Pay Pal seems like they are trying to lock me into a premiere account (1 Viewer)

[Robert_eb]

Here's the problem I'm having with pay pal.

Personal accounts let you receive bank transfers free but will not let you accept a credit card payment. You must upgrade to a premiere account for credit card payments, which they charge you fees, for every payment received.

Pay pal has a policy for their personal accounts that only lets you upgrade once to a Premiere account and than revert back to a personal account.

What happened to me is that I received a payment which appeared to be a bank transfer, but six days later, I'm now informed that it's a credit card payment, after I mailed item out. Nowhere did it state in the email that it was a credit card payment or on my transaction history page at their web site, before today. Usually, when I receive a credit card payment, I'll receive an email from them that a credit card payment was made, and it'll ask me to accept or deny it. It will also state this on the Personal Account transaction page that I need to accept or deny a credit card payment. The email that I received for this transaction never indicated that this was a credit card payment and their web site indicated this as well. Today, I received an email from them not to forget too claim my money. Their web site now states that I need to accept or deny this payment, six days after payment was sent, three days after item is in the mail. This has happened to me four times now and I'm starting to wonder if this is common practice to lock you in to a premiere account. Pay pal refuses to let me accept this payment unless I upgrade, which will lock me in to the premiere account. Has this ever happed to anyone else?

 

[Dick]

This has not happened to me, but then again I haven't used the service for a while. It used to be FREE for both parties, now they are sucking sellers clean of a fair chunk of the profits on top of what eBay charges, and this is likely to grow worse, now that eBay has aquired PayPal. I can understand why some sellers refuse to accept payment via PayPal, despite its relative ease of use.

 

[Jeff Ulmer]

Accepting credit card payments has never been free in the real world. All merchants are charged anywhere from 2% to 9% per transaction. PayPal's rates aren't that bad, but the terms in order to be covered by their seller's protection make it difficult to use, especially for non US accounts, and with the amount of credit card fraud, it's hard to ship product without a guarantee of payment.

 

[Malcolm R]

I agree. I upgraded my account a couple years ago and never regret it. They charge what amounts to pennies for convenient and secure transactions.

If the fees bother you that much, don't use Paypal at all or simply price your items accordingly to cover the fees.

 

[Jon_Gregory]

Just put in your auctions that you will only accept bank transfers and no credit cards through paypal. I upgraded my account a year ago and love the ease of payments available. Many people do not want to send a bank transfer and it makes selling on ebay so much easier if you accept credit cards through paypal. I know that when I am looking on ebay, if a seller says they do not accept credit cards through paypal, I look elsewhere. Paypal may not be the ideal company, but what can you do if the masses use it. Paypal makes ebay easy. And compared to what credit card companies charge retailers for the convenience of accepting credit cards, paypal's credit card fees are small.