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"Hidden" PayPal Fees Inciting Community Unrest
Several sites are reporting on the addition of extra fees to PayPal that are just starting to become common knowledge. While PayPal has certainly had their fair share of controversy, the new "transaction fees" that promise to affect the entire customer base are already well on their way to becoming another. "For example, a personal account sending another personal account money for a one-time payment for, say, mowing your lawn was not previously charged any fees on either side, but is now charged the usual transaction fee (the sender gets to decide who pays). The only way to avoid this is by selecting 'gift' when making the transfer — something you can't do if you're following through on a purchase or invoice from someone. And, if you fall into this category (which many people do), it's likely that you had no idea about the changes until just now."
Ever since they began taking a percentage of my transactions, I stopped using Paypal whatsoever for the freelance work I do.
Paypal was nice when it began, but the more time passes the more annoyinng it becomes.
Do you D?
I don't know any details, but I'd imagine you'd be waiving any of your buyer's protection rights by sending money "as a gift" instead of for a good or service.
Whale
I use Paypal as a conduit for my credit card purchases.
I'm just fucking thrilled with PayPal right now, can't you tell?
Infinitely more expensive than doing a simple free bank to bank payment online. In the UK the fees are instantly transferred as well, if you wish, even between different banks.
Of course, anything less and we'd burn down the banks after their behaviour recently, and their other charges.
Credit Card processing is a competitive business.
Our online credit card rates are $0.15 + 1.70% per transactions. That is much cheaper than paypal.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
It's only cheaper until you have you something go wrong with a transaction. I can tell you for a fact that it's much easier to contest a problem with a standard credit card that it is to contest a paypal charge. As a buyer, I got screwed on what turned out to be faked brand-name items from someone in China with an invalid return address -- BTW, I did not plan on buying the item from China... the E-Bay auction "address" was in the US. However, the Paypal account address that I paid was registered to China which is something you might not spot right away. Paypal made me send back the package to China to try to get a refund which costs me a bunch in shipping. Then because they seller gave me a bad address, it got shipped back to me in the US. Paypal never gave me a refund because my item was "never actually returned to seller" even though the seller was at fault for giving a bad address.
Overall, I was out $100. I try to avoid both Paypal and E-Bay since this incident and only use them after exhausting all other options.
Every Paypal customer received an email that says that there are updates to the terms of service. If you could not be bothered to read it, that is your problem.
I use a webservice that mointers the TOSs of companies whos' services I use to be alerted to changes.
You can easily use TOSBack.org to do this for many companies.
Did you pay for the item using your credit card through Paypal or using your checking account? If you used your credit card you could have done a chargeback through the credit card company and bypassed Paypal's bullshit. Of course you'd lose your paypal account for doing this but that's a small price to pay to recover $100, IMHO anyway.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I use it as a conduit for purchases through my bank account, costs me $0.00 in fees.
Perhaps another person could say why the bank account/paypal is free and the other stuff costs money.
Because it costs Paypal money to run your credit card. They have to pay processing/transaction fees for credit cards just like any other merchant. However, they are still making money. I guarantee that with their usage, they can negotiate CC transaction fees in the 5-15 cent range with a percentage take of 1.5-7%.
Bank and paypal accounts are 'free' because of the practices surrounding those types of transactions.
I use it as a conduit for purchases through my bank account, costs me $0.00 in fees.
And your chargeback rights/protection if you get shafted by a bad seller or stupid Paypal policy.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Did you pay for the item using your credit card through Paypal or using your checking account?
I did use a credit card. Unfortunately, I used the "Paypal"-branded credit card issued by GE Money Bank. They have in their fine print that any charge on the card through Paypal has to be resolved through paypal. They will just give you the run-around otherwise.
First thing I did after this was to tear up and cancel that card and then link my regular credit card to paypal which is a Citibank Card -- Citibank has always been *VERY* *GOOD* at dealing with any hint of fraud whether online or by phone / mail.
I'm out the $$$ but I've learned an important lesson which I can share with all of you. Don't use Paypal if you can't afford to be shafted -- and if you do use Paypal, whatever you do, don't get the Paypal Credit Card.
eBay have a stranglehold on the online payment situation, they've banned the use of Google Checkout.
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
Yup. PayPal is a scam. Okay to use it until there is a problem.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
The theory is inaccurate. I'm sure to some extent they do, but they also get a much better assurance that the money will be paid than they would otherwise. Checks for instance, the person cashing a bad check historically has had to pay a huge amount of money to their bank for the privilege of learning that the check was for one reason or another declined. Not to mention the added expense of processing them.
With a credit card you know ahead of time in most cases whether or not it's been declined. The worst thing tends to be charge backs, but in those cases the more or less worst case for most vendors is that they lose the cost of the item. With checks they could end up paying more than that.
On top of that, businesses that don't take credit cards have to deal with turning away customers that don't carry cash or won't pay for things in cash.
Oddly enough, PayPal manages to find a way to best both in terms of pain-in-the-assedness.
In USA, I don't know, but in EU, it's considered and registered as bank already.
>>>If you used your credit card you could have done a chargeback...of course you'd lose your paypal account for doing this
This is an oft-repeated myth. I've done several chargebacks on my ebay/paypal purchases, and my account is still alive and well. I think the key is that I followed Paypal's Dispute process, waited until they agreed to reimburse me, and then did a chargeback as a last resort (i.e. if paypal could not recover the money from the seller).
