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You can use PayPal to send and receive money, but you need a PayPal account to manage your payments and your business. There's something comforting about having your own account. Sure, it's yet another password to remember, but it's all yours. You can visit a site like PayPal, log in, and see your settings, your name, and your history—proof that you've been there before and that someone (er, something) remembers you. But a PayPal account [Hack #1] , in particular, has the added bonus of being able to store cold, hard cash. You can't really touch it, but it's there, and it's yours.

You can use your PayPal balance to pay for stuff [Hack #11] , or you can withdraw it [Hack #20] and add it to the shoebox under your mattress. You can also watch it grow, as your eBay bidders pay for your stuff, web site customers buy your products, or friends pay you back for sushi dinners.

But it's not about sending and receiving money; it's about finding new ways to handle transactions so that you can spend more time eating sushi (or curly fries, or whatever). The real power of PayPal is its invisibility; you can have strangers send you money and still keep your account all to yourself. Whether you're selling a single product [Hack #28] , or a cart full of products [Hack #45] , PayPal can be as slick as you need it to be. If you take things even further, you can have PayPal notify your server [Hack #65] when you receive money, or even write a standalone application [Hack #88] to manage your sales without ever having to log into your account.

But it all begins with learning the ins and outs of your PayPal account, and that's what this chapter is about. Chow down, and have fun, but don't linger; there's code to be written.

If you want to get anywhere in this business, make sure you verify your account

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You can use PayPal to send and receive money, but you need a PayPal account to manage your payments and your business. There's something comforting about having your own account. Sure, it's yet another password to remember, but it's all yours. You can visit a site like PayPal, log in, and see your settings, your name, and your history—proof that you've been there before and that someone (er, something) remembers you. But a PayPal account [Hack #1] , in particular, has the added bonus of being able to store cold, hard cash. You can't really touch it, but it's there, and it's yours.

You can use your PayPal balance to pay for stuff [Hack #11] , or you can withdraw it [Hack #20] and add it to the shoebox under your mattress. You can also watch it grow, as your eBay bidders pay for your stuff, web site customers buy your products, or friends pay you back for sushi dinners.

But it's not about sending and receiving money; it's about finding new ways to handle transactions so that you can spend more time eating sushi (or curly fries, or whatever). The real power of PayPal is its invisibility; you can have strangers send you money and still keep your account all to yourself. Whether you're selling a single product [Hack #28] , or a cart full of products [Hack #45] , PayPal can be as slick as you need it to be. If you take things even further, you can have PayPal notify your server [Hack #65] when you receive money, or even write a standalone application [Hack #88] to manage your sales without ever having to log into your account.

But it all begins with learning the ins and outs of your PayPal account, and that's what this chapter is about. Chow down, and have fun, but don't linger; there's code to be written.

If you want to get anywhere in this business, make sure you verify your account

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Sign up for your own PayPal account, which is necessary if you'll be receiving payments or using just about any other hack in this book.

Although you can send money without creating a PayPal account [Hack #15] , there are advantages to having an account, including PayPal Buyer Protection, receiving payments, and viewing account history. And since there is no cost to create or maintain an account, the benefits easily outweigh the costs.

Here's what you'll need to get started:

Your email address
Your postal mailing address
Your phone number

You'll also be asked to provide two of the following four pieces of personal information, which will be used to verify your identity if you ever forget your account password:

Your mother's maiden name
The last four digits of your driver's license
The last four digits of your Social Security number
Your city of birth

To sign up for a Personal PayPal account (see the introduction to Chapter 3 for information on Business accounts), follow these steps:

Go to http://www.paypal.com and click Sign Up.
Select the Personal Account option, select your country, and then click Continue.
On the Account Signup page, enter your postal mailing address. PayPal will double-check the city, state, and Zip Code, so they must be valid. The address you provide should be the same as the billing address of the credit card you plan on adding to your account, although you will be given the opportunity to change it later.
Enter your telephone number, email address, and password. The email address must correspond to a valid email account to which you have immediate access, because you won't be able to use your PayPal account until you respond to the verification email that PayPal sends you.

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Provide PayPal with your necessary account information without waiting for your monthly bank statements.

Federal banking regulations require financial institutions to obtain proof of your identity before allowing you to open a bank account, and PayPal uses this fact to add security to their system. If you have a bank account, it proves you are a real person, at least in the eyes of PayPal. To unlock all the features of a new PayPal account, you'll have to attach a bank account and confirm it.

