Re: Bidpay.
Bidpay is the same thing as Western Union. Unfortunately, Western Union is operated by hundreds of local vendors - and they are not secure. Within the past month, we paid for 1 Bidpay auction (despite my own advice - my daughter made the purchase, didn't notice). Within 72 hours, someone had used our credit card number two more times - for a total of $700 of fraudulent cash transfers.
My bank has refunded the money and it has been turned over to law enforcement.
On one prior occasion, after the money was sent, we received a box with an old used item inside it - when we had paid $800 for a brand new item. Bidpay does not refund your money like Paypal does! When a similar thing happened with paypal, we received our money back. With Bidpay, we were simply out the money.
Three years ago, I had another fraudulent use of my credit card involving Western Union (not Bidpay per se - but I won't deal knowingly with Western Union at all).
My bank fraud management office (fortunately) caught the more recent Western Union fraud - after they charged the first set of fraudulent transfers, they tried again for another $1,000 worth of wire transfers, but my bank (Wells Fargo) automatically flags Western Union transactions and calls the customer if there is more than 1 in a certain time period - and they warned me not to do business with Western Union because of this problem.
That's why I don't do Bidpay, even though it's allowed by Ebay.
I did not recommend using paypal unless you use a credit card as well. However, with the paypal account I use, I'm guaranteed for up to $2000 - and yes, you do get your money back if there's fraud and the bag is not authentic.
Selling a counterfeit handback is a violation of state and federal laws where I live, and it is also a crime reportable to the Post Office - if it was shipped via the post office (which is yet a third crime). Paypal is more than happy to refund your money when it knows it is dealing with a potential criminal seller. Sellers who guarantee the authenticity of their bags or use any words like "Authentic" or "Guaranteed Balenciaga" in their listings must then ship a genuine bag - or else face really stiff legal penalties.
Not that there's any federal oversight these days - but the threat of it is enough to get Paypal (which is owned by Ebay) to comply. Ebay lost several lawsuits in the past couple of years over this issue and is anxious not to lose any more.
