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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."
... when is /. going to re-enable the direct credit card payment option for those who want to subscribe? I was a subscriber for the longest time until this option went away. Not everybody is willing to do business with Paypal or has the ability to do so.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
...than using a credit card.
It'll be an outrage for a month, then the world will settle down. Then they'll start the membership fees.
I think I'm just going to close my Paypal now - I only ever used it because I didn't have a credit card, and I trust the guys over at Steam with my credit card number.
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?
As much as I hate to think so, this might just be "good business". The company can and should push the limits of their service while still maintaining their customer base. IF one way to do that is to incrementally increase fees until they see a detrimental business impact, then why shouldn't they try it? If they overdo it, then competition will step in and offer cheaper alternatives. And if PayPal is truly being anti-competitive then there are ways to legally resolve that as well.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
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'm just fucking thrilled with PayPal right now, can't you tell?
I had this problem a few weeks ago.
If I remember correctly, you have to switch to the personal tab and make sure the source is a paypal balance or a bank account
They even tell you what costs what when you send the money and click "When fees apply" link.
Here's the excerpt from Paypal:
I used my bank account to pay a friend, so it was free. Though, if it were anything more serious, I would be leery since I can't do charge back or other convenient stuff.
The writer does NOT mention that in the article what source the money came from.
Perhaps another person could say why the bank account/paypal is free and the other stuff costs money.
import system.cool.Sig;
Between Ebay and Paypal fees, I can't sell anything for $10 and still break even (meaning I get nothing out of selling the merchandise). So I said screw em and now anything that needs sold goes on Craigslist.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Just another fee sellers can tack on to the already inflated shipping in handling. Sure you can buy this for $5 + $15 S&H + $5 Transaction Fee. Guess it works for TicketM*ster, why not PayPal
I sold an expensive (~$1800) camera package for a friend on eBay. Got an instant PayPal payment, with a confirmed shipping address, but no other communication from the buyer.
Shipped the package to the Texas address via UPS Ground. Followed the tracking info as it hit various points, and eventually made it to the destination...
...where it bounced, launching an exception that the "recipient had moved", and that it was being "redirected to the new address". An address which happened to be within 50 miles of my own address. The "buyer" continued to ignore emails.
Called up PayPal, explained that I'd shipped the package to a confirmed address. They said, "Yes, you should be covered under Seller Protection." I then explained that it had been bounced to an unconfirmed address, without any action or agreement on my part. "Oh," they said. "If you can't provide proof that the package has been delivered to a confirmed address, you aren't protected."
"So," I ask, "you mean that I can send a package using your approved shipper, with your approved tracking, to an address that you've confirmed -- and if the "recipient" redirects the shipment somewhere else, they can then claim that they never received the package, and I'll lose my payment with no recourse?"
"Well, I'm afraid so."
"So I guess I'd better recall the shipment and eat the shipping fee." "Yes, if I were you, that's what I'd do."
And that's why my eBay/PayPal annual sales volume has gone from five figures to one figure (0).
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.
Financial transactions always have cost, because there's always a chance of something going wrong and some expensive legal procedure following. Also, they must obviously pay for their operations. I don't understand how someone could expect a financial transaction service to be free.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Because Slashdot is digg?
P.S. Just because something happened yesterday doesn't mean it's not news, yeesh the internet generation wants to know everything the second it happens.
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.
Close all paypal accounts, and use mostly kijiji for my ads, and use ebay less then likely unless item is really something i need...then I use credit card on paypal..
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
One PayPal and eBay got together, eBay was already on the way out the door. Everyone had already found out that there just MIGHT be someone out there willing to pay $50 for a $10 pair of speakers, and that it MIGHT be pretty trivial to scam people out of money for a living. 80% or more of eBay is totally worthless to most people due to this.
So now what you have now is a company that makes its money from transactions, and settling a dispute wastes more time than its worth. For every scammed item or payment, there's one side that's unhappy, and one side that's happy. For a net gain of 0%. One person stops using it, the other person continues using it. All they have to do is maintain a decent user base and they'll be around for a while.
Of course, like most companies, they aren't looking to the future at all. They aren't trying to change things to sustain their business.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
I know a lot of shipping companies won't let you change the shipping address without sender authorization. I've run into this with packages which I once had to get redirected to my work address. I was able to get the destination address updated, but it required authorization from the shipper first.
I found my notice from PayPal on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying
"Beware of the Leopard."
On what planet?
