The few days you speak of is actually 45. If the Paypal was purchased with borrowed money, such as with an Amex card, clawbacks can happen up to 180 days later.
I am O.K. with waiting 45 days.
As for 180 days, I don't know if this is true, I never heard of it, but if it is, then, well, I can't say I am O.K. with that, but I am still willing to wait that long. Because what choice do I have?
The basic rule with Paypal is that you can safely take payments only from spenders you can trust. You can't treat PP payments like cash payments. PP is not money, it is the promise of money.
Listen, I understand what paypal is. But I have no choice. Paypal is the most popular (and I daresay the only popular) payment system. Ordinary people don't know about anything else and don't want to bother for the sake of 10 dollars transfer. And I am speaking about ordinary people. If I would look for clients only within the bitcoin community, then I think I wouldn't have a single client until the Second Coming of Christ. The bitcoin community is still too small, you know.
To discuss the risks and the possibility that this might work would require knowing what sort of trade you are doing. If you are settling with anything liquid, anything that can be readily resold, the risk of taking PP from a stranger is very high indeed and therefore needs a very high markup.
I provide a sort of consulting, so it can hardly be readily resold. Also, usually I don't demand prepayment. So, if they want to scam me, they would just refuse to pay.
![Smiley](https://bitcointalk.org/Smileys/default/smiley.gif)
If you want to deal with an unverified public, you must accept cash only.
How the hell can I do it? Accepting cash only is a VERY big restriction on the number of clients. Maybe you would suggest me to deal only with martians and wait for UFO's landing in front of my house to deal with them?
Why would I explain this to a smart ass for free? If I billed you would you be less rude?
How do you think people place bets from afar? What do the punters use? They use cash. Green Dot, Paysafe Cards, WebMoney, LR, WU, bank wires, moneygram, money orders, post office transfers etc etc etc
All paid for with cash. No promises or borrowed money.
If you are charging a low fee for something that a thief can't resell, then perhaps you can trust the spender's Paypal. Do you understand why what you sell is important in deciding if you can trust your customers? From what you describe, I think you might be OK, but you can't expect an exchanger to accept you at your word unless he trusts you. Such is the devil that is soft money.
You might get an exchanger to periodically cash you out through his bank account if you were willing to guarantee against chargebacks by leaving a deposit. Maybe you should negotiate the fee rather than just arbitrarily offering "A small percent of money would be your fee".
Paypal is not the only popular payment system. Certainly much more money is transferred by wires. by cheques, by WU etc - lots of services are bigger than Paypal.