Once you do this, your account will be verified and the following will happen:

You'll become eligible for Seller Protection [Hack #25] .
You'll be able to send as much money as you like. Unverified accounts are otherwise limited in the total amount of money that can be sent ($2,000 for U.S. accounts, for instance).
You'll be able to pay instantly from your checking account, rather than having to wait for eChecks to clear [Hack #11] .
You'll be able to withdraw money to your bank account [Hack #20] .

Here's how to become verified:

Log into your PayPal account, click the My Account tab and then click Profile.
Click the Bank Accounts link under the Financial Information heading.
Type the name of the bank that holds your checking account, and choose either Checking or Savings to indicate the type of account you're adding.
Grab one of the checks from your checkbook and type your bank's routing number and your account number, as illustrated in Figure 1-1.

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Add a credit card and a confirmed shipping address to your PayPal account to have your payments accepted by more sellers.

Whenever you buy something online using a credit card, the store from which you made the purchase checks that the address you provided matches the address on file with your credit card company. Retailers do this as a security precaution to guard against payments made with stolen credit cards; otherwise, a thief could use your credit card number to purchase something and have it shipped anywhere.

Address matching is done through a standard system called Address Verification System/Service (AVS), which is set up by all the credit card companies. PayPal does the same thing when you add a credit card to your PayPal account:

Log into PayPal, click the My Account tab, and then click Profile.
Select Credit Cards under Financial Information.
Any credit cards currently attached to your account will be shown here. Click Add to attach a new card.
Fill in your credit card number and mailing address; make sure the address matches the one on file with your credit card company as precisely as possible.
Click Add Card when you're done.

If PayPal is able to match the address through AVS, it will designate your address as Confirmed and you'll be able to use your credit card to fund payments right away. Plus, your payments will be eligible for PayPal's Seller Protection Policy [Hack #25] , and sellers (especially on eBay) will be much more likely to accept your payments.

If you're an online seller, you'll need to decide if and when you'll consider shipping items to an unconfirmed address. See the introduction to Chapter 3 and [Hack #25] for account settings related to accepting payments from unconfirmed addresses.

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Use an extra credit card to pay when you can't get into your account and don't have time to recover a forgotten password

If you find you have forgotten your password, PayPal can help. But if you need to make a payment now and don't have time to recover your password (a process that can take from a minute to over a week, depending on how much you know about your own account and how current that information is), there is a shortcut: use a credit card that is not already attached to a PayPal account to make your purchase.

You can't use a credit card already attached to an existing PayPal account; the system won't allow it. If you have only one credit card, you're out of luck and will need to recover your password before you can make another payment.

Note that if your debit card doubles as a credit card, you can use it with PayPal, either for a one-time purchase or, more permanently, by attaching it to your PayPal account.

Here's how to do it:

Clear the cookies in your web browser.
Click the appropriate button to make the payment, such as a Buy Now button on a seller's web site or an eBay checkout flow.
Choose the option for paying with a credit card if you do not have a PayPal account ("If you don't have a PayPal account and want to pay with a credit card...").
You will be prompted to complete your payment.

Now that you have made your purchase, don't forget to recover your password! You have several choices at this point, depending on how much you know about your account and how current your account information is:

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In the event that PayPal limits your account as a result of suspected fraud or other problem, you can restore it to its original, unrestricted state.

If PayPal determines that you have been engaging in fraudulent or high-risk activity (such as selling fake merchandise or using stolen credit cards) or that you have not been abiding by the terms of the user agreement (e.g., you've been using PayPal to sell pornographic material or weapons), PayPal will impose limits on your account. Your account might also be limited if you initiate a bank transfer that then fails due to insufficient funds or if you accept a payment that is later disputed by its sender.

PayPal often limits the account's access to certain features, such as sending, withdrawing, or even receiving money. This helps protect any other PayPal users with whom you've been dealing and helps reduce subsequent losses that PayPal would otherwise have to incur.

You know that PayPal has limited your account when your Account Overview page has a pink box that says Account Access Limited. As you might expect, click the "Click here for details" link for an explanation.

PayPal prides itself on being good at spotting high-risk behavior, but they also recognize that not all high-risk transactions are necessarily fraudulent or bad and not all disputes are the seller's fault. Thus, PayPal has an appeals process for those who have had their accounts limited.

