This question is periodically asked on the forums and there is a very important distinction between PayPal and EMT. I discuss PayPal at length in my post about Paying with PayPal: Goods or Gift?. For sellers, EMT is not risky. It’s like someone putting money in your account without having to send them anything first. There is zero recourse if you don’t send the item except that you might get removed from the group in which you arranged the sale. So, you should definitely save the post office receipt in order to prove to any group admins that the item was sent, should the post office lose it, or if it is stolen (etc.). I write about different Facebook groups to join in my post about How To Enter the Lululemon Market. As a seller it makes sense to use EMT as there are also no PayPal fees, and although it’s customary for buyers to add PayPal fees to their purchase, it still makes the item cheaper for the buyer if they don’t want to pay fees, but they could also pay as gift on PayPal and have the same level of protection (none). As a Buyer, EMT is very risky. Personally, I use EMT in two circumstances: 1: the item is very inexpensive ($20 or less) and the seller has requested that I pay with EMT. Otherwise, I might pay as gift on PayPal. 2: I trust the seller, who has been a long-standing member of the Lulu community and who I know would not risk her reputation for my money. I have EMT’d money a total of two times. I can imagine that by now, you can see where I’m going with this and that is that I overwhelmingly do not recommend EMT to buyers. It’s actually worse than paying as Gift on PayPal because there’s a chance that you can beg PayPal to refund you OR if you paid by credit card through PayPal you can ask your credit card to repay you. With EMT, it’s like paying in cash, then waiting for someone to go back home and get the item to you, while you wait.
I hope that this is informative to people, and I think that many of the scams that don’t involve counterfeit items have in some way been linked to EMT payments. So, I hope that this post helps people better understand their level of protection with EMT and to avoid scammers.
