I suffered a chargeback once. Sold a phone for £200, sent it to the Paypal address and then the guy claimed his account had been hijacked and Paypal took the money back off me. I contested it of course, but even with proof of postage they said he wasn't liable for the money as the transaction was unauthorised. That's it. I'm out £200!! Bastards!

As far as I'm aware they can't take money directly out of your bank account though - you just end up with a negative Paypal balance and then they demand payment. In fact the £200 had already cleared into my bank account when they reversed the payment.

It works both ways tho. I had my account hijacked a year or so ago. Some a*hole spent about £350 on clothes but Paypal picked up on it themselves, notified me my account had been compromised and then after 2-3 days refunded the money to my account.

Nowadays I tend not to sell anything through ebay and try to get cash on collection or a direct bank transfer if I sell any other way. Bank transfers cannot ever be returned so it's the safest way of receiving money. And regardless of what others may say it's next to impossible for anyone to get at your money with only your basic bank account details.

I've been stung by ebay/pay pal.

Sold something that didnt fit someone, they claimed it fitted too big to be a L and must be a fake. Demanded a refund which I sent inc money for them to rtn the postage as I didnt want them to hammer my eBay with bad feedback because they are stupid. They happily took the refund, all was rosy until my jacket never arrived back. I emailed them and paypal asking for proof of postage etc and got nothing back off ebay so raised a complaint. He claimed it was lost in the post but didnt have any numbers and I was out by 75quid. Tough luck. That was ebays attitude too.

Worst bit was the guy had my address from ebay and started hammering my emails saying he was coming round with mates to kick my head in for reporting him on ebay etc. He obv didnt realise I had all his details from the transaction so I sent them all off to the police with a copy of everything. Suffice to say they did feck all and said phone 999 when he turns up.

After random late night phone calls, mainly loud screams and threats of stabbings it all ended with me sending him an email with my phone no and address on with the offer to phone me when him and his mates are outside and I'll come down and kick what I deemed to be £75 worth of damage out of him infront of them. Funnily he never turned up, had a quick facebook stalk and its because he was infact a dad of 4 and a 10 stone weakling who though he could intimidate someone on the internet.