Needless to say, the best thing you can do if your account has been limited is to precisely follow the instructions on the web site and in the notification email you receive. Often, this entails completing a sequence of steps to provide PayPal with evidence of ownership of the PayPal account, ownership of the financials attached to the account, and verification of your own identity and address.

Only after you have completed

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Use PayPal's Multi-User Access feature to provide a separate login for each employee in your organization.

Even though you might trust your employees to take care of your kids for the weekend, you might have second thoughts about giving them full access your organization's PayPal account. To that end, the Multi-User Access system enables you to add up to 200 different users to a single account, each with configurable account privileges. Each user is assigned a separate login ID and password.

PayPal first has you establish an Administrative email address. PayPal will send all email notifications related to your account Profile to this email address. This is a security precaution so that PayPal can alert you at a different email address if someone tries to change the primary email address on your account.

PayPal steers you in this direction the first time you try to create a new user. Even before that, you should make sure you have at least two email addresses registered and confirmed in your account [Hack #8] .

Once you have your two email addresses, you are ready:

Log in to PayPal, and go to Profile→Multi-User Access.
Select an address from the list; note that you won't be able to select your Primary address.
To create your first login, click Add and type in the user's name when prompted. It's best to use the person's actual name, but you could also consider using a job function or other nickname (e.g., Customer Service 1).
Choose a User ID (must be 10-16 characters).

The length requirement and restriction against special characters make choosing a user ID is less than optimal. Further compounding the problem, these user IDs need to be unique for all of PayPal, not just for your account (e.g.,

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Use the information PayPal publishes about members to scope out sellers and buyers, and see what they can learn about you.

While all human relationships are built on trust, you might not want to rely on blind faith alone when your money is at stake. To help you determine which vendors and customers to trust and which to avoid, PayPal offers information about its members' standing with PayPal.

You can check any PayPal account's User Status by initiating (but not necessarily completing) a transaction with that user:

Log in to your PayPal account.
Click the Request Money tab.
Enter the email address of your prospective buyer, enter an amount to request (a single penny will do), and select the type Goods (other).
Click Continue.
The Request Money—Confirm page that appears (shown in Figure 1-5) will tell you the account type, Seller Reputation Number, and verification status of your buyer. Click the reputation link after Recipient Status: for information on the age of the account.

Figure 1-5: Checking a buyer's User Status

Because you are just making an inquiry here and don't actually intend to request money, click Cancel.

If you don't complete the transaction, the would-be recipient will not be notified.

Here are some of the things you'll see in the Member Information box:

Seller Reputation: Although PayPal refers to these scores as

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Set up multiple email accounts and filtering to manage PayPal email notifications more efficiently.

PayPal sends a lot of email to its members, ranging from payment notifications to PayPal news and account updates. It's not uncommon for important emails to get lost in the shuffle. But there are several things you can do to make PayPal emails more manageable.

There are two primary strategies to make email more manageable:

Set up multiple email accounts for different purposes.
Use the routing and filtering capabilities of your email reader to segregate the different types of email.

As you've probably figured out, email addresses are very important at PayPal. You log in with an email address, send money to other email addresses, and receive "You've got cash" emails (the most-read email messages on the Internet, by the way!) in your own email inbox.

But PayPal doesn't limit you to one email address, and with good reason: by associating multiple email addresses with a single account, it can be easier to deal with incoming payments and the associated orders that need to be filled.

The first thing you can do is register a second email address to be used to notify you of changes to your account Profile. If you are using PayPal's Multi-User Access feature [Hack #6] , you've already set up an administrative email address. But if not, consider doing so anyway, even if you don't intend to use the Multi-User Access feature.

PayPal uses the administrative email address to send notices when you make changes to your Profile. This is primarily a security measure intended to make it more difficult for a thief or phisher to gain access to your account and change your primary email address.

Before setting up an administrative email address, you should have access to at least two email accounts. Many ISPs allow single users to hold multiple email accounts, and if you have your own domain name, so much the better. Otherwise, you can use one of the free providers, such as Yahoo, Hotmail or Gmail.

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When things go wrong, don't run screaming for the hills. Use PayPal's various forms and phone numbers to get help fast.

Even if you aren't much of a fan of online help systems, it's probably the best place to start if you run into a problem with your account. PayPal Help is especially useful when it comes to PayPal's vast assortment of policies and procedures.

You'll find a link to Help in the upper-right corner of every page of the PayPal site. There are two main ways to use PayPal Help:

Browse by category (e.g., Making Payments, Seller Tools, etc.)
Search using natural language questions (e.g., "how do I earn interest?")

