I remember when PayPal first started out and it marketed itself as a friendly person-to-person money exchange service, and it was fantastic. It was incredibly simple and good value for money too. Then it got bought by eBay (anyone remember Billpoint?) and became a corporate monster; by 2004 it was completely unrecognisable from the original site.
I don't have a problem with PayPal, without their services I could not maintain a second income, but I don't agree with their over zealous policies. Many people on here sell f akes and I completely understand why PayPal terminates their accounts but for many others (like me) we've done nothing wrong but are deemed too risky. I had a 9 year old account (100% feedback, 4.9 DSRs) NARU'd because of the high risk involved. It is nonsensical. They apply absolutely no common sense to any cases.
I also dislike the way they request a million documents from their users, and the site is usually always slow and buggy. Oh, and they hide behind the laws of Luxembourg (PayPal Europe anyway) because they know they would have a much tougher time enforcing some of their outrageous policies if they were based in the UK or Germany.
They will be obsolete within 10 years though I reckon. I think the big banks will come up with their own person-to-person money services very soon, and eventually PayPals market share will crumble drastically. They know at the moment they can get away with treating their customers like ****, but eventually other options will be available and then they'll start lowering fees and getting rid of some draconian rules.
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