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
What's up with banks charging *you* when somebody wires money to your account? Isn't the fact you're using my fucking money and not even giving me interest on it enough? Makes about as much sense as phone companies charging to send or receive a text message, since it costs them on the order of, oh, say .0000001 cents to send one.
I made an eBay sale recently. The charges, when I placed the auction, amounted to 50p, but by the time Paypal took them from my bank account they had quadrupled to £2. On an item that only sold for £15 this amounts to a 10% surcharge. But who is getting the extra £1.50?
eBay say that the discrepancy is down to Paypal, Paypal say they're just passing on eBay's charges. Yet, as far as I can gather, they are the same company?!?
I get the feeling they are "bouncing" small amounts like this back and forth between the two divisions in the hope that nobody will notice, or at least that we can't be bothered chasing it up.
I wish more sites accepted Google Checkout.
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"
Paypal wants to steal three percent of every transaction? Why is it a percentage? Does their automated system actually put in more effort the larger the amount of money involved? No. Paypal's middle-man "contribution" is fixed, regardless of the amount of a transaction, so why isn't its fee also fixed?
Answer: greed.
If Paypal were even vaguely ethical, it would be charging a fixed fee for what is a fixed amount of effort on its part. Paypal isn't ethical. Neither are many real estate brokers, stock brokers, and lawyers. The easiest way to stop this greed would have been for people to simply vote with their dollars and refuse to be disadvantaged in this fashion, but far too many people are incredibly lousy at math, didn't know any better, and now the practice is institutionalized such that no one even thinks about it. What Paypal is doing is the rule, typical capitalistic behavior, not the exception. The only thing that's different here is that Paypal is HUGE and got belatedly scrutinized because Paypal tried to obfuscate it.
The real (ethical) issue is that Paypal has been demanding those percentage fees from anyone, not the fact that Paypal got caught trying to hide an expansion of whom it charges that percentage. Paypal already knew the percentage fees were unethical, and that is precisely why it desired to hide the expansion from consumers: it fears the consequences of its unethical greedy behavior.
If we're going to collectively rebel against Paypal charging a percentage fee, I'd suggest we not stop the rebellion until we've put an end to all such greedy percentage fees.
Of course, like most companies, they aren't looking to the future at all. They aren't trying to change things to sustain their business.
This is what makes me laugh when you hear about eBay's CEO thinking of a run for CA governor and the blurbs introducing the candidate as CEO fortune whatever company eBay... Of course, that prolly guarantees she'll be our next governor.
As out of first hand experience I can say that it is like that in the Netherlands, probably in EC as a whole.
Also in Latin-America. I know this immediate transfer to another bank-account is also possible in Chile, probably in Argentina and Brazil too.
Each land has so its own little banking-tradition, as if money is not international.
For example in Chile you can not open a useful bank-account (cuenta corriente) the first year of your legal stay. Even if you own a registered Chilean Company.
Pricing strategies vary from country to country, even when you deal with the same bank.
It is still a mess, not only how they invest, but also how they deal with customers.
My high 5-figure online business recently ditched PayPal because despite the various fees and commissions a bricks and mortar bank merchant facility was marginally cheaper and, here's the big one, they never reject a valid credit card. They also don't require nineteen types of personal information to process a simple, small payment. In the name of security PayPal occasionally would reject perfectly valid cards from customers with a good trading history (in one case several of the customer's cards were rejected). PayPal would not talk to the merchant about the customer's card, and the customer's time is better spent buying elsewhere rather than fighting to pay through the PayPal "Customer Service*" call centre in downtown Calcutta (that's what it sounds like).
* Just who is PayPal's customer anyway? Is it the merchant or the buyer, or is it whoever gives PP the easiest option/biggest profit?
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
I actually moved and bought something through Amazon.com and stupidly forgot to update the address they had stored for my account.
I was surprised that the only thing needed to get UPS to change the delivery address was the tracking number.
Skip ------ See the latest from http://www.anArchyFortWorth.com
In the opinion of Slashdotters, what is the best alternative to Paypal for sending and receiving small payments from friends and acquaintances? And don't say checks.
Paypal is operating as an unlicensed bank.
Paypal is not a bank. Paypal processes transactions. Amex? Mastercard? Visa? All payment processors. None of them are banks.
You too can process transactions! No bank charter required. No messy banking regulations. Set up a website, get fast and dirty with some SQL/PHP and Bob's yer Uncle!
