PayPal usage!

[Drew Toner]

Hello all,

I'm considering setting up a Paypal account on my wifes website. She would only be selling low dollar items and probably not very many of them We are in Canada.

Any one have some first hand experiance with the Paypal program, fees, reliability or any other issues that I might like to hear about ??

If you do not care to discuss your experiances on line, please email me. Thanks for the info,


Drew

 

[farmer ron]

Drew, my wife has used paypal for the last two years, she does not use it very often but uses it when she buys her aquarium stuff. She has not had any problems so far. The only thing that you have to be aware of is occasionally she will get an e mail from unknowns stating that they are from paypal and wanting to verify credit card and account numbers. These are imposters and all they want is your infor for fraud usage. Do not give out this info, do as we do and notify paypal immediately if you get one of these. I now of a few of our club members that do a lot of selling on places like e bay and use pay pal with no complaints.. Ron..

 

[N Gauger]

Originally posted by farmer ron
Drew, my wife has used paypal for the last two years, she does not use it very often but uses it when she buys her aquarium stuff. She has not had any problems so far. The only thing that you have to be aware of is occasionally she will get an e mail from unknowns stating that they are from paypal and wanting to verify credit card and account numbers. These are imposters and all they want is your infor for fraud usage. Do not give out this info, do as we do and notify paypal immediately if you get one of these. I now of a few of our club members that do a lot of selling on places like e bay and use pay pal with no complaints.. Ron..

Drew & whoever else is looking... I've been using Paypal since it's start - It's great - there is a small fee that you have to pay if you are the "Reciever" of monies (Just a Percentage) but it's well worth it!!!!!

Go to the site & read all the rules & procedures.. And Never .. never answer any e-mails asking for passwords or other "sensitive information"... Like Ron said - forward them to the company in question.. Paypal...e-bay.....Etc..

 

[CSX6638]

Drew, I have been buying and selling on ebay using PayPal since 2001 and I have never had a problem, like the other's have said before me do not answer any emails asking for info, they don't do that, if they need info from you they will ask for it when you log onto your account, also change your password at least every 6 months. I only accept payPal if it is paid from a PayPal, bank or checking account, No- Credit cards and I have never paid a fee buying or selling I only sell in the US, including, Alaska and Hawaii, and Canada, if you sell outside of that there are money exchange fees and some very high shipping costs that if you don't figure correctly will turn out to be be a loss. And customs declarations. Hope this helps. Good Luck selling.

 

[hudsonelectric]

Drew...

Same here. My wife and I buy and sell on eBay and use PayPal for making and receiving payments. The fees are nominal...you get the bucks in your account right away because the senders fund source is verified and then drafted. I wish more on-line hobby shops would use it...I could then pick up stuff without putting it on the credit card and hearing about it when the statement comes in! :curse: :cry: :curse:

Russ

 

[Matthyro]

I have a paypal account and have only used it once so far and it worked like a charm.

 

[Fred_M]

Just be aware

I agree PayPal is above the board and all, but as a seller you need to be aware of the charges you occure using ebay and paypal. You will pay a listing fees, a selling fees, and paypal fees. All these have a per piece charge + % of the total including shipping with paypal. Then you will need a Paypal debit card to get your money out OR pay PayPal to send you a check OR wait a week or two for direct deposits (or spend it on ebay). If you hook up for direct bank transactions and you do not have enough money to cover your charges and/or a purchase through PayPal your bank will also access you a fee as PayPal/ebay runs their debits as electronic checks, so there goes $25 (what my bank charged for being $1.18 short one month). And (from a teller friend) if you don't catch it quick enough they will keep running it every 2 to 3 days until you close your account (illegal and a bad thing because another bank will not open you another) or you get enough money to pay all the $25 and the original amount in the bank. I use PayPal, but you need to be aware of this if you intend to try and make money on ebay. I read some of the above posts and must say if you get a personal account there is a limit and after you exceed it selling they demand you get a business account. Examples of fees they charge on sales are $46.00 - $1.63... $17.30 - $.80,... $16.00 - $.76. It adds up. FRED

 

[pttom]

I've used it since 2001 also and had no problems.

 

[Bill Pontin]

The wife buys and sells on ebay and she prefers paypal over anything else. I'm a kept man and she pays for my occasional ebay train purchases with her account. .

 

[TomPM]

As an Ebay buyer and seller I have used Pay Pal for several years now and am very satisfied. Yes watch out for the bogus emails and when you receive one report it to Pay Pal. And yes as a seller you do have watch the fees but that is the price of doing business. Lately money order are getting to be as bad as checks. Many banks will not honor them and treat them like personal checks. You have to wait for Western Union or whoever issues the money order to pony up the money to your bank before they release the funds to you. As a result of this I only accept postal money orders because I know I can get them cashed when I mail the packages. Also I have never had a buyer take forever to pay with Pay Pal. Most Pay Pal users pay within 72 hours. Some of the money orders I am waiting 20 to 30 days to get.

