Selling online sucks!

[crimedog]

I'm just reviewing my EBay and PayPal charges, man do they suck! I try to sell here whenever possible, saves ebay's ~3% fees, but there's not always a market. When I sell on ebay and recieve money though PayPal I get socked for a total of about 6% on every sale. That bites!
Sure it's convienient, but this is adding up. Is there anything else? Should we boycott? :mad:

[deRusett]

why boycott? it costs a heck of a lot of money to run Paypal, and e-bay 6% in total is hardly a large fee. Credit card companies charge 10-25% on outstanding balances, shall we boycott all credit cards?

[Genjix]

its the best thing since sliced bread.

[tom10167]

Six percent is a lot? Wow, can I have your tax rates? Sales tax in NY alone is 8.25%.

[crimedog]

maybe i'm just cheap?

you can't compare it to sales tax, sales tax is paid for by the buyer (making it twice as bad ;) )

credit cards are an unfair comparison as well, you're borrowing their money. for this you're using their hosting (web page), bank transfers (the reason banks pay you for savings accounts is that they USE your money while it's in there). Whenever you're keeping money in your paypal account they're benifiting, but they also charge you 3% to get it into their account.

[OSUmaxx]

Like you said, PayPal and Ebay are offering a service. They need to get paid for it, and you have the choice to use it or not.

You can always sell on forums around the internet and only accept money orders if you don't like losing any money. There's not much of a choice if you'd like to use the services though.

[deRusett]

Originally posted by crimedog
maybe i'm just cheap?

you can't compare it to sales tax, sales tax is paid for by the buyer (making it twice as bad ;) )

credit cards are an unfair comparison as well, you're borrowing their money. for this you're using their hosting (web page), bank transfers (the reason banks pay you for savings accounts is that they USE your money while it's in there). Whenever you're keeping money in your paypal account they're benifiting, but they also charge you 3% to get it into their account.


PayPal is a FAR cry from a bank, Banks get monies through Loan's your savings accont is next to nothing to them compared to having your Loans with them. PayPal can't give loans so they need to change a fee, think of all the people that work for paypal, the bandwidth costs, and the tech suport, the little amount they MIGHT make off of investing your money if they didn't charge fees would hardly cover the service.

and even banks charge you user fees, unless you are still young enough

you pay the bank to keep your money accessable, with either per transaction fees or flat rates.

[Aslan]

Well, if you want to reduce the charges by 3%, you can always downgrade your Paypal account from Premier to Personal (the downside being that you can no longer accept CC charges at all).

I also think that this is somewhat of a scam myself. I agree that Paypal does need to get paid, but its annoying that after upgrading to Premier, they take 3% of every payment, regardless of whether it is CC or not.

When I was selling stuff on Paypal (Virtual items on Ultima Online, a very risky endeavor in itself ;) ) I upgraded for the 2 CC sales that I had, then after they took 3% every time, I just downgraded and stopped doing CC sales altogether.

[Thelemac]

Originally posted by crimedog
you can't compare it to sales tax, sales tax is paid for by the buyer (making it twice as bad ;) )


Actually, it's pretty close to the same thing. Sales tax is actually paid to the government by the seller, the same as fees are paid by the seller. It's the seller's option to price with the fees/sales tax in mind or not.

[Sophisticated]

and then there was www.Dangopay.com which credits you $5 on sign up!!! to bad ebay doesnt use this

[Mr.Guvernment]

dont foget EBay owns PayPal now :) so it is all one company getting your money!


for ebay purchases tell people to use www.bidpay.com / www.auuctionpayments.com

they charge the sender a fee and you get mailed a money order - ALSO because the money is from bidpay and it is a money order - u have no risk in losing money or someone crying to paypal fraud!! and bam - you get the money taken out of your account.

i really hope your not one of thos people who will ONLY accept paypal.!!!!!! i hate those - they have no good reason to not accept money orders!

Also - to pay via CC on paypal doesnt the person have to make an account? Either way - let the customer sign up and create an aco**** and fund it and send the money to you via paypal.


CompAnies need to make money - you dont like how they do it, dont support it.

other options for payment - but they all charge fee's

www.neteller.com
www.firepay.com
www.prepaidatm.com

%3 is a low fee - considering the cost it likely cost these companies - myself working for an online gaming company - we absorb fee's for transfers too us from the above 3 companies and it cost well over $1-$2k a day! in fee's - that we cover! that is alot of money.

[Mr.Guvernment]

Originally posted by Sophisticated
and then there was www.Dangopay.com which credits you $5 on sign up!!! to bad ebay doesnt use this


it is not Ebay that may not use it - it is the sellers that choose what payment methods they want to accept - thing is people are too affraid to trust other companies and since Ebay owns PayPal they shove PayPal down your throat when ever they can.

[FarEast]

Erm why don't you add 3-6% to the price of your goods to cover the PayPal and E-Bay fee's?

Just seems the logical thing to do!

[Stedeman]

Well you can also get 1.5% back from Pay Pal if you use their Debit card as a credit card. And a point missed about Pay Pal is it's instant no need to wait and when you use it with their debit card it's as fast to spend it. ex you buy something off me for $100 that means I get $96.70 I can spend at newegg 10 seconds later and they give me a $1.46 cash back.
If you don't mind waiting for someone to send you $ in the mail then go with a MO. But if you like it right now and the ability to use it too then Pay Pal all the way.

[JoT]

Originally posted by Sophisticated
and then there was www.Dangopay.com which credits you $5 on sign up!!! to bad ebay doesnt use this

Paypal used to do this, before the buyout.

[PerlAddict]

Originally posted by FarEast
Erm why don't you add 3-6% to the price of your goods to cover the PayPal and E-Bay fee's?

Just seems the logical thing to do!

Technically, it's against the rules to raise prices to cover your expenses to Paypal (plus, unless you set your minimum bid to be 3% more than what you want for it, and most people don't, the only other way to do it without specifically saying that's what you are doing is to inflate shipping charges, which is just wrong, IMHO).

[Pinky]

I've been selling on ebay and using paypal for like 4 years now. Never a problem! When there was an issue or two Paypal was helpful and for deadbeat bidders I always got my auction costs refunded.

I'm a tough customer, so it is only through years of trust that these companies have earned do I continue to use and recommend them. I pay the fees for the assurance it works (and as previously stated, fast!).