Paypal fees discussion

I don't see how it makes a difference if the seller states "I am charging a 4 percent paypal fee" or just adds the fee into the price without stating what it's for. Either way it's the same amount of money. Adding it in without stating might be a smarter business practice, but there's still no substantive difference. I don't see where the big moral imperative is and I'd rather the focus of any authoritative moderation by a forum be directed at booting scammers who don't deliver the goods, rather than effectively making people "bury" the Paypal fee.

eBay/ Paypal have an economic motivation to get people not to openly charge fees, because if people associate Paypal with "oooo noes, extra fees" they won't USE paypal and that will cost eBay/ Paypal money. There's nothing moral or immoral about it.

 

Once again.

A contract is a LEGAL agreement.

When you set up a PayPal account you are agreeing to their terms of service,

One of which is: You may not charge for fees.

If you do charge for fees you are breaking the terms of your LEGAL agreement.

The word ILLEGAL Means: doing something that violates a LEGAL agreement, whether it's a criminal law, a civil law, a commercial law or what have you.

Therefore. Charging a patron for PayPal fees IS illegal.


... won't get you tossed in jail, but it's illegal just the same.


I keep being amazed that people continue to debate this point. It's just simply factual.

 

I think you missed the part where i said that it was my opinion, and that I was not a mod, and that it was up to you to decide if you would or wouldn't enforce that.

I didn't know that paypal fees were being paid for. It wasn't stated, until later when they let it slip. In my agreement to pay, it was for the doll, and shipping, and insurance. NOT paypal fees.

 

Maybe I'm being a bit dense here... but I'm still not quite comprehending this logic. In one incident, it seems like "it's okay to add it to the cost but just don't SAY it's fees". After that, it became "If you don't state it, that's even worse". Then it's "Well, just don't let it slip later, you should be smarter than that".

I feel like this conversation is running in circles... Hypothetical situation time! (All of these are stated with a general hypothetic "you", not an individual "you").

Imagine someone is selling your dream doll, a very small-run limited that you may never see for sale again. The secondhand market value for the doll is estimated to be around $600.

Situation A) The seller is asking for $500, and don't state anything about fees. You agree to the price, pay the money and get the doll, happy with getting him/her for such a bargain. End of story.

Situation B) Same doll, same price. Only this time they say "The doll is $475, but I will have to add $25 to cover Paypal fees." Would you decline to purchase that doll, or would you still buy the doll since the overall price is less than the market value?

Situation C) They are asking for $500, you buy the doll. After paying, you find out that they padded the price to include Paypal fees. You already agreed to pay $500, since it's the market value for the doll, and were happy with the price before you found out it included fees since it was lower than the going rate. Would that upset you after finding out, or would you still be happy with the bargain?

Situation D) They are asking for $500, you buy the doll. After paying, you find out that they padded the price to include shipping materials, gas money to drive to the post office, and their time standing in line. Would you be just as upset as if they had charged Paypal fees?


I mean... if you agree to pay a certain price, and are happy with that price, why should it matter if you find out later what they included in that price? Yes, it's against Paypal's TOS, but I still believe that if you agreed to a price you should stick to it, no matter what you find out later about how the cost was calculated. If someone is continually violating that TOS, I just believe that "what goes around comes around". They'll pay for it somehow, eventually... To me, it's not worth that fraction of a cost and my time or effort to make someone else follow the rules.

Personally, I'd rather have situation A because I just like to keep things simple. But in any of the scenarios, I'd just be happy to get the doll at a bargain price.

 

I'm a bit bad with words, at times. I'm not saying that it is OK to imbed fees. I'm saying that if you are going to do that, don't come out later and let it slip that you are charging for the fees. Because then you are asking for trouble. If you HIDE the fact that there are fees in the cost, because you know that they will be upset if you come out and say it, don't let it slip later that you were also charging for the paypal fees.

And for those who said "It's up to you to watch yourselves, and make your own decisions, watch your own back, etc. Well, the same can be said for knock off dolls, bad sellers, ebay scams, etc. No one is here to hold your hand on any of those either, but as a community, it sure helps if people bring it up, and show it for what it is.

Anyways, i've said what i have to say, and i'm really not going to keep repeating myself because people are jumping in and not reading the past posts, or blatently misquoting me. This is definately going in circles.


Everyone else can do as they wish. But if it's me, then i'm going to do the things i've said i'm going to do. If i did not tell you it was ok to pay for your paypal fees, then you can bet if i find out later that it's being charged to me, I'll get my money back, by going to paypal to let them know.

 

I don't think we're justifying fees in general. I still don't think it's right to do, because as I stated before it is essentially going back on one's word.

However, what I was trying to do was to understand your point of view. I really honestly just plain didn't get it. I didn't misquote anything. Those are direct quotes. I trimmed them down to avoid a giant block of quoted text, yes, and to highlight the points that were confusing me the most.

I think most of us agree that charging fees is technically wrong, because it is a violation of your TOS contract with Paypal. I think the debate has veered into the direction of "is it ethically wrong to charge customers for the overhead of an item, even Paypal fees". In my mind, ethically and as business practice, it is not. BUT since users have signed a contract, they shouldn't.

However, if I found out after the fact that someone had done it, and I'd been happy with things up to that point, I wouldn't get up in arms about it. I agreed to pay a price unknowing that the fees were there. Finding out what made up that price wouldn't change how I felt about it.

