Whoa, it was a light hearted comment, hence the smilie!.
By chance I had just been reading posts elsewhere by people who tirelessly run down the lowest prices on everything yet simultaneously bemoan the 'race to the bottom' that retail has generally become, apparently making no connection between the two.
First I always pay by VISA credit card directly, to gain section 75 protection.
Regarding Paypal, the first danger to be aware of is that section 75 will not apply to your purchase if Paypal is acting as a middleman rather than merely as a payment gateway, and that is far from clear in many cases. Paypal's own protection scheme is inferior in various ways and not backed by law.
I have my own reasons for hating Paypal anyway and I closed my account years ago.
Buying confidently online can be difficult if you don't keep abreast of things, it's descending into a cesspool. Even Amazon, despite its many other despicable practices behind the scenes, was at least good at what it did: not any more, its marketplace is being overrun by fakes and they don't care, they are making a fortune out of it. Even if you buy from a genuine well known retailer via Amazon, you might still be sent a fake (how this happens is easy to understand once explained, I won't bother here).
Other than low-priced items - and certainly any electronics - I would always buy from long established retailers with well known reputations. All our big-ticket stuff is from specialist retailers or established ones known particularly for their after sales service.
Edit: the Paypal stuff: I meant one thing and said the opposite!. Corrected now, for more detail see
here