You are probably right on some of what you say but as a customer of the credit card company you are entitled to certain protections and security services that they provide to you as a card holder. That is what you contract with them to provide. Safe, convenient and secure payment of bills and other obligations. Like I mention in another post, that is why they charge fees for their services and interest. PayPal can also claim any policy they want but whether that relieves them from some responsibility here or not may be another issue. There may be laws that require periods of time greater than what PayPal asserts or laws that may actually require PayPal to have a balance on hand to cover such fraudulant acts by their customers. Simply attempting to recover and investigating may not actually be enough. In reality, as I understand it, I could be wrong though, you are not a PayPal customer. The seller pays a fee to PayPal and is the customer. PayPal does not provide you with a service to take your credit card and give your money to a seller or thief, they provide service to the seller to take credit cards as a form of payment. Same thing if you went to YOUR bank and got a merchant account and registered to accept credit cards. You pay your bank a fee and they provide you with the credit card acceptance equipment and services. PayPal should be REQUIRING their customers, the sellers, to keep some balance or "SECURITY" on account in case of such a dispute.

I am not sure of all this but as I said it is my understanding of the situation. These goofy policies on the part of PayPal are the reason that I still do not use them and why I limit my eBay purchases to smaller amounts that I will not have much hardship if I get burned. I also use money orders so that unfamiliar people do not get credit card or check numbers.

I do business with several people here and would like to say that it isn't anything personal. It is just a habit that I have gotten into considering the large number of new sellers whom I have NO experience with that I buy from on eBay.