Pondering Minstrel

Wednesday, December 01, 2004

PAYPAL ALTERNATIVE

It is very unfortunate that the customer service and customer policies at PayPal aren't better because it is a truly valuable and convenient service idea. However, if you're with them long enough, you'll eventually run into a major snag. Most of my friends were tried and true PayPal believers, and then it happens, but I think one of the things that bothers me most is that, through (now) illegally misleading wording in their user agreement, the general public is lulled into thinking that PayPal is just like a credit card or merchant account, so they don't read the fine print.

Back to alternatives. Yisroel (Izzy) Goodman, who is a semi-professional skeptic that writes occassionally for AuctionBytes, wrote an article on his website reviewing the different payment services available.

Izzy claims that
1) I am not an employee of, consultant of or have any connection to any payment service except as a customer or former customer.

2) I personally have never had any charge backs from any payment service and my account has never been restricted. My personal experiences with payment services, (including the ones I don't recommend such as Paypal, Paydirect and Billpoint) have been good.
He states that buyers and sellers should use PayPal with "extreme caution", but he does recommend ValidCash.com, which is a service owned by Checkfree.com, the bill pay service.
I think the CheckFree system is as safe as it can be. Since they have the name, address, bank account, driver's license and social security number of the seller, I would think this would minimize buyer risk and prevent scamming sellers from using the service.
However, keep in mind that he himself has not personally used it. I have a friend signing up for it in order to avoid PayPal, so I'll let you know how it goes.

PayPal - The "Pal" You Pay