how does paypal work

Paypal works wonderfully in an auction situation provided the seller provides fixed shipping charges beforehand. When the auction ends there is nothing for the buyer and seller to waffle over and no time waiting for the payment to arrive; the buyer pays and the seller ships. Done deal!

They allow you to set up an account for free and funds may be sent using your credit card. Once my account had been set up the amount they would allow me to send slowly decreased from a reasonably high amount to $17.00. They said to send more than that to someone I had to get verified by giving them a bank account number. This included money that they were holding for me in my account. In other words, I tried to purchase parts from percy audio whose value did not exceed the $32 they were holding in my account but since that was over the $17 limit I couldn' do it without giving them the personal bank account number. It may be legit but in today's age of identity theft and fraud it just seemed kind of suspicous to me so I didn't do it.

I've been using it for a few years now and love it. The method I use is the bank-to-bank funds transfer, it's immediate and most sellers will start the shipping process once they get e-mail noification from PayPal that funds have been transferred to them, which is immediate.

Most internet merchants absorb the PayPal fee, but in transactions between single parties, that's negotiable.

Beware. IT's fine until you have problems. Then, there is no serivce or support and nearly no way to get a real person on the phone who can do anything for you. I happily used them for a while until they shafted me out of $500 a year ago and never resolved it. I complied with their so-called 'seller protection policy' to the letter, which apparently mattered for naught. They have no regulation yet operate like a bank. I will never use them again and to date they have still never resolved my issue above. This is but one of hundreds of stories, many far worse than mine.

-Ed Sawyer

I have never had a problem and love it's ease of use BUT Ed sawyer is right. I've personally heard horror stories. Probably one in a few thousand go wrong BUT I'd hate to be that person. I still use it; with trepidation.