posted on November 29, 2000 08:18:10 PM new
I am a small time seller and don't want to open a business account with PayPal so I quit listing them in my ads and EOA letters. I do list ExchangePath. I want to keep the account open for my own personal use and for international sales. Well, people are still sending me PayPal payments for my other auctions. I just sent a nasty email to a bidder who did this and I feel bad now, I prefer to be friendly and positive to my customers. This item sold for $1.50, no room for paying paypal fees. I'm thinking of adding in my EOA letters add $0.50 for PayPal payments to discourage this. What would you do?
posted on November 29, 2000 08:28:42 PM new
directly chargeing fees for use of paypal or any credit card service is against ebay rules.
How ever you could incress your starting bid or add a handleing charge to your sales.
if you say in your auction Shipping and hanldleing of $3.75 rather than shipping $3.20 .
This would be ok with Ebay some buyer dont like High Handleing charges so try to keep it within reason Dont call it a fee for paypal this is no good and if someone reports it to safe harbor they will close your auctions.
to keep buyer from sending paypal with out asking frist just change your email address at paypal to one buyers dont know.
posted on November 29, 2000 08:43:29 PM new
>>to keep buyer from sending paypal with out asking frist just change your email address at paypal to one buyers dont know. <<
That's a great idea, but buyers will still try to send payment to the email address that they are replying to. Goes hand in hand with inability to read end of auction letters.
posted on November 30, 2000 02:36:58 AM new
hi ok I figured this out with mine. My bank refused to do business with pay pal, so I dropped pay pal, to get your bidders to stop just sending you need to change the email address with pay pal, go to any other email then yours. Like go to yahoo and sign up with one their use that one with pay pal so no one can find you. I deleted my ebay selling email address, and use my family one so no one can find me or just send the money any more. It really works )
posted on November 30, 2000 02:42:07 AM new
Get an email address at any free email provider (hotmail, yahoo, etc.). Use that for your PayPal email and REMOVE your eBay email from the account.
If they send you a PayPal payment to the eBay address you will get the "you have cash" email, but until you log on and accept the payment it is not "yours" ... just send that notice mail back to the buyer and tell them you do not accept PayPal and repeat your payment preferences.
posted on November 30, 2000 10:23:53 AM new
Don't be so quick to trade in PP for EP. EP is even worse. They not only do nothing to prevent CC fraud, if you report to them that you received a suspcious payment, they will freeze your account for weeks while they sort it out. Check out my ratings of payment services at http://www.ygoodman.com/payments.html and then check out EP's weak attempt to claim that they are working to prevent fraud and my questions to them for which I am waiting for an answer http://www.auctionwatch.com/mesg/read.html?num=2&thread=292380.
It's time sellers did a little investigating before handing over their business to "services" that aren't reliable.
posted on November 30, 2000 06:53:34 PM new
I'm still really confused about this whole PayPal thing. I have been with them over a year, I have a verified personal account. I am, like you, a "small time seller" and I always accept PayPal payments. I've never been charged any fees by PayPal at all. I don't know the total amounts I've accepted, but just today I transferred almost $200 into my checking account from PayPal (that was for just 2 auctions). I transfer as soon as I receive the money.
So what is the deal? I don't know the total $ amount from this month but 20 out of 30 auctions (a LOT for me...some months I don't list at all) were paid for with PayPal.
posted on November 30, 2000 07:02:23 PM new
GinaD: You have probably been lucky that most of the payments you received came from existing PP balances rather than credit card charges. Once you hit $500 in CC charges in 6 months you will have to sign up for a business account and pay fees. The problems with PP are not the fees. I happen to think they are fair. It is the way things are done. Changes made to the TOS without warning and even made retroactive. But an even bigger problem is PP doing things that are in direct contradiction of their own TOS. The "protection" plan that claims to protect you but instead protects PP at your expense. The accounts frozen without warning and without just cause. The details can be found at http://www.ygoodman.com/paypal.html. It also seems the foreign crooks have discovered that it is very easy to get a PP account with a stolen CC. When PP was not international, it was easier to protect yourself. Just dont ship outside the US. But now that they're international, you never know if the person paying you is a crook or not. Even if you know they are, you have no way to prevent them from making a payment to your account. PP has refused to give sellers an accept/reject method, despite promising it months ago. Once that money is in your account, you're hosed. If you return it, PP will take it out of your bank account because you "laundered it." If you keep it, PP will freeze your account for a month or two while they "investigate."
At http://www.ygoodman.com/credit.html you can read what the payment services don't want you to know.
posted on December 1, 2000 08:01:41 AM new
Paypal is the best thing to come along since ebay. They have made me hundreds of dollars. Brick an dmortar businesses pay about 3% to accept credit cards. (actually more with all cost involved) You are skating on paypal for free for your first $500 and the fees are great. Good for them. They are having growing pains but remember Visa and Mastercard have been around for 30 or more years and still have changes that upset people. Roll with them as they seem to really have a large scope. Protect yourself by not becoming too dependent and be sure to read and understand the new policies. Ask question if you don't understand this is real cash we are talking about not some software license we are pointing and clicking on. Good luck!
)