Everyone happy with PayPal?

[mouser]

 

Occasionally I get email from someone who is wary about using PayPal.

I've had a PayPal account for over 4 years, using it mostly as a a way to pay for things rather than receive money, and I have to say that I have never had a single bad experience, and overall my experience has been fantastic.

So far my experience in terms of using it to receive donations has been equally pleasent, and PayPal charges a much lower surcharge than other credit card / shareware processing services, and they are well set up for accepting user-chosen donation amounts.

But I am aware of all the sites on the web complaining about PayPal - all of them seem to be from seller's who have had their accounts closed by PayPal and had some of their money confiscated without warning.  I can certainly understand why this would be infuriating, especially if PayPal is not forthcoming about their reasons behind it..

I've also had at least one person tell me they were having trouble getting PayPal to accept their donation.

I'd be very interested in hearing other people's experiences with PayPal, both bad and good, and whether you think I should set up an alternative donation method (and if so, any recommendations?)

[Ann Elm]

I have had PayPal forever! Never have any problems with it.

[nudone]

  never had a problem either. haven't sold a great amount through it, few hundred quid maybe. used it more to buy things with.

[ricnaff]

  Never had any problems in something like 3 1/2 years. I've used it to send and receive payments. I've used it for international currencies. In fact, for some currencies, PayPal let's you choose who (you or the receiver) will pay the exchange fees. They do have some restrictive polices about payments to certain types of receivers. Just about anything that looks like gambling or smells too much like money laundering will be blocked, if possible, before it is sent. At other times, they catch on to some questionable transactions after doing some traffic analysis, and close the receiver's funds until a full investigation is performed. That can hurt, sure. But hey, they went through a federal lawsuit a little over a year ago about being a source of money laundring, and they were forced to implement rules. Sometimes their rules result in a "false" hit on abuse of their service, but with Uncle Sam looking over their shoulder for failure to stop such activity, can you blame them?

They're quick and easy, and just the thing to prevent my card information from getting out to vendors I know nothing about. Very handy, too, when I've left my CC at home and need to pay for something while online at a cafe or library or work or...

[tenseiken]

I haven't had a problem with PayPal itself, just a time or two with people I was sending money to.

[Zero-Point]

I've never had an issue with PayPal; only used it for purchasing.

[dom424]

I never used it because of everything I have heard.  When I finally did try to purchased I had problems.  Turned out it was me.  Sometime I must have denied one of it's cookies.  After I figured that out it worked fine.

[Scott]

I've heard horror stories about PayPal, but I've been using them for quite a few years, and never had a problem.  I can't imagine an easier service to use.

With that said, I do keep my bank accounts out of my PayPal profile, unless I need to be "verified" for some reason.  And at that time, I'll add a bank account, then remove it ASAP afterward.  I've been meaning to establish a special bank account just for PayPal, and have only a couple hundred bucks in there, but so far it has been one of those things I never get around to.

I recently tried YowCow.com, and hated it.  First of all, to sell stuff, you need to create a special type of account, where try treat you like a full "vendor", which is ridiculous.  (I occasionally sell a hard drive or something similar; I don't think that makes me a "hardware vendor".)  Then, one day while Googling for my name (something I do occasionally to ferret out privacy leaks), I found my name and other private information posted on one of YowCow's pages.  I complained to them, and the page soon disappeared.  I closed my YowCow account after that.

[JeffK]

I think Paypal is fine and I like vendors who give a PayPal option.

Jeff