What is PayPal Reputation Count, How to Find it!

I have hired a freelancer for some website designing service and he is asking me to pay 50% of the total fees upfront. The work includes designing a eCommerce store, setting it up and making sure its perfectly functional. The total amount we have finalized is 800$ and I need to pay 50% of this ie 400$ amount in advance. The freelancer says that he has a great reputation count in Paypal and i can believe him and make the payment, but am still worried if he would run away after my payment is made. Please advice me on this.

First of all its not advisable to deal with anyone directly, unless you know his brand name is trustworthy or else if his website has a excellent buzz in the market and many customers rely on their services. If you are worried about your money, then its recommended that you should opt for payment services like Escrow where in the money in kept with the middle men and when the work is confirmed to be complete all the funds are transferred to the seller. This can be a safe transaction and a good business module for both the parties. If the transaction amount is less then you can try out Freelancer websites like getafreelancer.com, guru.com, elance.com etc and get the freelancer to create the transaction through these websites which can again be a safe job for you.

Anyway if you want to know the Paypal Reputation count, then its a very easy job. This is because Paypal has always been showing these numbers to everyone but in most cases people would ignore this and just take no efforts in understanding what they mean. Based on the reputation count itself you can decide whether you can rely on the other party or not. If the count is too less or 0, its recommended to not make any payments.

From Paypal : Reputation Numbers help PayPal members evaluate the trustworthiness of the people they do business with. The Seller Reputation Number represents the total Verified Members who have paid a seller. Buyers use Reputation Numbers to help them assess the seller’s track record with other buyers.

Find Others Paypal Reputation : Login to your Paypal Account and then try sending some amount of money to the Receivers Account. You don’t actually have to send any money but just start on the option of sending some money and not complete the transaction by not clicking on the Submit Button. You will get a link which says something like this – Non-U.S. Verified Premier Member (548), click on this and a small window will open with all the information as shown below.