PCI compliance isn't too difficult either: http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:VNU6PPML01wJ:https://cms.paypal.com/cms_content/en_US/files/developer/PP_PCI_Compliance_WhitePaper.pdf+paypal+pci+compliant&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a
It's not some impossible thing.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Like PayPal, Mastercard and Visa are still just transaction brokers (very lucrative business, by the way), but late last year, American Express became a bank almost overnight. Ever since Congress passed the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), otherwise known as the Great Bank Bailout of 2008, any institution that wanted a chunk of bailout money had to be a bank (or an insurance company, like AIG, that insured banks and their worthless securities). In November 2008, after the government started handing out billions of federal reserve notes to failing institutions that were "too big to fail," American Express filed all the forms necessary to re-organize itself as a bank, and then recieved $3.4 billion (see http://bailout.propublica.org/entities/15-american-express). Fortunately, they just re-paid the entire loan--with interest--back to the U.S. Treasury Department, but they are now a bank, and will probably continue to be one as long as it benefits them.
Not really. Back when Paypal was brand-new (I know, not many people probably remember this), they were actually quite handy and cheap too. Their evil grew slowly, increasing especially after the Ebay acquisition.
Ebay was also a really cool and wonderful place when it was brand-new. The fees were small and there was all kinds of unique stuff on there, like a big online garage sale. Unlike most people, my account on there goes back to December 1996, when Ebay was called "AuctionWeb", so I think I remember their history better than most. Just like Paypal, their evil grew slowly, but much more so after they went public and the fees grew and grew and grew.
Why is PayPal still used by anyone other than Ebayers who have no choice? With Google Checkout being better and more secure all around and having more options I don't see why people aren't on a mass exodus of PayPal to Google Checkout.
Also, why has no one else bothered to launch a product that competes with them that is just as easy to use?
Ave Molech Setting
http://www.google.co.uk/finance?client=ob&q=NASDAQ:EBAY
They have lost 2/3 of their value in 2004...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Sorry, but the idea that Craigslist is a replacement for Ebay is lunacy.
CL certainly is a useful website, and is useful in many, many ways that Epay is not: it has community forums, jobs postings, you can look for a landscaper or a housekeeper there, you can look for friends/romance/"casual encounters", etc.
CL is basically meant to be a big, free (for most things) "community" website. One feature of that is the for-sale listings, which basically replace the old-style Classified Ads sections in newspapers. This is a useful service, but it in no way compares to Epay's auction-style system. For one thing, CL is completely location-dependent. If you're in Tulsa, you use tulsa.craigslist.org, and then you only see stuff being sold by your fellow Tulsans, which probably isn't much if you're looking for something obscure. CL simply doesn't handle long-distance selling at all. There are some aggregator sites, like searchtempest.com, which let you do searches on all or a subset of CL sites based on distance, but these are slow, and certainly nowhere near as convenient as Epay. Additionally, buying stuff on CL can be a real PITA. Sellers are flaky, they don't use email (WTF?) and want you to call them, they don't ship, they don't take online payments, etc. Buying stuff has many of the same problems, especially flaky buyers.
Certainly, many bargains can be found on CL. I've found it very useful for buying and selling furniture (which is too large to bother with shipping) and auto parts. But if I want to buy some Nixie tubes, for instance, you're not going to find that on CL.
Ebay was wonderful when it first came out, and for its first 5 years or so. It was basically a replacement for the garage sale, for anything small enough to ship. Sellers could get a lot more money than at a garage sale, and buyers could get stuff they couldn't find locally, and a lot more easily. The problem now is that Ebay has momentum, and no one's come up with a replacement for it which everyone wants to switch to. It's a chicken-and-egg problem: the buyers all use Ebay because all the sellers are all there, and the sellers use it because all the buyers are there. Anyone could make a similar website functionally (they're not doing anything really cutting-edge like Google does), but it wouldn't succeed because there'd be an insufficient number of users to achieve "critical mass".
And, yeah, I was more than a bit surprised at the way it panned out. I also didn't know that you could recall a shipment; it was certainly lucky for us that you could.
I honestly don't know what would've happened if we hadn't done the recall. Maybe it was a legitimate buyer, and everything would have been fine. But here's one more "interesting" observation:
I searched to see who else this buyer had dealt with recently, and found one seller. I emailed that seller (through eBay, very official and everything) asking if he'd had any trouble. He said "Yeah, they tried to reverse the charge and claim that they hadn't received the merchandise, but I sent PayPal the tracking info showing that it had been delivered, and PayPal restored the money to my account."