As with most search engines, you don't have to type a whole question to get good results. "add email" works just as well as "Can I add another email address?"

If the answer you find is particularly good or bad, you can do your good deed for the PayPal community by pressing the "Was the answer helpful?" buttons. We're told that PayPal actually does modify the Help system based on this feedback. In fact, PayPal performed a large-scale redesign of the Help system in early 2004.

Unfortunately PayPal's Help URLs do not remain constant, so don't try to bookmark specific pages for future reference. If you need to refer a friend or customer to a PayPal Help page, it's best to indicate a search term that brings up the article in question.

Like many companies, PayPal doesn't let you send a regular email directly to Customer Service. You must navigate through some web forms and give the web site the chance to answer your question. But eventually, you can write an open-ended question to PayPal. PayPal has a large support staff in Omaha, Nebraska, as well as in Omaha's unofficial sister city, Dublin, Ireland, to answer your questions and process your requests.

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So, you've just bought a genuine Zapp Brannigan Atomic Ray Gun on eBay, and now it's time to pony up the dough. You might be able to mail a personal check, but most sellers won't take them (and when they do, there's an extra week to wait for them to clear). Money orders and cashier's checks usually cost money and take several days to arrive, and then there's still no protection if the seller takes the ray gun and runs. Some sellers accept credit cards directly, but few provide online ordering or other safe means of sending your payment information.

This is where many buyers are introduced to PayPal. With a few clicks and usually no typing, you can send large or small sums of money across the country or around the world almost instantaneously and get fraud protection while doing it.

The first thing to remember when making a payment with PayPal is to be certain you've got it right. Review the details of the payment you're about to make on the Check Payment Details page, because once you hit the Pay button, there is no going back. You won't be able to rescind the payment, change the recipient in the case of a typo, or change the way the payment is funded [Hack #11] .

Keep a close eye on the source of funds [Hack #11] ; if you don't have enough money in your checking account and would prefer to use your credit card instead, you'll need to make that selection before you pay. Even if you r recipient were to refund the payment immediately [Hack #21] , the funds would still be pulled from your bank account or charged on your credit card.

Now, none of this means that PayPal doesn't have policies in place to protect you. If the recipient doesn't claim a pending payment within 30 days, for example, you'll get it back automatically. And you'll be able to dispute payments made for merchandise [Hack #16] in the event of fraud. But the person in the best position to protect your money is you, so use that position wisely.

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So, you've just bought a genuine Zapp Brannigan Atomic Ray Gun on eBay, and now it's time to pony up the dough. You might be able to mail a personal check, but most sellers won't take them (and when they do, there's an extra week to wait for them to clear). Money orders and cashier's checks usually cost money and take several days to arrive, and then there's still no protection if the seller takes the ray gun and runs. Some sellers accept credit cards directly, but few provide online ordering or other safe means of sending your payment information.

This is where many buyers are introduced to PayPal. With a few clicks and usually no typing, you can send large or small sums of money across the country or around the world almost instantaneously and get fraud protection while doing it.

The first thing to remember when making a payment with PayPal is to be certain you've got it right. Review the details of the payment you're about to make on the Check Payment Details page, because once you hit the Pay button, there is no going back. You won't be able to rescind the payment, change the recipient in the case of a typo, or change the way the payment is funded [Hack #11] .

Keep a close eye on the source of funds [Hack #11] ; if you don't have enough money in your checking account and would prefer to use your credit card instead, you'll need to make that selection before you pay. Even if you r recipient were to refund the payment immediately [Hack #21] , the funds would still be pulled from your bank account or charged on your credit card.

Now, none of this means that PayPal doesn't have policies in place to protect you. If the recipient doesn't claim a pending payment within 30 days, for example, you'll get it back automatically. And you'll be able to dispute payments made for merchandise [Hack #16] in the event of fraud. But the person in the best position to protect your money is you, so use that position wisely.

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Use PayPal's most basic feature to send money to anyone with an email address, even if the recipient doesn't have a PayPal account.

It's a little-known fact that you can send money to anyone who has an email address: the person to whom you send money doesn't need a PayPal account! The only information you need is the recipient's email address and, of course, the amount of money you would like to send.

