Originally posted by dipo 1 Sooo, having read all of the above, and somewhat skittish now is there a safe (?) payment site out there? I buy a lot on ebay and PayPal has and/or is touting the safety of using them. As always respect all of your opinions.
In the U.S.:
1. Deal with people you "know" and have reason to trust. E.g., people who have a posting history on this site, and some good feedback. Brick and mortar stores and some history in the market (fly-by-nights who rent space for a few months and then vanish don't have any history).
2. Where corporate entities are involved, check where they're from and look at websites for states' secretaries of state or local tax assessors to see whether they're actually properly chartered and doing business. You'd be surprised how many "companies" don't actually exist.
3. USPS money orders - no tracing back to your bank account, verifiable, immediately good as cash on receipt, and replaceable if stolen or lost in the mail. Downside: immediately good as cash on receipt and irrevocable.
4. debit cards issued by a federally-insured bank and used as credit cards - the Fair Credit Protection Act gives you sixty days from the date of a statement on which a charge appears to back out the charge for nondelivery, fraud, etc. Never authorize automatically recurring transactions, and tell the bank you want to "opt out of overdraft protection" (which limits any charge to the amount you've actually got in the bank account - it doesn't involve fees, though the banks state it as if it did - they'll tell you about the horrible risk of a transaction being declined because of insufficient funds, which is exactly what you want to happen if someone on the other end decides to charge you $2000 instead of $200.)