PainPal

I am not much of a user of ebay or paypal, but when I do use them I don't want it to be an ordeal. I will admit neither of these companies (actually just one company that owns the other) are high on my radar and I realize policies and fees change from one use to another. My previous paypal use was nearly a year ago.
I'd recently sold an item on ebay and the buyer used a credit card, sending payment to an unverified address. Verifying the address was a problem since my email program flagged the confirmation email as spam, so I had to address that.
Then I had to upgrade my paypal account (i.e. agree to pay more than I had previously) to receive the payment.
Not only did I net about $17 on a $25 auction (considering the cost of postage), but it also took quite a bit of time. All of this took several nights (I have a dial-up connection), several emails to and from tech support (and I use that term very loosely) and several phone calls to people who, I'm confident, were wearing nametags that said In Training. And then there were the language barriers.
I know there is going to be trouble when emails from tech support have both my first and last name wrong, even though I spelled them correctly in my request. And each reply was (allegedly) sent by a different person.

I also want to mention that the paypal tech support phone number is not toll-free. So in addition to paying the commission I also used some of my phone minutes.
I was astute enough to ask for a toll free number, which I am more than happy to share:
1-888-221-1161.
Feel free to mention my name. I am sure they won't recognize it.

It cracks me up to hear politicians mention the CEO of ebay, and her company being responsible for creating millions of small businesses. Given the way statistics are kept and the way politicians exaggerate, I am probably one of those "small businesses". Very small.
If I divide my profit by my time, I can see it would have been more profitable to hold a sign by a freeway off-ramp. Or maybe even a freeway on-ramp.