Now, on the old eBay, each of us would have negged the buyer, and anyone else getting a bid from her would have seen the recent negative feedback. But, of course, if sellers can leave negative feedback, they can blackmail buyers, or some damn thing. So not only can we not leave negative feedback, warning other potential sellers about this scammer -- we can't even leave NEUTRAL feedback. We're offered the choice of leaving positive feedback, or none at all.
When eBay supported an open feedback process, it was a great place to buy AND sell. Now, it's pretty much a place for big sellers to move loads of crap, and that's it. There's no way in hell I'd think of using it to sell a popular, high-value item as an individual seller. They've systematically taken away what little buyer protection there used to be, and they've castrated the seller's feedback mechanism -- there's no way to identify problem buyers, and no protection against negative feedback from them.
If the only feedback you can leave is "good job", what's the damn point?
Somehow I managed to screw eBay. Don't remember the exact sequence of events, but it involved me selling something that the buyer sent back. Long story short, I get a nasty email from eBay about once a week about how I owe them money, and that my account has been 'suspended' due to non-payment. Too bad. I did manage to open a new eBay account, a new PayPayl account for the very, very, very rare times when there is something on eBay that I really want. As with most organizations this size, they are most likely very top heavy with management, and thus there operating expenses are at an all time high. Cut the fat, trim the expenses, bring the salaries down out of the stratosphere, and all these ridiculous fees go down to a reasonable level. Frankly, the service charges and hidden fees, not to mention the very complex way eBay and PayPal are set up and intertwined, make me avoid the site as much as possible.
If I remember correctly, they had 2 sites, ebay for people in the bay area, and auctionweb for the rest of the country. I have been on since 97, so I agree completely. It really is a shame what has happened to ebay. There have been a few improvements, but most have been to screw the customer.
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
To be fair, a lot depends on the kind of thing you're buying.
If you're buying products for a very specific hobby, ebay is generally not too bad - mainly because the scammers tend to go for selling products with a broad appeal.
If you're buying something fairly generic - well, I'd be inclined to go with "Buyer collects, cash on collection". (Oh, except you can't do that any more, you have to accept Paypal).
Just another reason to move away from eBay, in my opinion. Remember the old days when it was fun? Now it's all money money money money. I even heard they were phasing out auctions for those Buy It Now deals and similar. Whilst that's cool for buyers, where's the auctions??! Don't get me started on all the costs to place a listing too. I've stopped using eBay, have changed to DubLi.com who have a much better model - and they don't use PayPal! Also, the prices go down. It's pretty much win-win. I'm surprised it's not a more well-known company, to be honest.
Why would anyone mod Lumpy's comment as flamebait? Mr Geithner, is that you?
You are welcome on my lawn.
it's still mail fraud even if you don't use a money order.
You're correct, assuming you ship USPS -- hadn't thought of that. And the USPS does provide a mail fraud complaint form online which includes both "Failure to Pay" and "Failure to Provide". Has anyone actually successfully had the USPS investigate cases of eBay fraud (e.g. buyer falsely claiming non-receipt) for non-gigantic dollar amounts, though? I googled for a bit and found people who contacted the USPS about eBay fraud, but no indications of whether USPS actually followed up.
http://cltracker.net -- powerful craigslist multi-city search
Let me make a suggestion for /.'s rating system:
Re:Still Cheaper... (Score:11, Insightful)
by Bogtha (906264) on Wednesday August 19, @05:25PM (#29125509)
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.
Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...
Western Union is still pretty expensive. Unless you're in a big hurry (which is the only real reason to use WU), the cheapest way to transfer money in America is the good ol' money order, which you can get at your supermarket or at the Post Office. That, plus a 42-cent stamp and an envelope, will let you transfer just about any sum for less than $1.50, and safely too (unlike personal checks).
Unfortunately, US banks aren't like European banks, where you can just wire money to other peoples' accounts for free (or nearly free, I'm not exactly sure what the fee is if any).
This is what makes me laugh when you hear about eBay's CEO thinking of a run for CA governor and the blurbs introducing the candidate as CEO fortune whatever company eBay... Of course, that prolly guarantees she'll be our next governor.
Meg Whitman is the former CEO of eBay; she left in March, 2008. Whether or not you agree with her politics, or think her experience as a CEO will translate to the governorship, it's hard to argue with her business acumen in growing eBay during a 10-year tenure that began in 1998, when eBay was still a very small company.
Unfortunately, US banks aren't like European banks, where you can just wire money to other peoples' accounts for free (or nearly free, I'm not exactly sure what the fee is if any).
My brokerage firm overnighted me a check for less than my bank was charging to accept a wire transfer. Now, that's efficiency for you.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)