PayPal Alternative? - What's your opinion?

As a buyer, when you pay with an eCheck, you lose the leverage of a credit card chargeback. This is reason enough for me not to use an eCheck for big ticket items. Not to mention having to keep a large balance in the bank account to which your Paypal account is linked.

For small cost items...say up to $1000 ("small cost" is all relative), I will sometimes consider an eCheck, and I always offer the alternative to buyers when I'm a seller. It certainly saves fees.

Paypal up to about $1K is not that expensive. If cost is an issue, you can send a USPS MO or Official Bank Check via a confirmable overnight service for about $10-$12. Once you have built up good feedback over a couple of years, most sellers will not require a waiting period once they receive some form of official check or MO, especially USPS money orders that they can cash the same day. I am not familiar with ING but will check it out.

Audiomax;

I had an experience with Paypal that contradicts your opinion, sorry to say. Two years ago I noticed $2,000 was missing from my checking account. I had authorized no transactions and was mystified. My bank found that Paypal had withdrawn the money via ACH withdrawal and posted it to my Paypal account for no reason. I bounced about 4 checks in the 24 hours before I discovered the issue. Paypal was incredibly difficult to work with, and though they had clearly withdrawn the money without authorization, they took 5 business days to return it to my account. No apologies, no explanation, nothing.

When I worked my way up the management chain looking for an answer, I was simply told that if I was dissatisfied with Paypal I should close my account. Arrogant f@#$^ng people to say the least.

Paypal may be safe in YOUR experience; but I assure you, they often screw up bigtime. A little web search will show you I am one of many to be screwed over by their poor practices.

I bought a preamp from an Audiogon member about three years ago. PayPal took the $2400 out of my checking account as usual/normal.

Two weeks later, I got a certified letter from PayPal saying I owed them $2400.00. I had a hard copy of my bank statement showing the original debit of $2400 from PayPal. I sent that to them and they still said I owed the money.

I went to my bank for help and to explain what was going on and had the branch manager of the bank send a notorized copy to PayPal. PayPal still claimed I owed the money.

About a month or so later, I got a certified letter from a collection agency saying PayPal had turned the claim over to them.

3 years later and over $600 in attorney's fees, I'm still dealing with this.

Luckily the seller got his money and didn't even know what was going on.

PayPal can kiss my hairy white butt...

Paypal and ebay both suck. They are not secure either. All someone has to do is to breach either site and they can add fake names and addresses in your account, then it looks as if you made a purchase. I had $1674.00 charged for 2 items I never bought. Of cource, I got all of my money back, but they were no help in the matter. I sold 2 items last week and they both wanted to put a hold on the funds for 21 days or force me to ship before funds went into my account or they wanted a positive feedback first. I spoke with both customers and they gave me a positive before receiving the units! So the money was released to me. I thank both customers very much for that. I have perfect feedback but I must have 100 or more (so they get more money) after that I will not be considered a crook! I also have an unpaid for item that I sold the same day. Lets see if they help me with that. Sometimes you need to use the lesser of two evils, but please beware of ebay and paypal policies. They only care about themselves! Good luck to all.