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[Baron von Bone]

PayPal's customer service is no doubt seeing if they have anyone there who can read, as the first reply had precisely nothing to do with the question ... well, other than that they were both about PayPal (it was all about account limits that are supposed to help me to be a successful seller). Here's the question I sent (and here's the section of the PayPal User Agreement in question):

I want to make sure I understand this part of PayPal's buyer protection agreement:
 
 --
Eligibility Requirements.
To be eligible for PayPal Purchase Protection you must meet all of the following requirements:
Pay for the eligible item from your Account.
 --
 
Does this mean in order for a purchase to be covered (non-eBay) I need to have the money required for the purchase in my PayPal account and I have to use that money for the purchase, or would a purchase be covered if I were to use PayPal, but pay with a credit card (i.e. Discover) or bank checking account (i.e. USAA)? The seller* offers the “Checkout with PayPal” button.
 
Thanks!
 
 
* The seller in this case is a Vendio store called Watch Works. The seller also has an eBay store called Wholesale Watch Works, in case that matters.

Well ... there it is.

[Eastcheap]

  --
Eligibility Requirements.
To be eligible for PayPal Purchase Protection you must meet all of the following requirements:
Pay for the eligible item from your Account.
 --
 
Does this mean in order for a purchase to be covered (non-eBay) I need to have the money required for the purchase in my PayPal account

I'm about 99 44/100% sure that "account" here refers generally to your PayPal account, not any funds they may be holding (those, I believe, are referred to as an "account balance," or somesuch, pretty consistently).

I agree that the wording is real weaselly, and I'm not surprised you're getting the runaround:  it's the kind of question that sends smart customer service reps diving for cover.  It may well be that only way you'd ever really know would be if a dispute arose.

If in doubt, you can always transfer the requisite funds to your PayPal balance.  One thing is almost certain:  you won't get a definitive answer from anyone who isn't a PayPal attorney and, even then, I'd want a piece of paper with someone's signature on it.

Hopefully someone who's actually gone through the dispute process will chime in.

[Baron von Bone]

If in doubt, you can always transfer the requisite funds to your PayPal balance.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I expect I'll do--not sure how long it takes for e-transfers to become available, but if not immediately it still probably won't be an issue (trying to take advantage of a short term sale deal).
 
Thanks for the input, man.

[Baron von Bone]

Turns out funds transfers take 3-4 business days, so that's a no-go (didn't expect that, but it's certainly not a surprise either). I'll just have to rely on my credit card's built in fraud protection (just double checked it according to the situation--Discover's documentation says a lot about ID theft, but I had to confirm the protection also applies to goods not received). I suspect Discover's customer service is a hell of a lot better than PayPal's anyway, according to some recent news about that. (Plus I sent them some quite unambiguously critical feedback about that story, which was, what, a couple of months ago now?)

[Eastcheap]

Turns out funds transfers take 3-4 business days,

Ay, there's the rub.  It's all a big scam, of course, but whatcha gonna do?  (If you think that's bad, try depositing a cashier's check.)

[Baron von Bone]

Ay, there's the rub.  It's all a big scam, of course, but whatcha gonna do?  (If you think that's bad, try depositing a cashier's check.)

Yeah, sometimes some of that stuff sneaks up on me because USAA spoils us (free/instant transfers and interwebs deposits ... that sort of thing). I used to expect most of it, at least, with SunTrust, and as far as I can tell they're pretty good about such things. Still, it's all a HELL of a lot faster and more convenient than it was when I was just starting out in the bank account game for sure! Of course then it was standard to expect mail orders to take 4-6 weeks too. Imagine how that would fly on eBay.