Commerce sites having no PayPal option

[Cuddles McKitten]

If an online store only had the payment options of credit/debit card and mailing in a check (but no PayPal), would that be an inconvenience or annoyance to you?

Edit: If it makes any difference, the average transaction would be about $500.

[handy]

If PayPal is the only option, then I won't use that business.

I have a PayPal account which I've not used for years, nor will I.

[NCLI]

If PayPal is the only option, then I won't use that business.

I have a PayPal account which I've not used for years, nor will I.
Why not, anything we should be worried about? :confused:

Anyway, I use Paypal a lot, mostly because it's so easy, so it would certainly annoy me.

[LowSky]

Paypal is a great idea when you dont have direct access to your wallet. Otherwise paying by credit card is just as safe and reliable.

[samalex]

With the way I've seen some home grown E-Commerce sites built I would put my trust in PayPal before much else. Amazon, B&N, etc I'll trust, but for smaller mom-and-pop stores who have a family friend or small web dev shop built their site, some of those sites are SCARILY insecure.

What I've seen MANY times are POS websites custom-built and setup on a web host that offers an SSL connection between the customer to the website. Then when the customer updates their shopping cart and checks out with their CC# and personal info, the app simply concatenates all the info into a text variable and using perl, PHP, etc emails it to the mom-and-pop shop so they can manually process it as if you walked into their shop.

From the standpoint of the business they think they're secure because the customer see's the SSL connection and their inbox starts filling-up with orders, but it's grossly insecure since the customer info is floating around out there on multiple systems and also being transmitted over the Internet insecurely. A packet analyzer can easily pick-up POP3 traffic as can it be easily readable via an unencrypted wifi connection. Multiple places were your info could be jacked.

So yes, if it's a smaller business I will only use PayPal as an option, and even larger businesses if PayPal is an option I always use it. Not that I trust PayPal 100%, but at least they are large enough that a consumer would have some recourse if something goes wrong.

Sam

[Frogs Hair]

I avoid on-line transactions whenever possible . I prefer a credit card that protects me if the number is ever stolen .

[handy]

Why not, anything we should be worried about? :confused:

Anyway, I use Paypal a lot, mostly because it's so easy, so it would certainly annoy me.

I had experience with them a few years back, where I needed to contact them, & it was all but impossible. I eventually got to someone on a phone, after days of struggle.

I have heard of people losing funds & not being able to get them back, but I can't remember the details, so take that with a grain of salt.

[doorknob60]

No, Paypal is an annoyance. A few years back, it was easy to use and just fine. Now, it's just annoying as hell. It doesn't let you add cards or anything without some weird verification process that doesn't even work, and it's just become more confusing and frustrating over the years. I try to avoid it when possible.

[4leite]

A close friend of mine had a terrible experience with Pay Pall and lost a lot of money. I suggest you check out any of the many sites set up to discredit paypal. Basically there customer service is terrible.

Also you might want to check out "Criticism and limitations" -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal

[lisati]

It won't even accept my debit card (at least not when I last tried) :(

[samalex]

It's been a couple of years since I setup a site that used PayPal, but I remember the API's being pretty simple to implement. As for personal use, I buy and sell on eBay maybe once or twice a year and have so for many years without any problems with PayPal. We also use PayPal for iTunes and a few other larger sites with no problems.

I don't use the more advanced features of it, just use it as the middle-man when buying/selling stuff. For this it seems to work as expected, but given there isn't a storefront to walk into like most banks when problems creep up I would be leery of using it as a bank or repository for large amounts of cash.

Sam