Back in the days when PayPal was giving away $10 for each new account referred, some entrepreneurial students would send $.20 payments to every kid in their school in hopes that the recipient would create an account. If no one claimed the payment, the money would eventually go back to the sender. Not a bad moneymaking scheme, even if only 1 in 20 recipients signed up! Today, with over 50,000 new users each day, PayPal doesn't offer such a bounty for referral. However, you can still enjoy the fun of surprising someone with a "You've got cash" email.

To send money to someone (whether they have a PayPal account or not):

Log into your PayPal account.
Click the Send Money tab, and then click the Pay Anyone subtab.
Enter the recipient's email address.
Enter the amount to send and select the currency you wish to use.
For Type, select Goods or Service if you are paying someone back for a good or service they provided you.

If you select Quasi-Cash and pay with a credit card or debit card, your card issuer might treat the transaction as a cash advance and charge you a cash advance fee.
Enter a Subject and a Note (both are optional). The Subject is important, because it appears as the subject of the email sent to the recipient of your payment. The note, however, is less likely to be seen, because it appears buried in the email. If you need to include important details, it is best to send them in a separate email.

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Select your preferred payment funding source each time you make a payment, a necessary step if you want to pay with a credit card or alternate bank account.

While a primary reason so many people use PayPal (PayPal reports over 45 million users as of March 31, 2004) is to send and receive credit card payments, there are several other ways to make a payment without using a credit card at all.

Each time you make a payment [Hack #10] , PayPal displays the Source of Funds (as shown in Figure 2-1) that will be used to make the payment on the Check Payment Details page and gives you an opportunity to switch sources if you so desire. Always review how you're making your payment and switch payment sources if necessary.

Figure 2-1: Choosing a source of funds

Click More Funding Options to display the Funding Options page, as shown in Figure 2-2. Each time you make a payment, you can select a funding source among several choices.

Figure 2-2: Selecting funding options

PayPal offers several different ways to fund your payment:

PayPal Balance: If you have funds sitting in your PayPal account, they are always used first when making a payment. Only if the amount of your payment exceeds your balance will you be able to choose the source for the remaining funds. The exception is the eCheck option, which can be used whether or not you have funds in your PayPal account. See the next section of this hack for a workaround.
Instant Transfer: The funds necessary to make the payment will be drawn from your bank account. Although PayPal does not actually get the funds from your bank for several days (thus, the transfer is not technically

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Use the PayPal Virtual Debit Bar to pay for goods or services at web sites that don't normally accept PayPal.

It's possible for you to pay someone via PayPal even if the recipient doesn't have a PayPal account [Hack #15] , but only if you know the email address of the person or business to whom you wish to send money and only if the recipient is willing to sign up and accept your payment. But what do you do if you want to buy something from an online retailer that doesn't accept PayPal?

There is, as it turns out, a way to pay with PayPal as though your account were a debit or credit card. There's a hard-to-find page at PayPal that allows you to set up and use the virtual Debit Bar to turn your PayPal email address into a virtual MasterCard debit card number. To get a virtual debit card number, you'll need to do all of the following:

Have a PayPal balance of at least one U.S. dollar
Add and confirm control of a checking account [Hack #2]
Add a credit card to your PayPal account and complete your Expanded Use Enrollment [Hack #3]

To use the virtual debit card, start by opening the virtual Debit Bar:

Log in to your PayPal account.
Visit the PayPal virtual Debit Bar web page (shown in Figure 2-3) at https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/shop/vdebit.

PayPal has removed most links to the virtual debit card from its web site, but you might still find it at this URL.

Figure 2-3: Choosing an online retailer at which to shop with PayPal's virtual Debit Bar

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Send a payment or request a payment with a WAP-enabled cell phone.

Imagine rummaging through items at a garage sale and finding a priceless antique. Now imagine checking in your wallet only to discover that you don't have the $19.00 to pay for it. What do you do? Hide the antique behind a box, run to the nearest ATM, and hope the item is still there when you return? No, you use your head, the power of PayPal, and the wonder of technology: pull out your web-enabled cell phone and use it to send a PayPal payment on the spot!

To navigate to PayPal's Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) site, open your phone's browser, choose "Go to URL" (or something similar), enter paypal.com, and click OK.

PayPal's WAP site is shown automatically to anyone accessing http://www.paypal.com from a WAP-enabled cell phone or PDA. It's a secure (https) connection, but must already have a PayPal account before you can use it.

After you have successfully logged in, you can select the Send Money link from the main menu, as shown in Figure 2-5. Next, enter the recipient's email address, the amount in dollars, and the amount in cents.

