I found out the hard way, the limits of PayPal's protection. A bike shop would not ship my parts, even after a month had gone by. He ignored emails & calls. I started an official PayPal dispute. PayPal never once said they could guarantee a refund of my money (I asked!), but said they would contact the vendor, which they did. I finally got the parts maybe 4 weeks later. As soon as the delivery was verified, Paypal canceled the dispute.

I immediately got back to PayPal, "hey! ... whaddabout damaged, and/or missing parts!?!" And there were missing parts.

They said, "we only deal with if the shipment occurred, not what was shipped."

Wow. That was the end of it. I was f**ked! PayPal was done. The transaction was a success I guess, in their minds. They did tell me to talk to the FBI's online fraud dept if I wanted to pursue the vendor. They also said their full protection only applies if it is an ebay transaction.

Anyway, the wheels I ordered this week were paid for with Discover. I called the cc company first to ask if they would reverse funds if I got screwed again (told them my PayPal story). They said yes. Hopefully I won't ever have to test that.