Paypal – Is It Really Your Pal?

Paypal

Paypal is a commonly used payment system for online transactions (Hosting, Domains, Bills, etc.), but what many of us don’t realize is that a lot of scams have occurred due to Paypal. Lets face it, Paypal is still great for paying online bills or any legit company that we all know of, but many of these scammers on the loose have been getting away with a feature on Paypal known as a “Chargeback“. What is a Chargeback? A Chargeback is when you get paid on Paypal and then the buyer who paid you will get his money back saying that it was an “unauthorized transaction” and therefore you would lose the item you sold and get no money.

Paypal allows 3 types of chargebacks:

• Item not received. Buyer pays for an item but never receives it.
• Item significantly different. Buyer pays for an item but receives item significantly different than expected.
• Unauthorized use. A buyer’s credit card number is stolen and used fraudulently.

Paypal has already had many disputes from Paypal users that had been scammed but always end up saying that they will “investigate” the issue but then again, ends up that they can’t help you or some other lame excuse. So the question here is: Can you really trust Paypal? The answer is both yes and no. Yes, because you can do faster transactions with legit companies and people you know and no, because if you use Paypal to pay for domains on Domain Forums to Buy, Sell, or Trade Domains, you must do your homework on who you are dealing with.

Stealing?

Another issue is that Paypal doesn’t even seem to try to fix the problem. From my perspective and others who have been scammed, they are saying that Paypal (in a couple of days or so) always report back that it was an “unauthorized payment” and even with evidence, they still won’t help you! For example, If you sold a domain for $200 and got the money then in the middle of the night, got notified that there was a Chargeback, and you talk to Paypal and show evidence it was a scam and want back your domain, they will tell you to talk to your registrar. The only chance you have now is just trying to get your domain back.

I just hope that these sellers will be more careful and not jump the gun on selling. Always check the name, email, or if possible the IP on other places to see if the member/user is a known scammer. And try using something else for huge transactions besides Paypal, unless you want to remain with no money and no domain. Using services such as escrow can be a lot more safer and prevent scammers from taking your money and/or domain that belongs to you.