Figure 2-5: Sending a PayPal payment from a WAP-enabled cell phone

When you're done, click Submit. This brings you to a screen where you can confirm the payment by selecting Yes, as shown in Figure 2-6.

Figure 2-6: Select Yes to confirm your payment

After you have made the payment, the recipient might want to verify that the transaction has completed.

If you're feeling charitable and the recipient is standing next to you, you can simply log out on your phone, hand it over, and let her verify your payment.

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Send a payment along with the respective seller fees using the Mass Pay feature, so that your recipient gets precisely what you promised.

Whether a product is sold or a service is performed, most people generally accept that the product or service provider is responsible for paying any applicable processing fees. But there are plenty of scenarios in which the recipient of your payment is not expecting or willing to pay any fees:

Someone who has loaned you money should not have to pay a fee to get paid back.
Members of your web site's affiliate program [Hack #77] are not likely to expect to lose 2.9% of their referral fees.
Those new to selling on eBay often don't realize that accepting PayPal for their auctions generates enough additional business to be worth the applicable PayPal fees. If you're buying something from an eBay seller who is unwilling to accept PayPal because of the fees, you can often grease the wheels by offering to cover the fees yourself.

Of course, PayPal doesn't charge seller fees for payments received into Personal accounts, but these accounts have their own limitations (described in the introduction to Chapter 3), rendering them useless for this purpose. If you need to make a payment to a recipient's Premier or Business account for a specific amount without generating fees for him, you have two options: calculate the seller fees yourself or use Mass Pay.

The first solution is to include the applicable fees with your payment, so that when PayPal deducts the fees, the recipient ends up with the intended amount. The equation (yes, there's some math involved) to calculate the total amount received is as follows:

Amount Received = Amount Sent - PayPal Fees

Seller fees for Business and Premier accounts are typically 30 cents plus 2.9% of the amount sent. If you send someone $40, PayPal takes $1.46 (2.9% x $40 + $.30), leaving $38.54 for the recipient.

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Pay someone quickly without going to the trouble of setting up an account.

If you don't have a PayPal account and you want to see what the fuss is about, send someone money using PayPal. After all, everyone owes someone for something. Perhaps you owe a coworker for lunch, a friend who bought you a ticket to the big game, or another friend who sold you his old DVD player. Why not pay them via PayPal?

But to send someone money, you'll have to sign up for an account. Or will you? The answer is no, as long as the recipient has a PayPal account!

Using this procedure, you can also request and accept payments without requiring the customer to sign up for a PayPal account. Just fill in your own email address into the URL discussed here and send it to your customers.

To send money without creating a PayPal account, open up any web browser, and type this address (URL):

http://paypal.com/xclick/business=

Add the email address of the recipient of the money to the end of the URL, like this:

paypal.com/xclick/business=reg@paypalhacks.com

After pressing the Enter key (or Return on the Mac), the email address (reg@paypalhacks.com, in this case) will be sent to the PayPal web site, which will look up the user's account. If the email address refers to an existing PayPal account, you will see the Payment Details page (shown in Figure 2-7) with the following information:

Pay To: The email address of the recipient of your payment.
Payment For: An optional field, into which you can enter a note describing what the payment is for.
Currency: The currency it expects you to use; the default is U.S. dollars.

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Know your rights! Use PayPal's Buyer Protection policy to get your money back in the event that a seller has defrauded you.

Let's say you just found an unbelievable deal for a plasma screen TV on eBay and you pay for it with PayPal. But it's been two weeks and still no TV has been delivered, and the seller doesn't respond to any of your emails.

Or you buy a high-end coffee grinder from eBay, pay with PayPal, and it's shipped to you quickly. But when you plug it in, nothing happens. In fact, upon closer inspection, there is nothing inside the grinder at all: it's just a shell with no parts. You get ahold of the seller, but he is uncooperative.

Fortunately, PayPal can help resolve merchandise disputes. The key is to understand the delicate processes and etiquette involved so that your dispute can be handled quickly and painlessly.

If you're a seller, see [Hack #27] for ways to defend yourself against disputes filed against you.

PayPal Buyer Protection uses online dispute resolution to address transaction-related disputes between buyers and sellers. For transactions that are eligible for PayPal Buyer Protection (look for the blue and white shield on the eBay listing), buyers can report a problem with a purchase as long as it's tangible merchandise that has been shipped by a courier that uses online package tracking.