 

Personally, I don't get bothered all that much about paying Paypal fees...I just factor it into the price I'm willing to pay for the doll. Of course I have never charged those fees myself because I don't feel it's right to do so according to my Paypal TOS. But as a buyer, it just seems like a fact of life here in the marketplace. If I want to give the doll a good home...if it's a good price even with the paypal fees...then I won't deprive myself the pleasure of having it in my collection. Hey, it's the seller's moral dilema not mine, so I don't feel responsible for taking on the burden of being their moral compass. That's between them, their conscience and Paypal. I get much more upset at seeing some poor unloved doll languishing forever in the marketplace because some greedy and stupid jerk thinks that for their yellowed, roughly played with and damaged 4-year-old doll (not limited and still being made by the company) they should charge full new price, plus fees, plus their initial shipping from the original company 4 years ago, plus an exhorbitant fee for their time to give the poor doll a really bad face-up and a disintegrating sock dress. That one always leaves me shaking my head in disbelief, and it's truly amazing how prevalent that is.

 

I don't know if I have posted this before, I'm too lazy to look for my past posts here...

But Paypal lets you have both a Personal account AND a premier account. So what I do in my sales is tell people to send the money to the personal account if they're paying with funds, instant bank transfer or e-checks, and to the Premier one if they're using credit/debit card.

I never charge paypal fees on my personal sales, I eat them, but it does help if someone is paying with a method that doesn't cause any fees

 

I have tried to do that too but one problem is that the Personal account has a limit on how much money you can accept in a month - I think it's like 500 dollars - so if you are selling an expensive doll or doing a big group order, the personal account is not going to work.

 

O_o Really?
Did you verify your account? I have hosted medium to large group orders (like the Dollmore ones, where the total is $800 or more), and most of the participants have used my personal account to send the money, and I have never had that problem O:

ETA: And I just went to check my personal PP, and the only limit I see is on credit/debit card payments that I can accept, but of course I won't take those on that account.

 

Just a FYI to this discussion--is everyone aware that Paypal will be reporting to the IRS? I called them and they said they are doing this now;

http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y08/m08/i06/s01

Which I think royally stinks-most people are selling items and dolls they have already paid taxes on.

 

I can "hear" just fine, and so can Armeleia, for the record. So far in this thread, most people have stated that PP fees "should just be worked into the base price" so that charging fees is not an issue, which implies it is not the amount of the fees that is bothering them, but merely the fact that they are being pointed out.

As much as you claim to disagree with this stance, you yourself have proudly regaled us with your tale of agreeing to pay a price for an item, but then finding out later that the seller had come to that price by taking into account her cost of doing business through PP. So what did you do? Decided after the fact that the price you had agreed to and already paid was suddenly unfair, simply because you didn't like where some of the money was going. In short, it wasn't the cost that bothered you -- if it was, you'd never have agreed to the price in the first place, much less paid it -- it was having it pointed out.

 

*blinks* I'm a little confused about all the commotion. The doll is marketed as $X. You either:

1. Purchase it for $X
2. Try to negotiate it to $Y
3. Find another seller

I don't care if the seller worked her mortgage payments into $X. That's what she's selling it for. If you purchase it for $X you clearly thought it was worth $X, no matter how the seller came to that amount.

 

-nevermind, didn't come out the way I'd intended it to -

 

I have no idea how your account works, but if you search your Paypal on "Monthly Receiving Limits" you'll see what I'm talking about. My personal account is still set at 500 dollars per month, I checked. If money comes in above that, they will hold the money until you upgrade your account to one that pays them fees. I think you *may* be able to get around it for group orders by having people send money tagged something other than "Goods", but since I would rather not take a chance on that, and would also like to give people the option to pay by credit cards if they need to, I just use the Premier account for that. All my group orders have been well over 1000 USD and in some cases over 2000 USD because they were for things like expensive eyes and doll heads.

And yes, I'm verified and have been for years.

 

I personally think it isn't really fair for the buyer to be paying the fees of the seller... That would be like going to a store and them asking you to pay some of their rent...

 

I do it as a courtesy when someone's doing me a favour - like for faceups, or if they're purchasing things for me on a group order. But not normally when I'm only buying things off them that they already own. I ask for it in the same circumstances.

 

yeah. whut Ostrich said.

 

Actually, you are paying for the rent in the case of a physical store, as well as labor, commission (for certain items or in a mall), utilities, interest on the company's debt, TAXES, etc. Every store marks up items to cover their costs and perhaps even earn money after all the bills are paid. However, these things are not as easy to break down or estimate as a 4% Paypal fee, which is why I think people fixate on it so much.

Honestly, the only way to avoid paying a markup is to buy only things on clearance that the store/person wants to get rid of ASAP. Potentially lucrative if you want to resell for (gasp!) profit, but not a large selection otherwise...

 

I can't see that option anywhere O:
The main page where they show you the amount you have, has a "View limits" link, and when I click on it, it only shows me the credit/debit card payments I can take.

I wonder why you get receiving limits, or if it's my account that has something different.
I do remember I had something like that but that was before verifying, but it disappeared after I sent my confirmation number. That's why I asked if you had done that, I hope I didn't offend you! That wasn't my intention.

ETA: And I checked my email from Paypal when I had just opened it and linked a card to it, here's what it said:

Your card has been linked to your PayPal account - now you just need to confirm it. Here's how:

Your card ending in xxxx has been charged $1.95 USD on xx/xx/xxxx.

Check your card statement in 2-3 days and find the 4-digit PayPal code for the charge.

Return to PayPal and enter the 4-digit code to confirm your credit card.

The charge will be refunded to your PayPal account after you confirm your card. When you confirm your card, your Sending, Receiving and Withdrawal limits will be lifted and you will be a Verified member.

If you access your card statement online, you will see the number within 2-3 business days. If you don't have online access to your statement, please wait for your printed statement to arrive by mail.
Sincerely,
PayPal

Then if you're verified there shouldn't be a reason why they gave you sending/receiving limits! If it's a problem, maybe you can contact them about it?
I apologize in advance if I sound like I'm butting in, I just thought it could help you or anyone in the same situation.