Digital BW, The Print

At 7:05 pm -0600 2/8/04, Ken Carney wrote:

>My question is whether there are reliable places besides ebay on the 
>internet. I don't really trust ebay/paypal (I see to open a seller 
>account they want my bank account number in addition to a credit 
>card number. I know --- everytime I write a check someone has my 
>bank account number, but still it doesn't sound right, and I've 
>heard lots of horror stories, defrauded once there myself...).


Ken --

We too were uncomfortable with giving PayPal complete access to our 
bank account. The obvious (and frighteningly real) scenario was that 
someone would hack the PayPal withdrawal authorization and withdraw 
all of the funds in the account. Since US banking law allows banks to 
hold the account holder at fault, even in cases of obvious fraud 
(whereas credit card companies must protect the client, except for 
the first $50 -- which they usually waive), we felt this was a valid 
concern. Valid enough to cause us to not upgrade to a "verified" 
PayPal account for some time. (**)

The way we finally solved the problem was to arrange with our banker 
to create another account which we only use for PayPal transactions. 
We keep the minimum balance that the bank requires for no monthly fee 
($1200 in our case) and only add to it if we buy something from 
someone  who cannot take credit card transfers (people with 
"personal" rather than "premier" accounts).

This way, even if someone were to gain full access to the account, we 
wouldn't lose everything we had in the bank -- only the $1200 maximum 
we have set.

Except for that caveat we've found eBay an excellent place to buy and 
sell and have never had any trouble with PayPal.


Hope this helps,

-=-Dennis


(**) BTW: Anyone who doesn't believe that the law allows banks to 
dump fraudulent losses on the account holder should have their 
checkbook stolen sometime. If someone writes those stolen checks your 
bank _will_not_ stand behind you. If the checks go through the system 
(and they invariably will, no matter how obviously wrong the 
signature) then your only legal recourse will be to recover the 
stolen funds from the person who fraudulently wrote and signed the 
checks. Fat chance.