slightly off topic - Pay Pal

See http://www.paypalsucks.com/ for horror stories. PayPal is open to this type of abuse as the buyer can report the item as "not received", and PayPal reverse the payment to your account - the buyer gets the mailed item, and a refund. Common eBay scam.

Not being a banker, I ask the question....

How does Pay Pal, or anyone, without authority, REMOVE money from YOUR account?

Cheers

Wolfie

With PayPal, it's technically not your account. The account is not a bank account as you or I would know it, for example Bank of South Australia.
They just offer a clearing or transaction "bucket" for the buyer and seller to swap funds.

Safest method for the seller is a direct bank deposit from the buyer, the buyer cannot reverse that transaction. Not even the bank without a heap of legal a*se covering.

Sorry to hear about you being ripped off. E-Bay is a great concept, it's a pity scum slips into the gene pool whilst the chlorine level is low.

Geoff.

As much as I hate ACA for the way it reports, this is probably a story they would love, they are on a tell us if you've been ripped off thing. Write them an email and if they think they'll get lot of viewers to watch they'll follow it.

And with Ebay being such a big thing, I can only imagine the ads for that nights show.

Worth a try you have nothing to lose.

Sandy

The flip side is when a seller does not supply the goods as promised, it is relatively easy to get a refund through Paypal (as I have done). Takes longer than 2 days though - 30 days from memory.

I thought that the dispute procedure took MUCH longer than 2 days though - involved sending several emails to the seller, (via Paypal) which had to be replied to, and then forwarded to the buyer (me) for reply and notification to Paypal, before any action was taken in my case, so I don't see how this could have happened to you as you describe.

BTW, I have no affiliation with Paypal (apart from using it occasionally), nor any particular axe to grind.

regards
Terry

Paypal is a great thing to use when buying on E-Bay. I always use it when buying but I would never use it for selling for the reasons outlined in posts above.

E-Bay (which owns Pay-Pal) has a myriad of fine print which they throw at you if you contact their complaints so their ars* is covered in all situations which might otherwise see them liable for offenses. I'm sure they have enough money for the best lawyers!

I always preferred sold.com.au but E-bay swallowed that one.

aqwaddo

I personally have only had one bad ebay experience, and after a bit of searching tracked down an Australian Paypal office phone number, after a 5-minute phone call to them I had the payment reversed no problems. Sorry to hear you have had a less pleasent experience.

I sell a fair amount of stuff on ebay. I ALWAYS check to "Direct Deposit to Bank Account" option - or COD. Never PayPal.

Hi All,

I actually work in an Internet Banking area, and we get all manner of complaints about eBay and Paypal. With eBay, all we are able to do from the banks point of view is submit a request to the other bank and ask that the person return the funds. However if someone is scamming you, then they aren't going to say yes! And second of all because of all the red tape involved, this process takes 6 to 8 weeks!!!

As far as PayPal goes, we can't do anything at all.

It saddens me when someone calls and tells us they have just payed $xxx to someone and lost their money. My advice would be if buying only buy from someone who has got a positive history on eBay, and if selling, direct credit only or a proper escrow service if the item is expensive enough, and don't post it until you have their cash in your hot little hand.

As far as your situation goes Apwaddo, I'd try using eBay's dispute process. It is a bit nicer then PayPals, and throw around the threat of legal action to the buyer if they won't give you the cash. (even if you don't go through with it, which you wouldn't bother for $450. sometimes the threat is enough to get them to pay)

Hi all,

Try oztion.com.au, they are not as big as SOLD.com.au when they launched few years back but they are growing rapidly. I knew about it through emailcash few months ago.

Paul

Thanks for all the replies. I should point out that my compaint is not against the buyer - I fully realise there are crooks all over the world and that 'buyer beware' applies. My point is I thought i had done that by using PayPal which advertises itself as offering security when dealing with e-bay transactions. It does no such thing. Besides charging you a fortune ($17 0n $450 in my case), they offer no more security to a seller than posting an item and hoping and praying the seller will send you the money when he receives it. Even less in fact, as they send you a nice e-mail to tell you that the buyer has paid you, a statement showing the money is there for transferring to your account and a nice piece of b***sh*t, telling you how secure you are to be dealing with PayPal, then they have the right to withdraw the money from you after they have posted it because they were too slack to check their funds in the first place. I say again - DO NOT GO ANYHWERE NEAR PAYPAL! Sometime on the future they will rob you.

One more thing that has not been mentioned here and will help you........politely, patiently, get proof of delivery from Australia Post.