E-mail Money Transfers - Good/Bad?

I recently found this forum, and reading some of the awful happenings has been an eye opener. It did cause me to question something though - using e-mail money transfers.

I have been using EMTs as much as possible, since it's bank-to-bank, cheap, fast, and traceable (I think?). I'm not a huge PayPal fan, but I will use PayPal if other person prefers it. I just like EMTs myself.

However, now I see PayPal has the buyer protection covered.

Do EMTs have buyer/seller protection? Is there anything sketchy for the buyer when using EMTs? Does buying with EMTs put me at risk? And does my asking customers for EMT payments make me look sketchy?

I'll add that I am in Canada, and all Canadian banks seem to be great for EMTs. I have no idea if other countries even use EMTs?

Thank you in advance,
Melanie Pratt
www.MelsExotics.ca

There were a couple of recent threads in the Canadian BOI where E-mail transfers were used to make payments to what ended up being scammers. From what I remember, their banks wouldn't do anything about it since they knowingly initiated the transfer. It'd seem that the only protection that they offered was in the event that someone's account was hacked and a transfer sent without the account holder's knowledge. That may vary from bank to bank, though.

It seems that PayPal has at least somewhat more protection, but it's not entirely safe, either. Apparently, if they used a credit card, there's nothing to stop a buyer from doing a chargeback after they've received what they paid for.

There is no buyer protection or anything.If you initiate the transfer its all on you and the bank can do nothing.I learned my lesson and will NEVER pay through email transfer again!It's just not worth the risk of getting ripped off.

Darn it. That's what I was afraid of. Thank you for the replies.

Gah, guess this means I should use PayPal then. I would never scam a customer, but I want everyone to feel safe buying from me. And I certainly don't want to use an EMT and get scammed. Poop.

Thank you both for the replies!

Balls. I didn't know this about EMTs.

I know up here in Canada a lot of people tend to use them though. PayPal hasn't quite caught on like it did South of us.