I have had a PayPal account since 2000 when PayPal was first set up and, whilst I have come across the occasional fraudster on ebay, PayPal or Ebay's customer services have acted swiftly to recover the situation.

That, however, was before PayPal became a subsidiary of Ebay and divorced its European operations from the USA. I was wrong in my earlier post about it being Irish. It is only the English speaking call centre is based in Ireland. According to Wikipedia, it is registered as a bank, although it is actually registered as a "Financial Credit Institution" but hides in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg where it is almost untouchable.

This is the first time I have had a dispute which they kicked into touch inside 24 hours, and, despite appealing the decision and asking for help - PayPal even refused to contact the courier. I should state here that the courier's telephone, email address and postal address were all out of date (they still are) and I had a hell of a job tracking them down - I had to flag their driver down on our estate and contact his local depot to get the head office details.

This is the relevant section and you will see that you will get no help from PayPal if British Airways charges you incorrectly, or twice, as Travel Tickets are specifically excluded: