems at all. I primarily use it for eBay purchases and sales, but have also used it simply to send money to someone else. I have used it for several hundred transactions, I would guess, and have not had a single issue with the system. I was a bit concerned about security, at first, but no longer. At first I used it only to pay with my credit card, but that costs the seller a bit more to cover the credit card fees. I then went to using my checking account, with what they call an e-check, but that took a few extra days to allow the payment to clear my bank account. Now I am using my bank account, but also using my credit card account as back-up. That makes the payment instantaneous, as the credit card would be used if the bank account transaction failed to clear due to insufficient funds. PayPal was an independent operation, at first, and they did have some growing pains with customer service as they grew so quickly. Now it is owned by eBay, I believe, and it has improved as a result.

I love the ease and speed with which I can pay somebody and am always disappointed when the seller doesn't use or want to set up a PayPal account.

Try it, you will like it.

Dick Schneiders

I have been using PayPal for four years now with almost 100 transactions. I never had any type(s) of problem. I believe eBay owns PayPal now so they are backed by eBay. Credit card fraud is always an issue online. PayPal is more secured than some of the other services. Besides, your credit card company has your account protected so max liability is only $50 (by law). Most banks wouldn’t charge you a penny if a fraud occurred with your account. I wouldn’t worry… :)

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Originally Posted by George M

as being generally slow to embrace 21st century technology :-) I still do not have a Paypal account but seems to be a growing trend for purchasing items on line, for e-bay etc. Thought I would canvas board members as to whether the general consensus is an account of this nature has a low chance of being hacked, i.e. what the security risk is etc. I am considering getting an account as it seems to be the way to go for future transactions. Any comments/suggestions for minimizing credit card fraud or is this really not a concern to most.
Thanks,
George

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any problems with it, except for the fact that i get at least one scam email
a week looking like an official paypal document telling me that there's a problem with my account and they need me to log in and reenter all my info with a convenient link provided to go directly to the site...I send these to paypal each week without clicking on the link and they tell me each time that its a scam not real and they will try to track down the sender from the email that i forward to them.... This happens about once a week and I imagine if i was ever foolish enough to actually click on this fake link and fill out the info then I would have problems.... But I get the same mail from a fake ebay once a week or so also... But no never any problems with the accounts themselves and I use them all the time...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by George M

as being generally slow to embrace 21st century technology :-) I still do not have a Paypal account but seems to be a growing trend for purchasing items on line, for e-bay etc. Thought I would canvas board members as to whether the general consensus is an account of this nature has a low chance of being hacked, i.e. what the security risk is etc. I am considering getting an account as it seems to be the way to go for future transactions. Any comments/suggestions for minimizing credit card fraud or is this really not a concern to most.
Thanks,
George

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We've been using ours for 4-5 years now with no problems.

I would say the biggest risk would falling for a "spoof" email that looks like is is from PayPay asking you to re-verify password and credit card #'s, etc. (my brother in law almost fell for an email like that) As long as you read their policy statement and understand that they will never ask you for that type of information via email and let yourself fall for would-be idenity theives, you'll be OK.

I haven't experienced it, but have read of folks who tried to work directly with their credit card companies to stop payment on a bad ebay transaction and faced negative concenquences from ebay for going outside their normal dispute resolution process, but I'm not sure of the details.