A word about Scammers

Thanks, 1967 'cuda! Appreciate your sharing that. I was not aware that it could be done that way.

I will pass on PayPal, though. I have a few acquaintances on other car forums who sell on e-Bay and use PayPal. Some have had no problems whilst others have had situations where their payment was held up for weeks or longer (not sure of the circumstances as I do not sell on e-Bay but only buy a part for my car there occasionally). And of course, there is the 4% PayPal takes off the top...... Which must either be passed along to the buyer as a price increase...... Or eaten by the seller.

Regarding setting up a separate bank account with low balance used strictly for receiving payments...... That's a very good idea regardless of what form of payment you accept.

Funny you should mention that...... Until his past Saturday, I had just such an account. Had it for several years and used it primarily as you suggest. At times, it would simply remain unused for the better part of a year or more if I wasn't buying or selling car parts.

When I opened this account, there were no fees and no minimum balance. So as long as it had $50 or $100 in it, no problem, right? Wrong! In late 2013, the bank arbitrarily changed the terms of our accounts (we have more than one there)...... Without notification nor our approval. Now there is a $500 minimum balance required. And if our balance falls below that amount, they begin charging a $5 monthly fee. Well, that happened to us at one point a couple of months ago (my fault for not being more vigilant, but I am old and not all that computer savvy. So have no electronic access to our account and my wife set it up so that we do not receive a statement in the mail each month).

Anyway, the bank began taking $5 per month out of this account without my knowing it and the next time I wrote a check on the account (months later), instead of having the amount I should have had, my balance was lower than I thought and I was inadvertently overdrawn by $3.

Because of this $3 'overdraft', the bank (no doubt out of the goodness of their heart)...... Put $100 into our account as overdraft protection and began charging us 19.88% interest monthly on the $100! By the time we figured out that something was not right (this past Friday evening), the bank had screwed us out of $58.13 in interest and fees!

So I went down there Saturday morning. Couldn't get it straightened out to my satisfaction, and closed out the account. Had nearly $2 grand in there at the time (less the $58.13 they stole), but the charges and interest payments were continuing nonetheless.

This week, will begin looking for another bank. And once I find a good one...... We will close our other accounts at this particular bank and consider this a lesson learned the hard way. From now on, I am going to get a monthly statement in the mail as I have from other banks in years past even though my wife wants to monitor our accounts online.

Sorry to bore you with all this about the bank...... But if it causes even one other person here to check their own accounts more closely and avoid being screwed by their bank...... Then I don't mind sounding dumb...... Because it was a dumb thing on my part not to catch this earlier and avoid getting screwed over.

Thanks,

Harry