PayPal

Though I'm fairly newly registered here, I've been watching this and other knife forums for years. I've noticed lately in the B/S/T Forum that sellers are increasingly asking for PayPal Gift or add 3% (or 3.5%, etc.). This has been going on for a while at other knife forums, but it seems more recent here, and it's very discouraging. If the seller is the one getting the money, the seller should be the one paying the fees, in my opinion.

Furthermore, it's against the PayPal Terms of Service to ask for gift payment or add surcharges. Here are some quotes from PayPal's Terms of Service (TOS), which everyone who uses PayPal must agree to:

4.1 Receiving Personal Payments. If you are selling goods or services, you may not ask the buyer to send you a Personal (Gift) Payment for the purchase. If you do so, PayPal may remove your ability to accept Personal Payments.

4.6 No Surcharges. You agree that you will not impose a surcharge or any other fee for accepting PayPal as a payment method.

Lately a number of sellers at Blade Forums are trying to get around this by saying something like "Price is $400, net to me." Same thing. If I use PayPal, I'm supposed to send him $415 or whatever.

Only a few are doing this at KKF so far, but it seems to be growing, and that's sad.

Sorry buddy. It is what it is. Im not a fan of paypal charging anyone 3% and typically sell my knives 10% cheaper than anyone else and pay for shipping as it is. I think everyone here is pretty fair with pricing man. My two cents.

Actually, I'm with you OP. When I sell I include it in the price. What really gets me is I see people asking for up to 4% for paypal fees. Last I checked it was 2.9% plus .30 per transaction. I pretty much write off the 4%'ers as "never do business with". Seems like nickel and diming to me, and I'm getting too old to deal with the BS.

hate nickel & dime baggers!

I also agree. The way I see it, the US banking system is about 20 years behind the rest of the civilized world when it comes to electronic bank transfers, and the Paypal fees are what we have to pay for the convenience of immediate service. Not that I am happy about it, but I have learned to accept it. I use Paypal quite often and for my own little transactions I need it as a option, so I normally discourage people from using the 'gift' option and would never ask for it myself - unless it actually were something like that. Just raise the asking price by a few $$, and screwing others on shipping and financial costs will not endear you to anybody.

Stefan

AFKitchenknivesguy said:

Actually, I'm with you OP. When I sell I include it in the price. What really gets me is I see people asking for up to 4% for paypal fees. Last I checked it was 2.9% plus .30 per transaction. I pretty much write off the 4%'ers as "never do business with". Seems like nickel and diming to me, and I'm getting too old to deal with the BS.

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I agree, it makes sense to include it in the price. If for nothing else just to keep things kosher with Paypal and as stated above the nickel and dime bs makes no sense...for a couple of bucks on a couple hundred dollar knife, really?

i never really thought much about it one way or another... it was kind of the standard on a photography forum i'm on, but i totally see where you guys are coming from on this

Cord_steele, as much as I hate to say so, you're right. So for now on every seller will only accept USPS Money Orders, wait three to five days for it to arrive before sending the item. Or I guess we could all jack up the price by 3% without saying anything and accept PayPal.

If someone is in the retail business, then they should be responsible for paying PayPal's fees. I'm sure though that they price their items so their cost of doing business is included which includes PayPal's fee, whether or not they say so. For the people here that only sell a few knives now and then, not as a business but as a hobbyist, they should be able to pass on PayPal's fees to the buyer. Of course that's just my opinion.

It's really easy. I have a super widget I want to sell. I want $99 for it. It's going to cost $5.80 to send it in a small priority box. So now I need to get $104.80 to make my $99. Most people want to use PP to pay for it and that is going to cost me 2.9% + 50 cents ($3.54) now I need to get $108.34 to clear my $99. No problem the item gets listed for $110 shipped. Problem solved.

As a buyer you must always just assume that you are paying the PP fee and the shipping cost in the price of the item you are buying weather the seller asks for it on top of the sale price or as part of the sale price it.

i dont care either way. whenever i buy and sell here among other knife geeks i dont think its worth it to haggle over a few bucks. but i agree w the OP, the seller should consider the fees part of the asking price when selling something between 2 parties.

2.9% for paypal may seem like a lot but if you own a small business, credit card companies will hit you for about 2% and paypal non gifts do let you pay with a credit card after all which is a plus for some people. In theory small business can give a discount for cash but few do.

So I come down on the side of the OP: stated price should include paypal fees and if someone wants to offer a small discount for a paypal gift that is cool to me as well...

I use Paypal because it makes doing my business so much easier for me. It gives my customers a widely recognized method of payment. It ties me to USPS and makes printing shipping labels as simple as a few key strokes. It allows me to seamlessly transfer money back and forth to a back account and it gives me statements every months showing all my transactions. I don't mind paying for that and I do. I treat it as a business expense and it comes out of my net profit. I don't pass on my Paypal fees to my customers, never have and never will.

Since my latest sale post seems to be the cause of the furor from the OP, I'll just return to my original practice of including PayPal fees in the asking price. Sorry to have ruffled any feathers.

Rick

really? I thought it was my post. Oh well.

It's way too early for this...

I agree with the OP. I think it's better to include the fees in the price. (Adding it on reminds me of Ticketmaster! :angry1

It bothers me less when someone posts it from the beginning.

