there are lots of legitimate and proven problems with PayPal, it's true.  i have a friend who actually got burned badly by them when someone took over her account.  that it happened was kind of acceptable; there are always security problems.  how they handled it, which was pretty much to do nothing and be as unhelpful as possible, was not.  it's understandable from a corporate perspective; they took the offensive and basically tried to get out of anything being their responsibility.  but not the best recommendation for a process.