Paypal is not nearly so evil as ebay itself (and Paypal is part of ebay, of course).
They have jerked me around as much as anybody else over the years, but I still marvel at the beauty and simplicity of it. Want to send $100 to somebody in the Australian outback from Atlanta, Georgia? The money will be in his account in seconds.
If you want to use "gift" to avoid the transfer fees, you are making a mistake. Yes, you might get dinged for a couple of percentage points, but it is not an onerous cut (unlike ebay's tribute, which has ballooned to a full 10% on the last couple of items I sold!).
If a seller is seeking to protect himself, then it makes a bit more sense, but you are still "gaming" a system outside of its standard playing field. But until ebay/Paypal chooses to make transactions safer for sellers (don't hold your breath) there are few options, especially international.
Ebay/Paypal has surely weighed the annoyances of gifting against their need to always protect buyers. They know perfectly well that the laws of supply and demand revolve around the demand side. As long as a demand exists, suppliers will be lined up to satisfy it.
I got in trouble with Paypal a couple of years ago after accepting a series of "gift" payments (and I am talking about perhaps a dozen small transactions, max, over a couple of weeks) where they locked up my account and put a 21-day hold on everything. Even conventional ebay sales, by the book, they were holding it back even after items were sold, shipped, received, and positive feedback had been left for me.
So, I don't mess with the gift thing, as a rule. If I am providing goods and/or services to a stranger for money, that is a business transaction and I don't want to have to defend it as something else.
