What just happened to accepting Paypal?? looks like they are trying to drive us away

Yes.  I just spent one entire hour to complete a purchase here on  Audiogon.  What a pain!  Two weeks ago, it took less than a minute. This evening I had to call PayPal to see what was going on, and it turns out it is Audiogon not PayPal.  Thankfully the seller phastm3 was wonderful and understanding as I apologized for all the trouble. I was embarrassed, thinking he thought I was a fraud or didn’t really have the credit to purchase the item.  Really, Audiogon, you should tell us all what is going on and fix this problem!

Agreed it seems like it is driven just by Audiogon as when I saw this yesterday I too called PayPal and got the same answer.
C,Mon audiogon what are you playing at now??

So in order to complete the transaction I ended up having to send payment directly to the sellers email account associated with his PayPal account.  Others may have to do the same if they want to make a purchase here.

a conspiracy theorist might assume that Audiogon was trying to force us over to Stripe, whatever that is. But I passed along these concerns to Audiogon and was promised they would try to get answer on Monday

Seems like they want control over payment 

:/