Sellers are not allowed to ask/demand money orders or any other non-viewable form of payment.
Buyers are allowed to ask sellers if they can send a money order. Most honest sellers and all crooked ones will say yes.
Why are sellers not allowed to demand money orders? For the same reason that scammers love them. If the seller says he never got it, the buyer cannot prove he did and the money order issuer will not reimburse him. Nor will the money order company do anything about a money order cashed but nothing sent.
Electronic payment (and eBay does accept a few other electronic payment methods, including direct credit card payment to sellers who have merchant accounts ) allows the mediator (eBay or PP) to see that the payment has in fact been made. Scamming sellers then must prove that the purchase has been delivered to the buyer.
For further Buyer Protection, use PP as the method of sending a payment from a credit card, instead of from a bank balance. Not only is this faster, since bank payments need to be cleared as e-cheques, but the credit card offers another layer of Buyer Protection through their chargeback policies.
And, since PP detests this, which is why they don't push it, you get that warm and fuzzy 'stickin it to the Man' feeling without also sticking it to yourself.