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
How about because PayPal said they would be free?
When PayPal first started there were no fees of any kind and they had a page on their site called "How PayPal works" (it's long gone). The idea was to charge your credit card and then hold the money for a couple of days before passing it along to the merchant, making money on the "float". It was a good idea that worked for a while.
Unfortunately, PayPal fell victim to the dotbomb mentality, hiring hundreds of employees they didn't need and moving into big expensive office buildings. This required the addition of more and more fees to make money. Then they were taken over by Ebay who needs more revenue to make their shreholders happy. Both Ebay and PayPal have gone to shit as a result.
Wrong, unless I'm quite mistaken, as I've done a little research into this.
Those rates you quote are real, but you've conveniently omitted the monthly fees required, or the required monthly transaction volume. Not everyone is doing $100,000 worth of CC transactions per month to get those low rates. Personally, I have a small hobby business making only a few hundred dollars per year (hence the term "hobby"). Maybe I'll eventually get it to grow into something larger, but certainly nothing as large as $100k/month. For businesses like mine, Paypal is the only viable option, as CC processing is very, very expensive if you have little volume. Paypal is dirt cheap: no monthly fees, and just fees per transaction. The currecy-exchange rates are also cheap at 1% over the regular fees. For small sellers, there aren't any good alternatives, except maybe Google Checkout, which has identical rates.
A propos diffs: it's interesting to note that PayPal also blocked the Wayback Machine via robots.txt, so it's not possible to go back and do a diff on their TOS, to see how they evolved over time.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
I don't know about this. A foreclosure, for instance, will certainly "tank" your credit score, as would an auto repossession. An unpaid fee of $30? I really doubt it. I'm not a credit expert by any means, but I don't think anything that small does much to your credit score
Your wrong. With collection items it has less to do with the amount that's owed and more to do with the fact that there's a collection item on your report. I'm sure the amount owed factors into it to a degree but just having a collection item on your report will tank your credit score. Even a paid collection item will tank your score until it gets to be a few years old and/or falls off.
Plus, you can write to the credit bureaus every month requesting it be removed, and if the bank misses responding even once, it's gone.
You can do that but eventually the bureau will stop responding to your dispute requests and just send you form letters back saying the item was already investigated. The best way to do this is to file the dispute right around the middle of December. The holidays play havoc with work schedules at the banks and credit bureaus. I successfully disputed all but two negative items off my report by doing this.
Just make sure you dispute the item(s) based off a report that you either paid for or obtained because you were denied credit. Don't ever dispute something based off one of the free reports. When Congress passed the law mandating that they give you one free report per year they included language that says they have 45 days to respond to disputes from those reports. If you get the report through another means they only have 30 days.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
They actually do not have to adhere to Reg E not being a banking or financial institution.
I have worked on a few accounts where this has happened and unlike the comment above about ruining your credit the problem with it is then your bank puts you on a list that does not allow you to open a bank account with any other bank. Sort of a non-banked black list.
Basically your only recourse is to pay the bank fees and beg paypal. If they say no you have to go the states attorney route. Good luck with that.
Often times the Paypal "Dispute Process" can be really messed up.
I used to sell a lot of stuff on EBAY when I was unemployed for a period of time. I'd buy things in bulk and sell them off on EBAY. It wasn't making me rich and it was a lot of work but it was helping me get by a hard time....until they started making things difficult for me.
The worst problem was a $27 transaction. The buyer paid and a day later my account was locked. The reason? Apparently at some time the buyer was a victim of credit card fraud so they decided it was fraud again....and because I was receiving the money I MUST be involved. Both of our accounts would be locked pending a paypal investigation.
I had about 60 packages I had to ship out very shortly and the money to do that was...in my Paypal account. Being poor and unemployed, I didn't have nearly enough money to cover it outside of that account. I talked to the guy with the $27 transaction on the phone and we decided to just call Paypal and get them to cancel it. No way. We were both under suspicion of criminal activity. In the meantime, I had another 70-80 auctions end but the Buyers could not send me money because of my frozen account. Obviously "Paypal froze my account" didn't inspire confidence so few of those people worked with me and I got stuck with EBAY seller fees.
I tried to explain the situation to the other people I owed goods. Some asked if I could just refund their money. I agreed to that but...guess what? I couldn't! As time wore on, they started getting mad and filing more complaints. By the time the original was cleared up 23 days later I had another 30 or so complaints where.....I couldn't refund the money. Ebay Fees hit (That money could come out) which left me with not enough money for all the refunds anyway. Of course, they started hammering my bank account after that. Luckily I got a job shortly after and was able to make sure everyone got their merchandise or money....but Paypal just destroyed me, my once spectacular Ebay reputation, and my bank account. It was absolutely ridiculous.
"However, eBay specifically forbids it. I don't know why."
Because ebay owns paypal, and google checkout is in direct competition with paypal.
wiki link
Direct online bank transfer ... in civilized world (read Europe). Its mostly free, takes below one minute to fill online form and money lands on another account same day. In Poland its instant if same bank, 3 transfer sessions a day between all Polish banks through Elixir system.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.