So, what's wrong with PayPal and why is this site here?

PayPal Sucks is an anti paypal site to expose the nightmare of doing business "the paypal way." Post your complaints, troubles, fraud stories, lawsuits, and other dissatisfaction in the forums. Read the links & faq pages for help in resolving your paypal troubles and complaints. Read the options page to find an alternative to paypal, perhaps even get yourself your own merchant account to access credit cards directly. To enumerate the complaints:

1. Their customer service is horrible. They hide their telephone number, (intentionally - by their own admission) and only provide support via "form" emails:

As for the customer service, Sollitto said they intentionally make the phone number very difficult to find in order to save costs."

If you have a problem, you are at their mercy! (And you will eventually have a problem.)

2. Their terms of service are not completely disclosed upon signup and some key "conditions" are not disclosed. No place do they openly tell potential members that their money is 100% at risk. That PayPal can, will, and has in the past, completely cleaned out customers' accounts, (including your checking or savings account) with no appeals process available.

3. If PayPal feels your actions are questionable, PayPal is the investigator, judge, jury and executioner. "Telling your side" of what happened, in most cases seems to be irrelevant. They also refuse to provide you with the details of their investigation and withhold documents they relied upon to make their decisions. Your only contact will be an email that says:

Thank you for contacting PayPal. We apologize for the delay in respondingto your service request.

After review, the decision has been made to keep your account locked. Thisdecision cannot be appealed.

If you have any further questions, please reply to this email.

That will be end of it as far as PayPal is concerned. You can email back, but you'll just get more of the same.

4. If you are a bona fide, up-standing individual with hundreds of successful transactions, but someone pays you with a stolen credit card, your account (by PayPal's own admission) is immediately flagged as being "criminal behavior" and any money in that account is confiscated. If a customer "disputes" the charge, same thing happens. (See email above.)

5. PayPal's fees are now up to 2.9% plus $.35 per transaction. A money order costs $.50 to $1. The bank charges most businesses $.05 to $.12 per check. A good credit card merchant account is about 2.3%. (Plus you can contest chargebacks and have merchant rights.) On a $100 item, PayPal's fee is over $3. At one time, PayPal was the cheapest way to send money, but they are now one of the most expensive, plus you totally at their mercy in regards to chargebacks.

6. Money sent from PayPal account to PayPal account is subject to the exact same fees credit card purchases are. Thus every transaction makes PayPal money, but it's nothing more than an entry in a computer database on their system. No money has actually moved.

] So, what's wrong with PayPal and why is this site here?