♥♥Gone to pastures new. Thanks to all of you. You are a lovely crowd, but time does not ...
♥♥Gone to pastures new. Thanks to all of you. You are a lovely crowd, but time does not permit me to do the site justice any more♥♥
Member since:01.08.2003
Reviews:633
Members who trust:492
I like Paypal. There are those who argue against it because of the charges that they levy for their services, but for me, it is a swift way of getting money from A to B, and if I have to pay a little for the use of their services, I really do not mind very much.
WHAT IS PAYPAL ?
Well its a secure way of getting money from A to B. Suppose for example, you want to sell something on Ebay (one of the auction sites on the internet). People place bids and you sell an item. Then you have to get the persons address and details of how much the postage costs, and doing everything by email and then post is not only longwinded but you can wait so long that you actually forget what you sold to whom !! Yes, of course, your ebay account keeps details, but when you have a memory like mine, I can never remember if I have billed someone or not, and sometimes your personal page on Ebay is a little slow to track things and I lose my way.
Paypal is a method of payment. You send a bill via the Paypal site, or in fact through Ebay connection with the site, and the person either ignores it or pays it. Simple. I like simple. If the person pays, you can then send them their goods, and everyone is happy in a relatively short space of time.
Paypal is also a method of sending someone money, i.e. if you have bought something on the internet and want to pay an individual or company that also use Paypal, and you can usually tell this when you go into auctions, because the Paypal symbol is displayed on the page. If it is not, then I would
suggest you contact the member and ask if they take Paypal payments.
SECURITY
Boy is this site secure. I had not sold anything for a long time on ebay and when I moved house, I decided to have a clear out and sell stuff on the net. What I forgot to do was to tell them that I had moved, and in the meantime changed my email account because the server was giving me a lot of difficulty. I tried to log in and failed, and they asked my email address. Since I had no access to this mail any more, they asked for my phone number. I had moved !!! I had a different number.
I would say from my experience of the site that the security is second to none, and worth having. I eventually remembered all on my own one night what my password was and managed to get back in again !!!
SO HOW DO YOU GET A PAYPAL ACCOUNT.
Signing up for an account is a serious matter. The site need personal information because it is their link to you, i.e. credit card details, bank account details, address, etc. It is normal. It is not daunting, and the site information is secure. Signing up was verified by email, and took me into my account. From there, navigation was easy and what I found was this.
WELCOME - MY ACCOUNT
This tells you all about the state of your account and how much is in it. Since I both buy and sell by ebay, I tend to keep the balance in the account most of the time, although you can transfer money into your bank account if you wish to. My account section of the site tells you your recent history of transactions and you can change details on this page, such as email address, bank cards, bank information. This is a useful place because you need to keep your information as up to date as possible.
You can also access all your history of transactions, both sales and purchases, and the state of these transactions, i.e. if they are paid or unpaid. I have even been known to send out two bills by accident, and here you can delete or cancel one of them and apologise to the person for having sent them two !!!
Well once you are a verified member, you see the tabs at the top of the page which tell you that you can ask for money or send money.
ASK FOR MONEY
The form for asking for money is simple to fill out. You are asked the email address of the person you want to bill, and given adequate space to say what kind of payment it is, i.e. auctions, personal payment to someone or whatever. It is simple. Once you have filled out the form, an email is sent to the person who you are billing and they can quickly get into the link and make a secure payment with their bankers card. You get a notification that they have paid and everyone smiles.
PAY MONEY
Here again, the details are very easy to fill in. I have billed people all over the world, and I always bill in Euros, although you have a choice of which currency you wish (limited to major currencies like Euro, Pound, Dollars and Yen.
Your money is paid quickly and you receive your items much quicker than you would have done had you had to wait for the post.
LAYOUT AND DESIGN OF THE SITE
I would say that the site is extremely user friendly, although they do not forget that security is of paramount importance. This is not a pretty site. It's a basic blue and white site, but it isn't there for decoration. It is there as a functional site and at this it excells.
SITE CONTENT
Well here you have your own account and the different areas that I have mentioned above, although the site offers more than this. If offers a customer service which is super and which responds very quickly in times of need.
They also have areas devoted to business users although I am not one and cannot comment on their reliability. What I can say from my little experience of Paypal is that if they can get funds from A to B so easily in a secure manner, then I would imagine that it would be worth paying for the service. They offer you the chance to have a Paypal connection on your professional site, and this really must be worth its weight in gold, because you have instant access to a professional payments system.
They also have tools to help people who have auctions, although I prefer to use the tools linked to Ebay whereby people looking at my auctions instantly see that I take Paypal services. What I do like is their email service, telling me when payments have been made and to whom I have sent bills, and also when payments have been received by people.
HOW FREE IS THE STUFF ?
The service is not free. Yes, you can open an account free. Yes, you can demand money free if like me you are a small time user of Paypal, but you get charged for putting the money in the Bank or Bank transfers but the amount is so small that it hardly merits mentioning. You are charged 2.5% for currency conversions which is fair enough, and besides anything, business users tend to up their postage and packing fees to take account of any paypal fees that may be applicable to business users, so in effect, the service is cheap considering the security and efficiency that it offers.
From my experience as a personal user and not a business user, Paypal is super. I love it. It's instant money in the pot the moment the auction finishes as most people that have bought are eager to see their goods and thus pay quickly. Compared with receiving cheques, this method wins hands down for me.
HOW FAST IS THE WEBSITE
I only have a 56K connection but I find that pages load very fast and there is no waiting in between for loading at all. A momentary pause and Voila !!
SEARCH FACILITY
This is really handy because you can put the dates of your preference in and see your transactions from here. I like this feature a lot. Transactions that are not finalised stay on the opening page, but sometimes its handy to look at your history to see if you missed something.
WOULD I RECOMMEND IT ?
I have used Paypal not only for auctions, but also for sending money from one end of the world to the other. Yes, I fully recommend it. I find their service efficient, professional, and contrary to anyone's complaints about the site, as a personal user rather than a business one, I find the site superb. I can only imagine that they do charge professionals much more than individuals which is normal, and have noticed that professional shops on ebay sometimes refuse to use Paypal but I have found their service for the "little people" absolutely unquestionably good.
I would recommend them highly.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Now i pretty much insist on paypal payment only for all my autions and other hobby trades.. i only wish more general shopping site accepted it too :) much more efficient...cheers WS
Advantages: This service is fast, convenient, and free to individuals. Disadvantages: You have to pay a small fee to have a check cut, and some people might inadvertently believe that this site is one hundred percent secure.
Sarah_B 26.01.2002 (27.01.2002)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of paypal.com
Aug 6th, 2004
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