Lutia wrote:
Like everyone does wire transfer in germany and it works fine.
There's nothing wrong with wire transferring to trusted people you know, it's just that you can't secure it. Like for ebay stuff, it's so instant, and easy to scam with. You can't trace it, the people receiving the money don't have to give much info other than the information you provide them. It's perfect for scams.
Paypal, on the other hand, presents security for the buyer, and problems for the scammers. Paypal holds the money until the buyers recieve the product/service, or up to x amount of days without a complaint from the buyer. If the buyer complains you can get the money back via a trial type system. I was able to get my $500 paypal deposit back that I had to pay up front to secure the imaginary bike this way. The person I was arguing with claimed her ebay account was hacked and someone put that bike up on it. I believe the Nigerian scammers tricked her into thinking she would get a cut of the money. I saw this on dateline, and the original post's news was one of the scams. $20mil for helping secure money from a dead rich guy. You help pay lawyers fee or something like that, and pretend to be related to the guy so the millions ($80mil or so) don't go to the government or bank forever. They make it sound legit and greed is what trap you.
All of the scams are greed based, and people like us, looking for a sick deal are the ones that fall for it. It taught me a valuable lesson at least. And I read about a Florida Doctor that got tricked out of a $400,000 car like I got tricked out of a $2,800 bike. I felt better that it was only $2,000 for me. It could have been worse.