There are ways. Buyer protection is not always given either. Back up your pay pal account with a credit card. That way if paypal refuses your credit card company will refund the money.

Before bidding look over the vendors feedback. Also his feedback ratio for the last 12 months. Below 98 percent no buyer protection at all the last time I looked at paypals requirements.

Most people that have been stung do not leave negative feedback as they feel they will get the same. So any negatives on vendors ratings have to be considered seriously.

Condition an item is recieved in is subjective as well and may not recieve a favorable ruling for example from paypal on a complaint. Plus you will have to mail it back on your dime. Many people got so sick of all the games they will not use paypal. I will not get into the more serious fraud areas but they exist even as ebay is trying to stamp them out the crooks keep changing their identities.

Again most people are fundementally good. Just do not assume paypal will always be there on your behalf if you get involved with a crook. Overall I too have saved a lot of money on ebay and found hard to source items.

There have been the few random issues though as well. Three to four of them paypal helped. A couple I lost on. The basic problem is if the crook clears your money out of his account right away. Paypal does not like to use their own money to keep you happy.

Paypal has started quite some time ago to keep your money in their hands longer before releasing it to the seller. In the mercedes world a vendor called generally bigaboo on ebay but has many other names cut quite a swath through our members several years ago. As far as I am aware he got away with it. Look up bigaboo in the archives on site. There may still be lots of posts.