Paypal fees discussion

I absolutely hate Paypal's fees. Not only do they charge a ridiculous amount but they also invent their own exchange rates to which suits them best in order to take more money from you.

I charge Paypal fees, because i often undercut the market price in order to insure a sale and i can't afford to take more of a loss on the product.

 

I absolutely refuse to buy items from people who charge PayPal fees, no matter how much I want the item.

A few times I've contacted sellers and said "I would love to buy your item, but I won't pay the PayPal fee. If you're okay with that, I'll send payment right away. But if you insist that the buyer pays the PayPal fee, then I won't be buying from you at all."

Sometimes the sellers say "That's okay, no PayPal fee" and sometimes they say "No, sorry, I won't sell to you."

 

But I thought there were no paypal fees if you made it a "personal" payment like "gift"?

 

The only options on my PayPal Account are (1) Goods, (2) Services/Other, (3) eBay Items, (4) Cash Advance. I don't see a Personal Payment/Gift option?

 

I think there's a seperate tab to get to that option or something?

PayPal fees really confuse me. I have a debit card attached to my PayPal account and have been asked to pay fees once for a purchase through DoA and not at other times. Don't really get it. I thought it was just credit cards that incurred the fees? =_=;

 

I Don't like that people charge fees and actually have passed on stuff I really wanted because of the fees. The only time I will pay a fee is on a group order because they are saving me money on shipping.

 

I don't get that option either but I heard that it wasn't good to accept payments like that as a seller because the buyer can withdraw the payment very easily meaning an untruthful person could have the doll in their money

 

Stores pay credit card companies like Mastercard and Visa so that they can accept those cards for payment. This is already reflected in the prices they charge, if you read the back of your till receipts it will usually explain that a percentage of the charge made goes towards the store's membership with Mastercard, so your $1 taco, doesn't really cost $1 at all, it actually costs a bit less, and the rest goes towards being a member of Mastercard. In effect, everyone pays for the store's membership fee, whether they pay by credit card or not. Sounds like Paypal fees to me...

Along the top there should be options...and one of those should be 'Send Money', if you click on that, there will be two tabs underneath the space for an email address, one is for purchases made and the other one is for personal use. If you use the personal one, you tend not to be charged fees, because Paypal thinks you are simply moving money around, rather than paying for bills or goods.

I'd like to know what a Mod thinks about quitting after a sale has been agreed when paypal fees have never been mentioned previously and a seller has raised the price by asking for the fees to be covered? As a buyer I would feel very angry and duped about being asked to pay fees that have never before come up in negotiations for a sale. I might not need to read an itemised list of reasons why someone is selling something at a certain price, but I certainly do want to see an itemised list of what I am expected to pay; good example - item+shipping+fees = price, bad example - item+emotional value+cat's new kidney+original shipping costs+original customs fees+outfit you may not want+new shipping costs+fees = price

Now that we have sanctions against flakey buyers on the Marketplace...what about shady sellers? I don't consider it flaking out on a deal if one party hasn't been clear on what the deal entails until the last minute. Mods, please help!

 

I know this was posted a year ago, but this is exactly how I feel. I would never charge someone fees, it's unethical.

 

Paypal charges th same fees on Debit cards as it does on Credit cards to the best of my knowledge even though the cost to them is a lot less for debit cards

 

Coming into this kind of late, but I wouldn't consider buying from someone who asked for fees separately; if you're worried about fees, add that into the price.
I DO agree that the paypal fees on small amounts are a bit high; I wish they had it just a straight percentage instead of x+3% or whatever amount it is. It's not that much extra work for a seller to just add the fees into their price (even into their shipping/handling price if they really think that charging less 'on paper' will help the item sell)

 

is there really a way to send "gift" money? i'd love to know that as gift giving would be much simpler!

 

Yes -- this was discussed a few posts back. I've just signed on to PayPal to check exactly where it's located: on the "Send Money" page, underneath the "To" and "Amount" boxes, there is one tab for "Purchase" (contains: goods/services/eBay items checkable boxes), this is the default tab.

Next to this, there is the tab for "Personal" payments, which contains gift/household expense and a few other checkable options.

 

I usually do not charge fees unless it's an expensive item and I end up having to lose money and have it taken out of my own hard earned pocket. I charge fees on group orders because I like to have the exact total amount the company asks for and not have me remove more money out of my own pocket to meet the total (it's not fair to me). I'm not bothered by people who ask for fees. *shrugs*

 

Yeah I was under the impression it's against Paypal's service agreement as well. Someone I know who owns a webshop, mentioned that to me. Technically charging could get banned if you don't roll it into your overall asking price. But I don't think people realize that.

That's probably because they didn't realize the fee until after they got the payment...

Err maybe in other countries, but for a while in the States, Taco Bell was actually charging a 35 cent fee on top of the overall price of the taco. AM/PM still charges .45 cents to use your debt card for gas, but they don't offer a credit option. Ironically, the bank whose card you use gets a part of that fee. A lot of people don't realize it, but for every debit card transaction you do, the bank earns something like .17 cents from Visa or Mastercard o.O

 

This is not totally accurate.
Merchants that have actual physical stores only make on average 30% or less profit overall on the stuff they sell. All operating costs, such as fees, rent, etc all come out of that profit. That's why so many physical stores are going out of business these days because they just can't keep up with internet stores where merchants make on the average of 90% profit, since they pass most of their operating costs onto their customers in form of handling charges.

 

^ This.

I'm not sure, but I think that the standard charge for accepting credit cards is 3%. So you're paying for the service, whether you're aware of it or not.

 

It's not just against Paypal's service agreement, but also a California state law (Paypal is based in California). It's part of the anti-discrimination law that states that you can't discriminate against a person who wants to use a credit card by charging them a fee, while a person paying cash doesn't get charged a fee.
At the gas station or Taco Bell, the fee is not for the use of your card, but for the use of their machines. It's a loophole in the law that I hope that some day will get plugged up. These machines may only seem like a convenience for the buyer, but in actuality, they are more of a convenience for the seller, because this way, all their funds are electronically transferred to their accounts and they don't have to deal with cash, plus they are less likely to get robbed.

 

I never charge PayPal fees. However I do use two PayPal accounts to receive payments. One on my name and is Personal. Another on my husband's name and it's Premium. Since PayPal charges fees to a holder of a Premium account, no matter if it's balance or CC, I only use Premium account for CC payments and Personal for funds. I figure why give them extra fees, if technically there's a way not to and it's not against any rules. And in most cases I do get balance payments, because there's a lot of buying/selling going on in this community and people do happen to have positive balance on PayPal quite often.

 

Personally I think it's okay to charge people with Group Orders. I mean after all it's that one person that is taking the time to organizing the whole thing and everyone just has to pay lower shipping cost. Espeically in the case of Minimee projects. Getting people to post comments, etc. is a pain. Then chatting with the company about something going wrong on the project.

But if you're selling an item. I think you have to take the fees in account and figure out how much of a profit you want to make. I mean if a total price came up to $600 and then you're asking for the paypal fees on top of that. Oh heck no, that's just rude! I mean that person is already spending money on the item and then it's a slap in the face to just charge them extra so the seller has more money. Just like in ebay it pisses me off when they don't state that they are going to add sales tax, especially if you don't live in that same state.

Also I agree it's a pet peeve of mine when someone in a split or GO states DOESN'T state that there's pp fees involved. To me it's unfair business and in a way it breaks the contract between seller and buyer.