[Sleaker]

I'm not sure why the article posters thinks paypal disputes are ever favorable. There's been articles all over the internet on how horrible their CS is and pretty blatantly discribes their bad practices and how they haven't gotten any better. I'm just surprised people refuse to use alternatives for online payments. Even if paypal says you're protected, if you didn't use a Credit Card through their service to make the purchase it's kind of the author's fault for trusting Paypal to be competent at being able to resolve this issue even after it was blatantly going to be a scam.

tldr; I find it pretty hard to feel compassion for the author here.

[irq-1]

People use PayPal for the same reason banks use email, not because either is secure or reliable, but simply because people make decisions by following the crowd. As long as people think PayPal (or Yelp) has a big crowd of users, they'll use it's popularity as a substitute for critical selection, and consider it a "legitimate" choice.