Paypal...necessary evil many times unfortunately; I've had to use it many times which have gone well but there is always that threat of the buyer coming back with some bollocks months down the road. They also take a long time (several days) to route money to you claiming (as they have with me via phone), that it is not their fault and it about clearing times through the FR on the disbursement of funds. Please note the same linkages and paths between the banks through the FR are used to pull money from an account and conveniently seem to work faster than when they have to disburse money from PP into your account. A cynical person who has worked much of their career with the financial markets and many FSI customers including the federal clearing related entities and settlement houses might conclude they are also 'playing the float' on the funds as a rather high percentage of possibility...same with Bombaywalla's experience while that $8K was sitting in their possession.
I'll have to check out Direct Merchants (pointed out by Czarivey above).
Wire Transfer and Certified Checks have their perils too (mostly because recourse is limited in the event of fraud once the funds have moved out of an account).
It all comes down to whether we are dealing with a scumbag on the other end of the transaction. I had one nightmare transaction spanning December 2014-early February of this year that was costly but was not PP-related. Also had one in the last couple of years where the user came back several months in and claimed a working unit had issues after not hearing back for almost all of the first 3 months after shipment was received and then freight-forwarded somewhere else that was a pain to resolve but eventually did get resolved.
I'll have to check out Direct Merchants (pointed out by Czarivey above).
Wire Transfer and Certified Checks have their perils too (mostly because recourse is limited in the event of fraud once the funds have moved out of an account).
It all comes down to whether we are dealing with a scumbag on the other end of the transaction. I had one nightmare transaction spanning December 2014-early February of this year that was costly but was not PP-related. Also had one in the last couple of years where the user came back several months in and claimed a working unit had issues after not hearing back for almost all of the first 3 months after shipment was received and then freight-forwarded somewhere else that was a pain to resolve but eventually did get resolved.