I have found you can trust that your money will get it is meant to go safely but my god it takes forever and they whack ridiculous charges on to the reciever of money. They supposedly need 3-5 days to 'transfer' the money but its really them whacking it in their account and making interest on it for a while. Its a joke. Depends what sort of transaction you do but if you can avoid paypal with another safe option then I would lean more towards that

I think if they are using paypal you may want to ask for an additional 3% to cover the fees that paypal incurs. I dont know if they are going to do a certain transaction that avoids this but I would look out for that

When buying from overseas on Ebay, I will only trade with people who accept payment through Paypal. Very safe and reliable, but as Schecky states watch out for their fees if you are the seller!!

Russ, tell him to pay the paypal charges what ever they are, if he wants to pay by paypal.  Might be better to just do a direct debit.

Paypal is fine, have used they for years and so far so good.

thanks for the info, sounds like it could be the go

Russ,

If the offer was for your boat via email, SMS or boatsonline.... DO NOT DO IT!!!!!

If it was i bet the offer was from a GMAIL email or similar and they were buying for a present or they were away on holidays and offered what you are asking or more?

Have had a few similar offers (even from english and chinese mobile phone accounts) when we were selling our boat and now on the daughter's car that is for sale.

I won't type the details but here are a couple of links to give you an idea of what they get up to:

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1340763

and

http://www.commerce.wa.gov.au/ConsumerProtection/scamnet/Scams/Online_car_sales_sca.html

But to answer your original question..... Normally Paypal is a good option for things like Ebay etc as they insure your transaction

What I am saying above is in normal use Paypal is OK..... but if not a trusted site online BEWARE!!!!!

F**K that, make them pay via direct deposit.

its not the one where they say they are very busy and will send an agent on their behalf is it ?

I will only pay via paypal. Had an incident recently where i bought an item from ebay and it wasnt sent. Contacted paypal and they tried to contact the seller, No reply so paypal gave me my money back. Its like a buyers insurance, thats why he wants to go through paypal. I wouldnt transfer ANY amount to ANYBODYS bank account, not without GETTING the item first.

Have bought heaps of items from overseas, will only deal with sellers that accept Pay Pal payments.

Have that extra safety if the goods don't arrive.

Paypal/ebay are pretty evil, but useful.

Sure, but I recently had to get DOCEP onto paypal because they refused to issue me refund in a particular circumstance. The seller had taken my money and failed to ship the goods, yet ebay had confiscated the money from the seller because I proved that he was involved with identy theft. Now, ebay claimed that I wasn't covered because the seller's feedback level had dropped (was ok when I bought), and wouldn't give me the money.

It was only after getting DOCEP onto it that they refunded me. The kicker is that they also nullfied the transaction, so there was no bad feedback and the like, and they do that to keep their averages up for good transactions and positive feedback!

paypal is pretty secure and the only was to go imo.

simply dont give them the items until the money has landed into the paypal account and transferred into your own back accoun, once its there its all yours then let them pick up the items................simple and safe and if they were 100% legite then they wouldnt worry about the extra time it will take for this process to happen.

oh and from memory now paypal has dropped the fees from transferring the funds from your paypal account into your own account

hey russ

there are some  people around that are scaming ebay.

my mate had his boat for sale on ebay, someone from o/seas offered to buy it unseen and pay by paypal.

found out later it was a scam and thats how they get into your account details, be carful,

 as mako said, when the sale has been done and you have the cash in your hands then post or pickup.

good luck

I buy a lot of gear online and not just fishing gear, but unless someone has a Paypal account, I won't go near them. Paypal is the only way to go and they look after you if there are any problems.

Paypal is great for buying and selling things online, but the drawback is it also favors the scammers, my brother has had over 500 transctions no dramas whatsoever.

if you are the seller you dont have to ship the goods until you have their money in your account. thats way it takes 2 weeks to ship from some suppliers .

Had a few Scams try to get me through pay pay with the sale of my car... If it seems to good to be tru it probably is. Iv had people offer me the asking price for my car(37000$) with out even seing it there just aftet detales to rip u off jmo

thanks for all the heads up. too many scammers around so got to be careful these days