OneBigDay
Enlightened
Now that I have been doing this for a while I understand the pipeline and all the pieces involved. I would never post a unique transaction id on any public forum now that I have had some time to absorb the whole process. At the time I started this thread I was pretty green on the forum and was trying to avoid PayPal but found it impossible to interact with other forum members without doing so. No real regrets in signing up at this point but I don't trust PayPal any more than I did 2 years ago.
This is exactly the kind of thing that sets off alarm bells for me too. For example just last week I had a transaction with a Chinese merchant. I did not have enough funds in my account so I used the "e-check" method that supposedly takes 3-5 days to "clear". Funny thing is those funds were gone from my bank account within a few hours of the transaction, however, the paypal status remained in "Pending" for another 4 or 5 days. I would really love to know what they are doing with my money in the time it is gone from my bank account until the time they inform the seller that the transaction is "Completed". Keep in mind the money is completely invisible from my view during this entire 5 days - gone from my bank account, not showing in any holding place like my paypal balance, and the merchant has not received the money yet. Whatever happens during this 5 day period is unknown and not transparent to either the buyer or seller. Now imagine holding on to a couple hundred bucks for 5 days at a time from hundreds of thousands of people? You all can draw your own conclusions from this but I expect that if there was a fully transparent alternative to PayPal we would see mass exodus from said service.
Great tip from Robin24k on using virtual credit card numbers. I had looked into this in the past for online purchases in general but there were only a couple banks offering this service. I can't remember why I didn't sign up? I may look into this again.
This is exactly the kind of thing that sets off alarm bells for me too. For example just last week I had a transaction with a Chinese merchant. I did not have enough funds in my account so I used the "e-check" method that supposedly takes 3-5 days to "clear". Funny thing is those funds were gone from my bank account within a few hours of the transaction, however, the paypal status remained in "Pending" for another 4 or 5 days. I would really love to know what they are doing with my money in the time it is gone from my bank account until the time they inform the seller that the transaction is "Completed". Keep in mind the money is completely invisible from my view during this entire 5 days - gone from my bank account, not showing in any holding place like my paypal balance, and the merchant has not received the money yet. Whatever happens during this 5 day period is unknown and not transparent to either the buyer or seller. Now imagine holding on to a couple hundred bucks for 5 days at a time from hundreds of thousands of people? You all can draw your own conclusions from this but I expect that if there was a fully transparent alternative to PayPal we would see mass exodus from said service.
Great tip from Robin24k on using virtual credit card numbers. I had looked into this in the past for online purchases in general but there were only a couple banks offering this service. I can't remember why I didn't sign up? I may look into this again.
