I use paypal all the time because of ebay and such, but with all the scams that 1st came out with paypal I have been very careful not to get lost in the shuffle.
I keep a separate account just for paypal and only keep a minimum amount approx. $40.00 and if I know I'll need more than that there for something with a larger amount I just make a deposit in the account to cover it.
But I rarely use the account from the bank for purchases as a rule I use a credit card to pay, again one with a low amount, just in case something does ever go wrong I'm not that deep into it.
Paypal has a "wall of shame" that came out within the 1st 6 months of the birth of paypal, it was put on the net by the people that got shafted.
Paypal can for absolutely no reason at all freeze your account at any time, when they do it they just say that there was some suspicious activity and BANG you can't retrieve your funds until they release them.
Now people on the net (wall of shame) have said that paypal was doing this in regional blocks, by doing this they would freeze a bunch of accounts for a month or better and of course paypal being a bank and holding you're funds ... collects the interest on your money.
It was said that they took this money from the frozen accounts and reinvested it in other ventures for profit and when they made the money back they unfroze the accounts, if they lost the money then the accounts never got reopened.
The wall of shame had over 20,000 people on it that got taken for as littlle as $50.00 to some in the $1,000.00's and it took months for some of them to get their money back and some of them never got their money back at all.
So be safe when dealing with them, and NEVER reply to an e-mail that addresses you by your e-mail address or dear sir or anything odd, they always use your name.
If you get one saying they need you to update your information, NEVER follow the link from the e-mail. Go on the net and type in
www.paypal.com and if there is any updates needed you'll see it here but almost always those are bogus e-mails.
Glad you got refunded by BOA, you are one of the lucky ones.