A few months ago my girlfriend decided to sell her mobile (a sony ericsson K700i) on ebay it sold for £100 she only accepted paypal as it is said to be "secure".

Shortly after the auction ended she received an email from Paypal (or so it looked like it was from paypal) saying that the phone had been paid for. So we sent the phone only to realise that the email wasn't from paypal at all... So we'd just lost £115 (phone +P&P).

We called paypal expecting to get our money one way or another but were told that since the buyer didn't actually use paypal it basically had nothing to do with them... i asked if they were planning on doing anything about people claiming to be paypal and was told that they already knew about it and were doing their best...(not good enough when you just lost 115 quid i tell you...)

Now tell me if i'm wrong in thinking that, but two year ago my credit card details were copied as i'd swiped it through one of those bank doors to gain access to the ATM at night and £700 were taken from my account. Obviously i panicked, but when i called my bank they told me that they were responsible for the card security system and since i'd done nothing wrong (ie carry the card and the pin together) they were reliable for the card not being safe and i got my money back... So if it's so easy for anyone to look like paypal surely they should share some of the losses...

Another time i bought speakers and never received them i contacted the seller but got no response. So i contacted paypal and a few days later they said they would claim the money of the seller who simply stopped his account and that was that never got my money back...