Older, but no wiser

My son is now £140 poorer thanks to this policy of Paypal:

“Payments received in your PayPal account may be reversed at a later time (in some instances up to 180 Days following the time of receiving the payment) if such a payment is subject to a chargeback, reversal, claim or otherwise invalidated. This means that for some of our sellers, payments received into their account may be reversed after they have been paid and after the seller has delivered any goods sold.”

He sold an iPod on eBay, received confirmation of the buyer’s payment into Paypal, shipped the goods, then a few days later Paypal took the money back out of his account, because it turns out the buyer was using a stolen credit card.

So much for seller protection. We both mistakenly thought that Paypal acted as a security buffer between buyer and seller, but in practice it seems that if Paypal accepts a criminal as a client, they're able to pass on the effects of that client's criminal behaviour to their other law-abiding clients after the event at no loss to themselves. Moreover, since they're not a bank they can operate outside of banking legislation.

If you Google “Paypal sucks” you’ll find plenty of websites and blogs recounting problems with their ‘service’, and thousands of very angry and frustrated users. I've taken down the links that I had here, as it turns out many of these sites are actually linking back to (and sponsored by??) a competitor to Paypal. I make no comment about any competitor's service; Paypal still sucks.