What isn't covered? Vehicles (e.g., cars and boats), intangible goods such as online subscriptions, and anything in violation of PayPal's Acceptable Use Policy are not covered.

There are two kinds of claims you can file as a buyer:

You did not receive a package.
You received a package, but it is not as described (which includes getting an empty box).

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From accepting occasional donations to receiving payments from thousands of customers, PayPal provides the tools and support you need to build your business. Rather than having to complete a complicated and costly application for a merchant account so that you can accept payments, all you have to do is fill out a form at http://www.paypal.com, and PayPal will handle all the dirty work. To get started, all you have to do is to set up your PayPal account for accepting payments.

PayPal offers three types of accounts. All of them can be used for making and accepting payments, but each has its own unique features:

Personal: Personal accounts [Hack #1] are the most common, because they are what most new PayPal members choose by default. Most buyers who use PayPal to make payments have a Personal account.

There is no fee for sending or receiving payments with a Personal account, but there are limitations. Personal accounts cannot receive payments funded by credit cards; since many PayPal buyers like to fund their payments with a credit card, a Personal account severely limits a seller's customer base. Also, Personal accounts are limited to receiving $1,000 in payments per month.
Premier: Premier accounts can accept payments funded with credit cards. There is no fee for sending payments with a Premier account, but there is a fee for accepting payments, no matter how they are funded. Premier accounts also include a host of features to help make your business successful and efficient, such as the Seller Protection Policy, the PayPal Shopping Cart, Subscriptions, Recurring Payments, and a listing in PayPal Shops.
Business: Business accounts are nearly identical to Premier accounts, but they offer a few added features of interest to businesses. For instance, your PayPal account is identified to your customers as your business name instead of your personal name (as it is with both Personal and Premier accounts). The fee structure for Business accounts is the same as for Premier accounts.

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From accepting occasional donations to receiving payments from thousands of customers, PayPal provides the tools and support you need to build your business. Rather than having to complete a complicated and costly application for a merchant account so that you can accept payments, all you have to do is fill out a form at http://www.paypal.com, and PayPal will handle all the dirty work. To get started, all you have to do is to set up your PayPal account for accepting payments.

PayPal offers three types of accounts. All of them can be used for making and accepting payments, but each has its own unique features:

Personal: Personal accounts [Hack #1] are the most common, because they are what most new PayPal members choose by default. Most buyers who use PayPal to make payments have a Personal account.

There is no fee for sending or receiving payments with a Personal account, but there are limitations. Personal accounts cannot receive payments funded by credit cards; since many PayPal buyers like to fund their payments with a credit card, a Personal account severely limits a seller's customer base. Also, Personal accounts are limited to receiving $1,000 in payments per month.
Premier: Premier accounts can accept payments funded with credit cards. There is no fee for sending payments with a Premier account, but there is a fee for accepting payments, no matter how they are funded. Premier accounts also include a host of features to help make your business successful and efficient, such as the Seller Protection Policy, the PayPal Shopping Cart, Subscriptions, Recurring Payments, and a listing in PayPal Shops.
Business: Business accounts are nearly identical to Premier accounts, but they offer a few added features of interest to businesses. For instance, your PayPal account is identified to your customers as your business name instead of your personal name (as it is with both Personal and Premier accounts). The fee structure for Business accounts is the same as for Premier accounts.

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If you have only a Personal account, you can easily upgrade it:

Log into your PayPal Personal account.
Click Upgrade Account.
On the Upgrade Your Account screen, click Upgrade Now.
On the Choose a Name to Do Business As page, choose either Premier or Business. Choosing Business allows you to enter business information, such as customer service contact information for your business, on the next screen.

When you're done, your account will immediately be capable of accepting payments funded by credit cards .

Should you change your mind, you can downgrade a Premier or Business account to a Personal account only once. If you think you might want to use a Personal account after upgrading, it's best to open a separate account.

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Before using your account, you might want to take a moment to review your Payment Receiving Preferences, as shown in Figure 3-1. You can set your PayPal account to accept or reject payments based on your business needs.

Figure 3-1: Using the Payment Receiving Preferences page to choose which types of payments to accept

Here's how to access these settings:

Log into your PayPal Premier or Business account.
Click the My Account tab, and then click the Profile subtab.
Click the Payment Receiving Preferences tab under the Selling Preferences heading.

Here you can make your choices about whether to accept payments:

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