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I disagree. I sold something. The recipient said there was nothing in the box when he received it. Payment is taken back and I no longer have the item.

That happens sometimes but I'm talking about how buyers protect themselves, not sellers. You are basically backing up what I'm saying that there are more buyers who are crooks than sellers.

Best advice I can give for a seller is to document, document, document. Take pictures of the product going into the box and have witnesses. Make sure you have evidence of the weight of the package and the item. Only ship via traceable services. Use an escrow service if you are really worried or if the item is especially valuable (eBay offers one). Don't sell anything on eBay you cannot afford to lose. There is no way to perfectly keep all crooks from trying to scam you but I've sold probably 15000 items on eBay over the years and over 99% of the buyers are perfectly fine. We had trouble with about 1% of buyers (mostly hard to please people) and about 0.1% were people actually trying to rip us off.

Using an escrow service, its the safest way to make a major purchase with an untrusted party. I used http://www.escrow.com/ last year when I sold a domain name I had used for 15 years. It was quick, easy, and thier fee was tolerable.

That's exactly what escrow.com does. They aren't owned by eBay, but they've been around almost as long.

I mean what the hell are the fees for at eBay? A website and advertising all over the place? Everybody and their mother has a website

Not one that gets forty gazillion hits per day. When you're paying eBay's fees, you're paying for buyer eyeballs... the same thing you pay for when you place a classified in your local newspaper. Nothing new under the sun.

Nah, buyers just need to stop being so loose with their money and start using escrow. If a seller won't agree to escrow, even if you offer to pay all the fees, he's probably a low-life scam artist.

Many people wouldn't buy a laptop sight-unseen by mail from a classified ad, but sell it on eBay and they're tripping all over themselves trying to fork over the cash without a lick of common sense.

Big-ticket items? Escrow, escrow, escrow. And always use Escrow.com -- it's the only escrow service eBay recommends, and you won't get suckered into an escrow scam (barring any future potential for "HACKED BY CHINESE!!!11").

Well, for starters they could offer an escrow service.

www.escrow.com is the preferred escrow provider for ebay. Yes, it costs extra, which is why it isn't done all the time. It's also a bit more work for the buyer and seller; for example when I used it last year it involved doing a wire transfer.

This web site provides good escrow solutions for ebay users.

OR you could just use an already established escrow serivce

I've used it to successfully purchase a large ticket item through an eBay user and am very happy with it.

The real problem with PayPal isn't with what it is, but with what it isn't. PayPal is *not* an escrow service. They say it flat out. And I'll be damned if I'll give my money in trust to a party that isn't.

Escrow.com *is* an escrow service. There are others. Yes, it costs more. But you have 1) protection, and 2) legal recourse if you get screwed.

A large number of people here have complained about how PayPal refuses to handle complaints about merchandise either not being sent or arriving in poor condition. While PayPal politely handles some of these cases, they are no means obligated by their terms to handle them all.

The fact of the matter is that PayPal is a money transfer agent. They are the electronic version of Western Union. Money transfer agents basically take money from one person, charge a fee, and then give the remainder to another. While they may have some fraud guarantees, they do not normally handle merchandise disputes. They just move money from one place to another, and then their job is done.

What people here seem to consider PayPal to be is an escrow service. An escrow service takes money from person A plus a fee, and then notifies person B that the escrow service has money from person A meant for them. Person B then sends the merchandise, which Person A inspects. If Person A is not satisfied, they send the merchandise back to Person B. Otherwise (ideally), Person B gets paid.

Escrow services endure a lot more risk than a money transfer agent does. They deal with a higher risk of fraud, and take more measures to compensate for this. PayPal does not consider themselves to be an escrow service. PayPal's own FAQ says so.

Examples of *real* online escrow services include Escrow.com and Tradenable. Note that I have not used either of these, so buyer/seller beware.