I've never ordered online before and was curious as to the safety of online payment methods such as paypal. Any advice would be very welcome. Thanks!

PayPal has been the subject of govt pressure since it is not an FDIC Bank and might crash losing millions of dollars, but as far as you, a buyer/seller for say $50.00 its a very quick convenient method. Its also cheaper than BidPay which thieves $5.00 per transaction for its electronic cheque.

Some large eBay dealers don't want you to use PayPal simply because they are charged roughly the same fee as a Visa or Mastercard tansaction would cost them.

The transaction is as secure as any other online banking in its DES encrypted SSL web pages.

Thanks very much for the advice...

A good alternative may be c2it.com It is not as popular yet but it is backed by a reputable company citicorp/citibank.

I have heard too many horror stories from people having paypal accounts frozen and the like. An internet search will turn up many problems.

I still use paypal to send payments, but once they started requiring linkage to a bank account in order to receive payments, I stopped using them in that capacity. Like I said before, after the horror stories, I did not what this company having direct access to my bank account!

In general, if you stick with reputable companies and use a credit (not debit) card, I think that the internet is pretty safe.

Just my opinion...
--Kris

I'd advise AGAINST using "Ebay Payments" which is backed by Billpoint. See my site for details of a recent escapade with them.

Buyer Beware

The matter was finally resolved yesterday - but Billpoint never did a DARN thing to solve the problem they created.

Thanks very much for the advice guys...let me just see if i have got this right...

avoid ebay payments and billpoint...

and paypal is okay for buying stuff but not for selling stuff?

(i suppose i could just stick with mailing cheques )

Paypal takes a small percentage out of your money when you sell stuff, but the time you save not having to cash checks and money orders is worth it.
It also saves the people who buy from you a lot of time. Paypal has been great for me.
I hope this helps.