The way PayPal risk management works is to dump the whole problem on the customer, never on themselves. This is why the "guarantees" on ebay are useless and actually a hassle for all parties, except paypal/ebay.
Try getting a false charge on your paypal card - the moment you notify them, they instantly cancel the card - but to get the money back you have to file a written snail mail report - and then they do not send you a replacement card automatically, they allow it to remain canceled and never support you otherwise unless you specifically ask for another card which will take at least two weeks to receive.
They have no problem with people leaving them as there is an endless supply of newbies and near zero competition with easy entry, because they aren't competing as a bank and don't have to obey banking laws.
Actually thats not true about dumping the whole problem on customer. A customer could be a buyer or seller, i believe you are talking about the seller. If you read the SEC filings paypal/ebay takes some loss based on what type of scam/stolen/other it is.
I suspect OP (both here and at Reddit) would be interested in pointers to some providers who share PayPal's low cost of entry with hopefully much better service. I know I would be :-)
WePay has a dead simple to use stores product and we just released a new API (with iframe checkouts - https://stage.wepay.com/developer ). Our goal is to be the 'anti-paypal' by providing over the top support, and making it really easy to get integrated.
If by customer, you mean both buyers and sellers; then you're right. I hate doing anything related to either EBay or Paypal for that reason. I typically exhaust my other options first before I use either service.
Even traditional banks have way better customer service and terms.
Try getting a false charge on your paypal card - the moment you notify them, they instantly cancel the card - but to get the money back you have to file a written snail mail report - and then they do not send you a replacement card automatically, they allow it to remain canceled and never support you otherwise unless you specifically ask for another card which will take at least two weeks to receive.
They have no problem with people leaving them as there is an endless supply of newbies and near zero competition with easy entry, because they aren't competing as a bank and don't have to obey banking laws.