I am a big PayPal fan on the buyer side, not so much on the seller side. PayPal can either use your bank account or it can tap your credit card depending on your choice. At $3000 total purchases from any given buyer PayPal will force you to link a bank account. Either way PayPal then pays the merchant. It is convienent for merchants since they don't have to maintain a credit card processing system or third party service. Drawback is transaction fees are high but from the buyer's side of the story that doesn't matter. For businesses with low value, high volume transactions PayPal works out to be roughly the same transaction cost as American Express. Visa and Mastercard are about 1/2 this cost per transaction. Again, from a buyers point of view PayPal is transaction fee free just as credit cards are. The merchants take the hit.

First of all, IF you ever get an email to review or update your account, delete the email. That is a Hacker trying to get your sign in info. They use the shotgun approach. Shoot out messages to any email account they can find and they hope for a clueless to give them the info, and many do.

I have been using Pay Pal for quite a while. Usually, only for paying my on line purchases. I bought a car from a daughter and used Pay Pal to pay her each month.

A couple times someone in sent me money that way. All I had to do was use my Pay Pal account to transfer the money into my checking account.

By the way, Spammers and Hackers are looking at these messages for anything they can find. They do not have to sign in, but can at least read the messages hoping someone types in a email address.

Rich

Art,  from the Tam valley site

Check
If you are not a fan of PayPal you may also order by sending me an email at dmcree at tamvalleyrr.com with the order and I will reply with the final amount including shipping and tax (if applicable).  I can not take credit cards directly.
Send the check to:
Tam Valley Depot
4541 Hidalgo Ave
San Diego, CA 92117

Marc Fournier, Quebec

I will never use pay pal again since I posted about a year ago. The first and only time I used it unauthorized purchases were made with my card, which were eventually corrected, but what a pain. And, I did not share info,  allowed my system to be hacked, yadda, yadda.....Everything was done right but since the card info was out there in the paypal system, it was used by someone else.

Steve   

to be clear regarding my relations with Tam Valley.  I have no problem with Tam Valley.  I admire their products, They are ingenious, useful, and not expensive, my problem was with the ordering system that allows no human reaction or modification once the credit card numbe is input.   I wish I had known earlier of the check option described above by Mark.

Also - in an prior post I described the Tam Valley equipment I was planning to order for four turnouts with a final cost of $20 per turnout.  When I learned more of what I needed the order for eight servos  came out to about $13 per turnout.  I still like the idea of using servos -  

Art

never a problem. Are you positive it was PayPal fault?

never a problem. Are you positive it was PayPal fault?

I learned today that Tam Valley does not accept credit cards but the shopping program they use offers a choice between credit cards and Paypal.  I selected credit card, entered my card number, and the program reported "you have a paypal account why not use that."  I was surprised that Paypal was in the picture.  They had to have received my CC number and looked it up in their files.   I believe now that the shopping program is operated by Paypal in an agreement  to save Tam Valley the bookkeeping.

I selected credit card again and paypal took over.  I could not turn them off  and the purchase was processed.- I went through a lot of robo-phone tag today before getting my Paypal membership terminated and money returned to my Mastercard account.  Everyone working on the week-end - that was a surprise..

I have used Paypal in the past and it was undoubtedly convenient at those times but I resent their taking over my financial decisions.

I still like the servo idea and may re-order - this time directly from Tam Valley usiing a check.

Art

Art,

Tam Valley is using PayPal as their transaction handler. That is why your purchase was routed to PayPal.

What Tam Valley is doing is what a gazzilion small businesses are doing - allowing PayPal to manage transactions. Virtually all businesses use some sort of third party service. It is usually hidden from the public view. PayPal has changed the game by successfully targeting individuals and small businesses as their niche market. PayPal has made it mindlesssly simple for both the purchaser and the merchant to use. The fact that people can use their PayPal account to pay (as I do) or they can pay with popular plastic is a one-upper on the traditional transaction handler business.

As PayPal matures from their eBay beginnings they are slowly becoming a viable, widespread payment option. Proof is in their latest marketing as they are beginning to introduce the customer protection element common amongst plastic. PayPal is also nice in that your credit card number isn't spread around to hundreds of merchants as you shop. The merchant never sees the buyer's account info with a PayPal transaction. When PayPal databases get hacked... well there is risk in everything!

I do a lot of selling on Ebay and PayPal is my opreferred payment method since I don't have the headache of trying to collect from anyone. I don't accept credit cards but of someone insists on sending me a check instead od payng by PayPal, I'll ladly accept that but Itell any customer who wants to pay by check that I'll ship nothing until the check clears my bank which ca take anywhere from 4 to 10 days due the vagaries of the Federal Banking system which doesn't always work with any eficiency.

PayPal represents intsant cash to me a guarantees that I ship out product within 48 hours fo the most part. Of course the payment has to reach me while I can still ship an item and for that It needs to reach me early in the mourning 5 days a week as anything else won't allow me to ship until the next day or if it's a Friday, shipping will have to wait for Monday. I have yet to hear any complaints about that because I don't like to fool around with this as I don'y like when it when a vendor screws out with shipping something I've bought to me.

As for PayPal, anything that can be automated is usually good foir both buyer and seller. Why? It elminates alot of the problems that other wise might occur. But one has to be careful with PayPal because you need to realize what not to do. One of them is never to reply to any message that asks you to sign on to correct a problem because those are always phishing expeditions to get a hold of your private information and they should be forwaderd and reported to PayPal by sending a copy of the message spoof@PayPal.com.

Irv

  I selected credit card, entered my card number, and the program reported "you have a paypal account why not use that."  I was surprised that Paypal was in the picture.  They had to have received my CC number and looked it up in their files.

This happened because the email address you entered on the credit card form was the same email address you most likely used for your paypal account.  I'm pretty sure PP isn't scanning credit cards, just the email address.  I'd be surprised otherwise.

I've seen this before, and there's usually an option to still say "No thanks" and continue using your credit card.

Keep in mind that since Paypal is the shopping cart software and CC processor for this merchant (and thousands of others), all payments regardless if a paypal account or a direct credit card will still go through them.

Heck, some sites use Paypal's pro payments which lets you completely hide them in the backend. You never leave their site or see a paypal logo, yet Paypal is still handling and processing the transaction (I have a client I setup with this kind of store). You'd never know.

So while some folks may say "I'll never use paypal again", you're probably using it more often than you'd expect when buying online with a credit card.