HI everyone!
I wanted to post a thread discussing PayPal, and the how that works...or actually does not.
I have had horrible experiences in dealing with Paypal.

Basically, repeated attempts to reach a human being at PayPal only end up in frustration. Just trying to find a phone number can take hours.
Once you do, it's incredibly difficult just to get someone on the phone. After hours of trying, and you finally get someone on the phone, they are not able to take any action to assist.

Imagine a consumer who'd made a purchase using PayPal, and had some problem.
If it was paid directly using a credit card, it's a simple matter to get the credit card company to intercede on the consumer's behalf.
If you're looking for PayPal to step in on your behalf....well, have you got 6 months to wait?

To make matters worse, eBay now owns PayPal.
Now, if you want to list an item on eBay UK, you MUST accept Paypal.
Freaking extortion Aggressive on eBay's part, right?

To make horrible matter even worse, a jewelry merchant will have to wait up to two months to collect the funds in full.

I really feel that eBay has us over a barrel as we have alot of friends and clients in the UK.
The bottom line here is that since we need to be included on eBay UK,  we've again started to accept PayPal on a limited number of listings BUT- we've added about 10% to the selling price to cover the cost of the high commission and the problems.

For those reading this, it's no problem at all. We have not increased the DBL prices by even one penny.
Bottom line, please make sure you look at the item's price on the DBL site to get the real bottom line.

It's a shame we can't discuss this on the eBay listings themselves- as I would hate for someone to actually pay the higher price...but we can't risk having someone pay by PayPal before talking to us.

Any ideas from our wonderful CDi audience will be greatly appreciated!

Paypal can be very heavy handed. You either use the service. or find a way around paypal.


Rio

The answer is no to all of your questions, except to the first one, where it is none. Apart from the very dubious advantage of anonymity (which, to be honest, is only useful if the vendor/payee is slightly less than honest).