| Key is to be paid in non-revocable funds - John stated two examples of those; western union (after pickup) and bank wire.
PayPal is reversible.
Making matters worse is that PayPal is a very shady outfit.
Though to their credit, the PayPal rep who replied to you was straightup - what he wrote is accurate.
With that said, PayPal is generally fine for low dollar transactions with trusted buyers.
Key word being "trusted". It's important to be aware that if any PayPal funds in the chain turns out to be bogus, PayPal will sometimes attempt to recover the loss from legitimate transactions using some very sketchy methods.
Ie. Person A steals a credit card, hacks another account, etc ... Then person A pays person B (who is unaware of the stolen funds), person B then later pays person C ... but sometime later PayPal discovers the funds are bad, then they may attempt to get the funds back from person C (withdraw to bank acct is usually the trigger for the clawback to begin) even though they have absolutely no connection to / knowledge of person A.
PayPal is best avoided, especially now that they appear to be imploding - and this is being openly discussed on PayPal's own forum at Ebay (they own PayPal).
As far as alternatives ... escrow, as others have already mentioned, provide much security to both buyer/seller while still offering convenience. Escrow.com is very fast.
Ron |