If any online shopping site would ask me for my credit card inprint and copy of ID my only reaction would be :trash:

L

Makes no sense. Offering the option to pay by a wire service is interesting, payments that way can be irrecoverable. And PayPal was not good enough for them. Cancelling does make sense.
Real fraudsters here ask for i tunes cards. Some people fall for it. The Tax Office getting paid in i tunes cards!? It pays to stay alert.

PP has arbitrarily frozen thousands of members accounts, not talking about specific transactions, just when they decided something fishy might be going on.

And I'm sure properly so in many instances, but it can take many months to even start making human contact.

I'm not saying not to use PP, just keep your balance low.

As a merchant that takes "click to buy" I only use paypal for my websites. The reasons are several.

1. Many people love the convience of paypal. No filling your ship to info, no entering your CC info, absolute protection for the consumer when you buy tangible material. This increases my sales.

2. Protection for the merchant. I do not hasve to deal with CC information. I am protected against fradulent purchases as long as I carefully follow their rules. My business is B to B in nature so I do not have a charge back problem, but in the rare instance of a issue I have been extremely happy with paypals resolution process.

3. Fair and reasonable fees. We do allot of business with Paypal to the tune of tens of thousands a month. They give us universal CC acceptance, EFT, etc... with one known reasonable fee.

We even advertise "accepts Paypal" on our web sites, which due to their popularity increases sales revenue.

Just last week a customer was having problems with his CC company authorizing a several thousand dollar purchase from my firm via the "normal" CC equipment we have onsite. I asked him if he had a Paypal account, and he did. We had our money in minutes, and shipped his equipment the same day. He was happy and we were happy. Win Win.

As a buyer, or customer I target merchants that accept paypal. It's fast, and easy, and the merchant never sees my CC information. Cant beat that.

Too much like send me $1000 and I'll send you back $1 million. Reminds me of spam offers. Let's see, in the last few hours what I got. Let's see.

Jessica wants to talk, Ananda (yes that's how it was spelled) wants to meet and Jenna will do anything I want to do. Then there's an oil man in Madagascar who is willing to show me how to get a license and make $3 a barrel on all sold under my license, selling 1 million barrels a month for earnings of $3 million a month.

Not sending them anything and not sending someone I don't know all my credit card front and back along with driver's license. The flagging is definitely not Paypal and just some charade on the merchant's part, unless it's the merchant Paypal flagged.

To me, it sounds like an out and out scam, and it was probably not even the right business phone you rang. No reputable business would ever ask someone to provide such important and personal information. I bet if you contact the business by a different route, eg a phone number from on-line directories, they will be appalled at what happened.

You might want to contact your credit card company as well. I'm sure Visa/MC, etc don't want to be dealing with a business that at best, is being very irresponsible, and at worst, is outright fraudulent. That company's email in box is an Identity Theif's wet dream!!

It's the correct phone number. These guys are Suzuki outboard dealers and I went through Suzuki's dealer locator to confirm their legitimacy. It will be interesting to see what PayPal has to say.:popcorn:

We too use Pay Pal, but have a technique for one time purchases.

We use a debt card .,and load it with about $5.00 more than the total purchase price.

If compromised , they get $5.00 , at best.

I am told a stolen ID will be used for a tiny purchase , to prove the card is valid before being sold.

Hope its sold to folks with no sense of humor!

The only thing that makes sense here is if the payment didnt actually process through paypal.

If you are running a card through your merchant account vs Paypal then you the merchant bear the risk of fraudulent transactions. The worst ones I imagine are the "I did not order that" claim.

If a merchant has been burned they might be inclined to take steps to minimize their risk.

Thinking about outboard motors...

They are the perfect product for credit card thieves to buy. They are high dollar, and easily re-sellable locally for cash.

This merchant might be legitiment, but has just been burned enough that he's put in place extra protections on his part to weed out potential fradulent transactions.

I'm not saying I agree with his method, I'm just saying that I can see why he might be leary of fraudulent customers.

But asking for what s/he did shows a very amateur-hour business operation, she should know that these days that would raise all kinds of red flags with customers.

Not to mention a liability nightmare if identity theft is traced back to a hack of his system.

Belt and suspenders that. The merchant does not get your card info, that's the whole point of PP.

But for merchants that don't take PP, check out AMEX's prepaid Serve.com, let's you create four "sub cards" you can cancel anytime.

Costs $1 a month but they waive it when you're active.

Great for separating ongoing donations / subscriptions.

And, they would like you to send the PIN number that goes along with the credit card, and your mother's maiden name, as well. Just to be sure, you know.

My wife and I have discussed doing this.

I am also a proponent of the extra care credit/debit card issuers are taking these days, inconvenient as it sometimes is. Someone (likely a waiter, we think) stole the number off her debit card. We were notified of suspicious activity--two attempted charges of $0.67 to verify the card before the thief sold it. There were two subsequnt attempts to buy hundreds of dollars of merchandise that the issuer declined. All of this activity happened in a single day.

I like the way Europeans handle checks at restaurants, with the card processor brought to the table. The card never leaves the owners' hands.

I could make an argument to NEVER, EVER pay for a meal with a credit card. Fraud is huge. Cash works, and most often exact change works better.

My buddy with his restaurant has a fraud case going on at all times... never ends. But on his end, if he doesn't accept CC, he looses business.

Most people I know only use cash for tiny transactions, maybe a few times a month, prefer for everything to be tracked.

Even at our local farmers' market most people use plastic, and of course the SNAP cards most of all.

Won't be too long cash will be viewed with suspicion, then illegal. Already that way for large amounts.

Yea, that's too bad people look at cash as illegal. I still buy big things with cash, and often have to give the bank notice because they don't carry much normally.

Cash works SO WELL, most of the time. Especially when buying cars, boats, toys, meals, junk and women.

I don't want no sinkin records or tracking (unless there's a warranty).

Just watch out the police don't find it while you're in transit. The current administration is supporting the federal loopholes for states that are trying to crack down on rogue PDs.

I never use cash for anything more than tipping dock hands and such except occasionally an artist or craftsman who doesn't accept cards and then only with full detailed receipt. I'm not comfortable carrying large amounts of cash.Someone robs me and they'll get a very small amount of cash and credit cards which will all be cancelled before they can use them.

As to the other side, receiving large amounts of cash, we do look at it with some degree of suspicion and do very carefully check the bills. Very seldom do we encounter purchases of over $10,000 for cash but when we do, we go through all the Form 8300 procedure. We did have one jewelry customer back out of the sale but otherwise no issue, just time consuming. Most who use large amounts of cash know to stay under that threshold.

In a previous life as a manufacturer, we accepted no cash ever and would send those wanting to pay in cash to the bank to buy a bank check.

While we might wonder about the person using cash, that's not our real concern, once proving it's not counterfeit. The concern is that large amounts of cash put our employees at greater risk and also provide temptation. Cash business is difficult to control and manage.

The top rated pizza parlor in Gainesville FL doesn't accept credit cards and has shortage of customers and usually a 30 minute wait for a table.