Upgrading ebay / paypal account for selling?

I seem to recall from past minor issues with new sellers on ebay that you have to upgrade your account to accept payments - is that an abolute thing or does it just come into play when going over certain amounts or number of payments?

And if you do have to, does it cost, or impose a cost on other paypal transactions when you're just buying?

Also, what's the pros and cons for setting up your bank account directly with paypal, both from a buying and selling perspective?

It's an absolute thing. As far as I can tell, you need to upgrade before you can sell anything.

No idea about the bank account thing. I assume you only need to link your PayPal.
I'm only just starting to look into it myself because I have a lot of model trains to sell.

I've had a business account for 8 years despite just being a part time seller. That said you can sell with a normal account but they limit you arbitrarily it seems.

You used to hit a receive limit in a month that was a £1000 or so and then needed to upgrade to business, additionally they start to pester you about tax too if you sell a lot. Personally I sold a few very high value items in the space of a few months and it triggered a system of needing to justify what my business was, it can be a pain but you can eventually make them understand you are not a business.

Back then it did mean I paid fees to receive any money whereas home sellers didn't under a certain amount. Pretty sure that has changed now and everyone pays on all transactions.

I can still do gift for free and I've always had my bank account specified, I think some people have a misaligned belief that if they don't, they are safe from charge backs but PayPal sell the debt on and you get hounded by debt collectors so you might as well have it in there.

Basically,the same answer as above.Yes you can have a normal account but they limit you on how much payments you can receive.

I started on ebay selling off 2 bikes and a shed load of old cycling gear[madness i know now]so my limit was reached pretty quickly.Ebay/paypal locked out my account when it still had funds in it and gave their reason as being a directive on money laundering,in that it is to prevent Mr Big from laundering his ill gotten gains.
What utter tosh :x Im sure the local drug lord would be doing a shit more than 800-1000 quid through the account.
TBH i dont know if being a business account incurs slightly higher fees :? I imagine it does somewhere :roll:

Notice that all of the cases of criminals using ebay to sell stolen goods has been noticed by people outside ebay.Police cracking cases,forums or individules noticing a problem and reporting it to the police.
Ebay are blind to most that goes on.....OOPS this has became an anti ebay rant

Great, I have over 300 model trains and at least as many carriages to sell. I guess I can expect trouble then.