At 8:34 AM -0700 6/26/02, Robert Patterson wrote: >On Wed, 26 June 2002, "Dennis W. Manasco" wrote > >> PayPal gives me the heebie jeebies... > >I think the reason many buyers have this reaction is the fact that >they have to sign up and are eventually required to give a bank >account if they want to use it for more than a few transactions.
Yes. This is one reason I will never do business with PayPal. American law strictly limits consumer liability for credit card fraud to $50, but most credit card companies will fully cover any on-line fraud if you sign a notarized statement attesting to the fraud. The banking lobby has been successful in stopping all laws designed to protect customers from fraudulent electronic withdrawals from their checking accounts. You cannot entirely protect yourself from this, but having a history of never letting anyone electronically withdraw funds from your account, never explicitly allowing anyone to electronically examine your account and never agreeing to any contracts which allow a merchant to access your account for funds unrecoverable from another source would go a long way in court towards making a case against someone who fraudulently accessed your account PayPal has the ability to check my credit rating under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. As a result of that they have the ability to check the ownership and limits of my credit cards and, through the card companies themselves, they have the ability to check whether or not I have the credit available to pay a particular charge. Why do they want my bank account number? There are probably several reasons, but one of them has to be that they want to be able to garnish my checking account should there be any problem with the credit card company. Not only does this give them a way to work around the laws restricting credit card fraud but, should they accidentally misplace a decimal point, to clean out my checking account. > Even though in my experience these concerns are misplaced, I >certainly respect anyone who feels this way. Paypal takes security >*extremely* seriously. Ironically, in fact, this is the reason for >most of the complaints. Paypal has been notorious for freezing >accounts containing huge amounts for disputes over tiny amounts and >then being unresponsive when questioned. I believe this has >primarily been a growing pain. I would like to think so as well, but: If I can hold a $100,000 account hostage for 60 days over a $20 disagreement I can make $500, even at todays miserly 3% or so for jumbo secured deposits. Do that over enough accounts (even for much smaller amounts) and leverage it against higher risk investments and you are starting to talk about real money. >For these reasons, I *do* offer alternative payment methods. Thank you. >I'm not sure why Dennis mistrusts EBay, See my reply to Dennis Bathory-Kitsz. (Basically my experience with PayPal raising its head again.) >but Billpoint is only tangentially part of EBay. It is an electronic >payment system that is highly secure, works flawlessly, and requires >no sign up. It supports credit cards from 40 countries. I can't >imagine why anyone would be concerned about it, except on the >general principle of being concerned by any web-based cc payment. If this is another system similar to Kagi or Digital River, which merely provides secure web payment without looking at bank accounts, I will examine it. > > Even a snailMail address to send a check to would be welcome. > >You will find that option on the order form at the website. I am sorry but I was unable to find this. I will examine the Billpoint documents and get back to you should I need further assistance. And by the way -- quite aside from all this payment plan business: Thank you for making some great plug-ins. Best wishes, -=-Dennis -- _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
