Paypal Is A Scam

For those of you that use PayPal to either sell on EBay or accept credit cards on your site, this is a warning, you may want to find another company to recieve your online payments. This post is not based on information I have found online or friends that have had some poor experiences using PayPal, the information that I am going to share with you is from personal experience with the company.

My first negative experience with PayPal was a little over a years ago, it had been several months since I had used my account when I decide to start selling on EBay again. I logged into to my account and updated all my information (new address and a new checking account). A few weeks later after selling several items on EBay, I attempted to log into my PayPal account to transfer some funds. I was shocked when I saw that the funds had been frozen due to "fraudulent activity". According to the PayPal website I could follow a few simple steps and my money would be unlocked, at this point I had over a hundred dollars in my account. I was instructed to send PayPal a copy of my driver's licence, a recent bill and a recent bank statement. The only problem with that was I had closed my original checking account months ago and therefore couldn't provide them with a recent statement.

I spent hours a day for weeks on the phone with PayPal trying to get withdrawal access granted to my account. Over those few weeks I spoke with over a dozen customer service reps. and several supervisors, all of which were extremely rude and didn't seem to have any idea what they were talking about. I was told by one of the supervisors, Susan I believe, that my account could not be frozen for more than six months. I decided to give up and wait it out. Guess what, my account was frozen February 16th 2008 and remains that way. Basically, PayPal stole $167.38 from me and their customer service treated me like a thief the entire time I was trying to retrieve my money.


EBay has changed its policy's and now you can only use of PayPal as a form of payment. Probably because Ebay owns PayPal and is trying to maximize their earnings made from fees. The problem is there are a lot of scammer out there that use Ebay because it is so easy to scam PayPal. Once a buyer files an "item not received" claim PayPal will withdraw the funds from your account. If you don't have enough to cover the automatic refund, they will withdraw the money from any linked accounts. I once had an Ebay buyer request a refund and then send back an empty box. When I contacted PayPal about what had happened, they said that there wasn't enough proof because the buyer had provided them with a tracking number. Due to the outrageous fees and PayPal's scammy behavior, I can no longer afford to sell on Ebay.

If you continue to use paypal, I would recommend that you not keep more than one hundred dollars in your account. I would also suggest to start a separate checking or savings account to link up to your PayPal account. PayPal acts like a bank but it isn't and therefore isn't bound by the same rules and regulations that banks are. There are a lotof PayPal horror stories out there, paypalsucks.com is a site dedicated to informing people about the dangers of using paypal and also offers some alternatives.

Good Luck,

The AntiScammer