PayPal and You

I've used paypal a lot over the years. My biggest complaint is their currency converter, they seem to take an extra percent or two when you use that.

I used to keep a few hundred dollars in my account just in case something nice came along, but more recently I've used E-checks for everything. You don't have to give paypal those extra few dollars of interest over the year, and the fees are a flat rate so the seller saves money. I got a 3% discount when buying a laptop that way. The only downside is that you have to wait a week from the purchase date for the money to clear, but in this impatient society I figure it doesn't hurt to practice a little patience.
 
I've always had good experiences with paypal.I use it for 99% of my knife buying & selling.
 
masa said:
you have forgotten to factor in shipping & handling,before your calculation and because paypal would not protect the interest of sellers insurance and delivery confirmation cost.
Yes, its a people problem which paypal would not help, doesn't seem like much a problem until you realise its the sellers who are paying them, well, at least half.
Click to expand...

I didn't forget. We are talking about PayPal and per PayPal rules it violates their user agreement to expressly charge a buyer "PayPal fees" when selling an item. I thought you might need some help better understanding how to build those in to your asking price since you said it was hard to do. I work with markups, margins and percentages every day so I don't think twice about it really. You are, in as much as it relates to PayPal, free to sell your item for the $207.62 plus S&H, Insurance, or whatever other expenses you want to pass on to your customer and figure out those charges once you know where you buyer lives, or what kind of service you agree on.

As for the people problem, yes PP does not remove all risk. From the view of the seller if a buyer sends me a USPS money order and I cash it before I ship then I have removed my risk, but the buyer assumed a greater risk than if we had used PP. Personally I would rather share the risk a little and gain the exposure to a much larger buying pool. I can always take a money order from someone who will not use PayPal.

Since the main objection to PP seems to be the risk to the seller, here is a little something I learned about personal checks (if anyone thinks they are "safer") while researching my options when starting an online business. A check never really "clears" the bank. You might wait 10 days, or two weeks to make sure a check doesn't "bounce", but my bank told me that the holder of the account a check is written on has at least a year, maybe more to challenge the validity of a check. So, if some kid takes a check out of the bottom of daddy's box of checks to pay you, and it takes daddy six months to discover that a check was presented for payment that he didn't write, they can come back on you for the funds. IF, however Jr. steals daddy's credit card and pays you via daddy's PayPal account, and PP tells you you are OK to ship and eligible for seller protection, as long as you can prove the item was delivered to the correct address you will keep your money. Seller protection has saved me from this scenario 4-5 times in the last 5 years.

This is because the kid paid PP and not me. PP basically paid me to ship something for them, and I did.
 
Perhaps PayPal should offer a "waiver" option: If seller chooses this option, the buyer must checkmark a box waiving his right to open a dispute at a later time. Make it ironclad with double verification. If the buyer doesn't want to click the waiver buttons..... no soup for him.

It seems to me there are more buyers abusing the system than sellers. But I could be wrong.
 
When I sell knives, I only accept payment via paypal. No exceptions, unless you are a close personal friend. Luckily, I've never been involved in a dispute.

Regarding claims by the other party, I would assume that PP gets it right 95% of the time. Nobody is perfect.

A couple of other rules I live by.

I don't accept "personal" transactions. Even if a buyer wants to do the personal option, I won't accept it. It's against the rules and I'm a man of principle.

I include all PP fees and shipping costs in the price I ask for a knife. Why wouldn't you?????? It doesn't take a math whiz to figure out the fees/shipping. Why would anyone ever say that fees and shipping costs are additional to be incurred by the buyer. It just makes no sense to me.

Insurance....I think it was mentioned a couple times in this thread, and although it's not a PP matter, I think it's worth mentioning. When I'm the seller (which I usually am), I don't care if the buyer wants insurance or not. The insurance is for the benefit of the seller, and not the buyer. With the exception of some international orders where the risk should be put on the buyer, for an expensive knife why would any seller not want to purchase insurance?? It's a fractional cost. If I ship a knife and it doesn't make it to the buyer, I will return the money. It's not the buyer's fault. But I will be sure to have insurance so I can recoup my own losses

Paypal is convenient, and basically asks as a ledger for my transactions. I have a record of all of the knives I've bought/sold, who the other party was, the $$ involved, the flow of funds is immediate, and they do protection you if you qualify for their protection (i.e., you don't break the rules).

I think paypal is one of the best things to happen to the Internet.
 
I use paypal and am very happy.
I have even done some stupid stuff and they helped me fix it immediately.

Any credit card processor charges fees for accepting cards. We have a separate merchant account for our gallery and wood yard sales but I use paypal for all of my online transactions. The paypal charges are a little higher but worth it to me as it provides the ability to do the shipping and tracking of items with minimal effort. This lets me focus my time on my work instead of excessive paperwork. I figure the time it saves me is worth a heck of a lot more than the fees I pay.

I have never been screwed by paypal or a customer after over 5 years of use with monthly volume in the thousands. About 1/3 of my paypal transactions are international. There have been a few attempted fraudulent transactions. Paypal was the one who caught them and had me on the phone within minutes to see if it was something I was authorizing or attempted fraud.

In a nutshell, by using paypal I am protected, my customers are protected, and both myself and my customers are able to determine the status of their purchase at any time. This has given the security necessary to conduct business worldwide for me.
 
One extra that isn't well known- international gift transactions ARE charged a percentage of the fee, but the sender chooses if they take the hit or if the receiver of the money does. This means somebody is getting the hit, why not go the legitimate route and protect everybody to the best of paypal's abilities?
 
If you're selling goods and/or services online, it just makes dollars and cents to accept paypal (Wow, was that a great pun or what?) Even if you sell goods & services offline, you can still reap the benefits of PayPal.

I don't think a lot of people realize that PayPal also has a business service. Practically anyone can sign up for it (or at least they used to could, not sure about current requirements). It's easy and I don't think it cost anything when I signed up for it many years ago.

I used to own a home inspection business with 4 employees. I tried for a long time to only accept checks and cash, but we lost a lot of Clients because they wanted to pay with their CC. Finally I started researching merchant accounts and ended going with PayPal. I was amazed at how many people would go online to pay their fees. Not only did we book more inspections, but we also booked more add-on services. I quietly raised our fees across the board to cover any processing fees.

Speaking of processing fees, theirs beat all the so called "merchant services" and banks that I could find. After we started doing over 10k per month in transactions through PayPal, they knocked off another 1/2 percent or 1 percent (I can't remember now, but the more we did, the lower our fee was).

If you're selling anything, you need to take a look into their services for small business. I think at one time they even had some sort of way to pay via PayPal at a POS (point of sale, not the other POS) terminal. You'll probably find that you'll save money on processing fees and may increase business!
 
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