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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."
Actually, the article is about PayPal charging more for their service without out notifying customers.
Paypal is operating as an unlicensed bank. I am amazed that the Feds have not already come down on them. And don't get me started on Ebay...
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
If you want to accept credit cards, paypal is by far the easiest way to do so since you don't need to qualify for a merchant account and get set up with a card processor.
The anger here is split between the fact that they added the fees without really alerting anyone and the fact that until now their business model had always been to give people free access for personal and near-personal (small scale ebay selling etc.) and then charge fees to the business users who receive payments. People would get comfortable with using the service as a buyer (no fees) and then as a small scale seller (fees only on CC based transactions) before becoming a true revenue stream for paypal when they move a business onto paypals system. Paypal has a lot of annoying stuff going on and maybe some fees are too high (although the real fee problem lies in their parent company getting double fees since you basically have to use paypal with ebay), but I am not sure that charging a small amount for business transactions that cost them money on a site that is otherwise cost and ad free is that big of a problem.
Bottles.
So wait, you got screwed by PayPal, so at the first available opportunity, you gave them your credit card details so you could continue to use their service? This kind of thing is exactly why corporations continue to screw people over - they know they can keep doing it time and time again, and people will just keep coming back for more.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
PayPal works with money like a bank or credit card, but they are treated like an internet Western Union on steroids, and yet most of the public is trusting them like a bank, which is a mistake.
PayPal needs controls like bank. The majority of their transactions may be okay, but that's like 95 to 99%... of billions. That's way too many bad transactions. They need to be made more secure, particularly for consumers.
I avoid PayPal like the plague because I don't want to become a statistic.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
You're kidding, right? Paypal didn't send a mass e-mail to all its users saying "Dear Customers, We're jacking up our fees!". Instead, they sent out a mass mail that said "Dear Customers, We updated our Terms of Service. By doing nothing, you agree that you accept the changes."
Take a look at Paypal's legal page. The Paypal "Terms of Service" are actually 14 different agreements, all written in legalese, all saying that they can be changed at any time for any reason by Paypal. All together, the agreements add up 4000 lines, give or take. Not every user is subject to every agreement (some are for specific services), but many are.
So can you really say with a straight face that you believe it is reasonable to expect Paypal users to reread 4000 lines of legalese every time Paypal announces that they've made some change to the agreement? It's not like they're providing diffs. They do not want their customers to understand these agreements or how they have changed because they are dishonest. That's the crux of the issue - Paypal is acting in bad faith to screw their own customers and hiding behind legalese when called out on it.