PayPal actually has various policies in place to prevent crooks from running their scams on ebay. Not only is there the 21-day earnings hold policy for new sellers, but they also have other restrictions on their accounts, which are eventually lifted as the seller provides more info. to PayPal to confirm/verify their identity and establish their reputation with successful transactions on ebay and PayPal.
But if you were to really analyze the current set-up, one can easily determine that it's crooked buyers, as well as dumb@s* id!otic impatient buyers who are at an advantage here. For instance, I had a Canadian buyer order an item from me just 10 days before Christmas. I'm a U.S. seller, and under normal circumstances this may be enough time to get the item delivered to Canada in time for the 25th. However, since there were massive blizzards preventing the progress/delivery of mail all over the North American east coast, combined with the fact that it was the peak time for mail during the holiday rush, the item wasn't getting there. I swear to God, on the 22nd, just 7 days (5 business days) after the item was purchased, this id!ot buyer files an Item Not Received (INR) dispute and escalates it to a claim on the very next day! I sent him several messages both through ebay, and at the PayPal Resolution Center where the claim was filed. I also e-mailed him a scanned copy of the postal receipt and the date-stamped stub from the customs form to prove that I shipped it the very next day after he bought/paid the item! I was certain that this guy was trying to scam me... and if not for some of the common sense policies that PayPal has in place, he could've easily gottten away with it too. As it turned out, the buyer was a completely narcissistic as*hole who was hoping to take advantage of the fact that since I (and most other sellers) don't usually include tracking for international shipments (it would've been 5 times as expensive to do so), he could get the item for free and take his money back by filing a FALSE claim at PayPal. Luckily for me, I remembered that sometimes shipments to Canada from the U.S. can be tracked by entering the customs form number at the Canada Post website (as opposed to the USPS website whose shipping service I used to send the item). I did just that, and viola... it was showing that the item did arrive on the 24th! It was now the 27th... the seller had received the item 3 days prior, but was still pretending that he didn't. So I then informed the seller that I was able to track it using the customs form # at the Canada Post site, and I also forwarded this info. to PayPal. Realizing that he has been caught in his scam, the buyer then quickly changes his claim from INR (Item Not Received) to SNaD (Significantly Not as Described). He now says that the item arrived damaged and that he wanted at least a partial refund for it. I was so upset, I wanted to travel up to Canada myself, and kick this guy's as*! I threatened to report him to the police for what he was trying to do, and after further negotiations was able to convince him to take a much smaller partial refund amount in order to get the case closed. But do you guys see now, how easily a sc*mbag crooked buyer can use PayPal's current policies to take advanatge of sellers?! And all this time, I had no access to that money because PayPal immediately places the funds associated with any given dispute/claim on hold as soon as the buyer opens a dispute. Even if you get full tracking service and prove to PayPal that an item the buyer said they didn't has been delivered, your money is still on hold, until PayPal can finally spare someone to take a good look at the case and dismiss it. It is absolutely ridiculous that bad crooked buyers can get away with bloody murder, and leave you negative feedback while doing it, whereas you can't even say anything about their actions to warn other ebayers!
