What is up with Paypal

[Carmel Cedar]

In my experience, paypal is an outdated tool. The OP, plus plenty of others, suggest paypal's "protections" are weaker than they would be with a credit card, despite the same transaction cost. Ripoff, in my view. Plus, the few times I've had to deal with their customer service, it was horrendous - even the worst credit card I ever had was much better.

When buying from merchants, I just give a credit card ... and have one specifically to do potentially riskier online transactions. Never a problem yet, but if there were, it won't take down my core credit card.

For guitar transactions, I have migrated to free payment methods. The best is Zelle, a cash transfer service that many banks have added to their suite of services. The bank pays their fee, and you benefit by having the transaction under the bank's umbrella of protections. Easy, nearly instant fund transfer, and no 2.9% (or any) charge. Hard to see a reason not to use it!

For Zelle transactions, in lieu of the "protections" paypal provides, I go deep and vet the buyer/seller (including a live phone conversation). Effectively, I'm using diligence to lower the risk of encountering a problem vs asking a paypal to solve it after. Never an issue so far, though it does require a bit of my time. I'm ok with that.

[blackie51]

....I use my credit card on there and that solves almost all these issues. Problem with Paypal? I just dispute it with the card company and it gets fixed fast!

Exactly what I do too.

Tom

[Chipotle]

Originally Posted by Dirk Hofman

PayPal to me is handy when I want to make a purchase but don't feel comfortable giving the particular site my CC credentials.

Some CC companies give you the ability to generate one-time virtual card numbers. Same protections, but no worries about your card number being stolen. I use it pretty much every time I do a non-subscription online CC payment. Check if your CC provider offers this.

[Earl49]

While we are on the topic, I just got off the phone with my credit card company. They now consider Paypal transactions as a "cash advance" and start charging interest on the day of the purchase. It doesn't amount to much but it was annoying to see even minor interest charges on the statement for the first time in many years. I may have to change credit cards.... especially since frequent flier miles mean nothing to me any more. This week is the five year anniversary of my last airline flight EVER. (I wasn't actively tracking that, but having to deal with "customer service" at the credit card company and looking at statement dates dredged up the old bad memories).

[Dirk Hofman]

Originally Posted by Chipotle

Some CC companies give you the ability to generate one-time virtual card numbers. Same protections, but no worries about your card number being stolen. I use it pretty much every time I do a non-subscription online CC payment. Check if your CC provider offers this.

Interesting, thanks. Doesn't look like my primary card doesn't at this time. Didn't know this existed though, thank you! Will look into it should I get another card at any point.