Sending payment as a gift also means you lose opportunities for recourse if something doesn't go right. And while I think the fees are a bit high, I think there are a lot of good uses to be able to conduct transactions with it.

Another acceptable way for individual sellers is splitting the fees. I still think it's easier for everyone to include it in the price. Hell, I even include the shipping costs in my sales.

I'm so glad someone has brought this up. This bugs the crap out of me. The Paypal price should be the same as the cash price.

As for the photography forum, everyone there does it but it doesn't make it right.

thats very true... i just dont sell much online outside of my website. For example, never sold on Ebay or anything like that. I had no clue what was normal, so i just followed the standard practices there. This conversation makes a lot of sense to me and i totally get it now... just never had to think about it before.

Any ad that says anything about "net to me" or add x % in paypal fees I simply ignore.
There are plenty of sellers out there that will handle their sales according to the ToS they agreed upon when signing up for their Paypal account.

Easy peasy!

Never has the practice annoyed me, but always was a little perplexing... If it's a cost of business, build it into the price. Perhaps I'm missing the point?

Edit: Some worthwhile academic research might come in handy in this discussion of setting a price to include the specific costs (benefit to seller):



Source: Social Psychological Personality Science Journal, published 07/30/2013 http://spp.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/07/29/1948550613499942.abstract

I don't think about this too much.

In a typical knife transaction the seller wants xx.xx for a knife. Usually xx.xx includes shipping (within specified area) Sometimes it includes insurance.

The Buyer makes a couple decisions.

Send money to pay for goods/services there is a fee.

Send money as gift there is not a fee.

Buyers call, Seller still wants xx.xx for knife.

Next buyer can use CC to pay and there is a fee.

Withdraw from PP balance or direct from bank there is not a fee.

Buyers call, Seller still wants xx.xx for knife.

I realize that buying from retailer/vendor is entirely different and fees are part of the price structure.

The recourse implications are interesting but hopefully not a concern here.

Am I missing something from a typical individual to individual transaction?

Dave

I think this falls under the category of 'six of one or half a dozen of the other'. Either that or 'much ado about nothing'.

tripleq said:

I think this falls under the category of 'six of one or half a dozen of the other'. Either that or 'much ado about nothing'.

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Since more than one person agrees, I think your wrong.

As long as the seller states it clearly then I don't think it matters either way. The 3% is usually applied when a buyer uses a credit card for the transaction but it doesn't apply when you use money from your paypal or bank account. Sellers with a business account with paypal I believe gets deducted the fees anyway for the service.

AFKitchenknivesguy said:

Since more than one person agrees, I think your wrong.

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And that would be because when several people share an opinion it makes them right or wrong? The point is that some people sell things for 100$+10$ shipping, others sell it for 110$ shipping included. No difference. Some people ask for the price + 3%, others hide that 3% in the advertised price. Again, no difference. The total price is the total price regardless of how the seller advertises it. We are talking about an open market where people have choices which included looking elsewhere or holding onto their money. There are no victims here. No one is forcing anyone to part with money if they don't want to.

tripleq said:

And that would be because when several people share an opinion it makes them right or wrong? The point is that some people sell things for 100$+10$ shipping, others sell it for 110$ shipping included. No difference. Some people ask for the price + 3%, others hide that 3% in the advertised price. Again, no difference. The total price is the total price regardless of how the seller advertises it. We are talking about an open market where people have choices which included looking elsewhere or holding onto their money. There are no victims here. No one is forcing anyone to part with money if they don't want to.

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Except that you signed an agreement with Paypal saying that you would abide by their terms of service, making them the victim here. Sorry, but by the agreement the fees can't be charged onto the seller. Again, not a big deal because it's only a few bucks, but why shouldn't Paypal get their money for completing their part of the transaction. I really could give a crap about the large company here, but without them these transactions would be much more difficult than they are currently, no reason they shouldn't benefit.

tripleq said:

And that would be because when several people share an opinion it makes them right or wrong? The point is that some people sell things for 100$+10$ shipping, others sell it for 110$ shipping included. No difference. Some people ask for the price + 3%, others hide that 3% in the advertised price. Again, no difference. The total price is the total price regardless of how the seller advertises it. We are talking about an open market where people have choices which included looking elsewhere or holding onto their money. There are no victims here. No one is forcing anyone to part with money if they don't want to.

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You've gotten off track. Your whole statement has nothing to do with the OP's original message which is, be honest and use PayPal's service as it's meant to be used.

quantumcloud509 said:

It is what it is. ...

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+1 No reason to get your panties in a bunch over it.

chinacats said:

Except that you signed an agreement with Paypal saying that you would abide by their terms of service, making them the victim here. Sorry, but by the agreement the fees can't be charged onto the seller. Again, not a big deal because it's only a few bucks, but why shouldn't Paypal get their money for completing their part of the transaction. I really could give a crap about the large company here, but without them these transactions would be much more difficult than they are currently, no reason they shouldn't benefit.

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Actually China the PayPal user agreement only states that the recipient of the purchase payment pays the fee but this only concerns who PayPal actually charges the fee to. It does not prohibit the recipient from charging that fee to the sender or otherwise including it in the total. The user agreement makes no mention of this whatsoever and rest assured that PayPal benefits from every transaction. In the case of a personal payment the sender decides who pays the fee so PayPal still gets their fee either way. A 'gift' payment as we refer to it is by no means free from these charges. Someone still pays the fee.