PayPal has offered buyer protection on its parent company eBay‘s properties since October 2003. Last year, the electronic payments juggernaut began offering purchase protection on merchant sites for select purchases, if the buyer didn’t receive the item.
Beginning November 1, shoppers around the world will have expanded buyer protection when they make purchases at the millions of retailers that accept PayPal, just in time for the busy holiday season.
The expanded protections will cover shoppers on merchant websites if they don’t receive an item they’ve purchased, or if they receive an item that is significantly different than described by the merchant (“That’s not an iPad, that’s an iPod Touch photographed from closeby”).
Important: PayPal says it will extend the additional benefits to shoppers in nearly all of the 190 countries it serves, but it’s leaving out a bunch of big (mostly European) ones – Brazil, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Poland and even my home country Belgium will not benefit from the extended policy (sad clown face).