 

[Vic]

Paypal works good for me too since eBay took it over. The only thing that I disliked was having to give out my bank account # to do electronic transfers from PayPal....So what I did was set up a seperate checking account for PayPal only. Its one of those "el cheapo" accounts that the bank doesn't charge for....some kind of a Sr. Citizens deal. Would they dare charge The Robber Barron anyway?

Never answer an e-mail from PayPal...its bogus....if they need information they will notify you when you sign in to your account. And change your password on a regular basis.

 

[Medicine Man]

MOST of my pay goe's to PayPal payment's(hope the wife NEVER reads this!!! ).
I wish more seller's used this option.

(just a note: my fastest payment was under a minute from the end of the auction,to haveing the money in the seller's account.)

MM :thumb:

 

[Drew Toner]

Cool, thanks for all the comments folks!! Sounds like everyone has about the same results using Paypal. Thats good.

And, Dash10, thanks for the warnings, you being a bean counter and all We did read the website and figured that the cost on a thirty dollar item would be fair, and not 'really' an issue, but yup, I'd rather have it in my pocket than theirs

I didn't know this untill today, but Paypal and ebay are one and the same Now, the items that she was going to sell, were just from her site, and not thru ebay. I wonder if using paypal independantly of ebay, would be any cheaper/expensive. I wonder if the extra exposure on ebay would 'rack up' more sales. Hmmm, that thirty dollar item could be $40, $50 ...


Drew

 

[Pete]

Here's another user who has had no problems. I like it when selling because it's quick - I can have the items out in a day or two of receiving confirmation. And it's also a big factor when I'm looking to buy something, as it saves me time and the cost of getting a money order. Unless it's something I just have to have...
I've found that transferring funds to my Canadian (Royal) bank account only takes 2 or 3 days, and their exchange rate is slightly below the banks'. And I've never received one of the bogus e-mails. Yet.
One idea that I'm in the process of implementing, is to have two accounts; one, my current premier account to accept credit card payments; and, two, opening a basic account to accept payments from a direct account or an e-check as they don't take a cut of those payments from the seller. Then find out which type of account the buyer is paying from, and direct them to the appropriate address. With a premier account, you pay a fee for all incoming transactions regardless of which type of account they originate from.

Pete

 

[jim currie]

have been using paypal and have had no problems and a side benefit is the charge back system .

 

[satokuma]

Drew - thought I would chime in...I sell and buy on ebay and other services and have been using Papal and love it...so easy... worth the small % they charge...the $ builds up in account and can either keep it their for purchases or move it back into your 'Swiss" account as needed.

 

[Raildog]

I have been selling on ebay since 1998 and have had little or no problems with PayPal. However... There are many large sellers who will have nothing to do with them at all. It may be that the fees for sellers who sell tons of stuff can get out of hand rapidly, I wouldn't know about that, since I only post one or two items at a time.

I would recommend that you go to the eBay community discussion boards and see what others are saying. I would start out on the general discussion board and post a general question like you did here.

Good Luck!

http://pages.ebay.com/community/boards/index.html

 

[Fred_M]

Maybe I am a bean counter, but money is money. Lets explore the selling of a $10 item on ebay. First there is a $.55 insertion fee (it's theirs whether it sells or not). Then if it sells they charge you another $.53 for final value fee. You then send the seller an invoice for $10 + $6 SH. He pays the $16 using PayPal. They take another $.76. Now when you ship it you need proof that you did to avoid chargebacks. So add another $.35 for delivery conformation. To get the $6 SH you promised priority mail, so give the PO another $5.40 for up to 2 pounds. So, your $16 sell nets you $8.31 less the value of the item. If it brings $10 on ebay I could sell it in my store for $20 , really I could. It might just take me a while to move it. (you really sold it for $16 because buyers add in shipping costs before they buy *smart one do*). So you get about half what you sold it for. The winners are ebay corp and shipping companies. Ebay made a $1.84 for hosting a web site and changing money, nothing more, they have no liability. The lower price the item the more % ebay takes too. Then don't forget to deduct the money that you lost last week on items that didn't sell (.55+ each). One bean two bean I'm going broke selling stuff on auction. Two years ago one could make money selling on ebay and yahoo auctions. Then they got popular and they raised the share that they take. Two years ago it was free to list on Yahoo Auctions and I made money, for a while. I'm done preaching. Say ebay. FRED

 

[Vic]

Every bean that Dash counted is true and if you are selling something on eBay just for the sake of selling most likely you are going to be disapointed with the return unless you set a reserve on the auction which is high enough to cover your known costs and the price you want to get for the item at auction. It will either sell or it won't but you are still stuck with the eBay fees. You have to just consider them "the cost of doing business" and not worry about them. And, if you re-list an item that didn't sell and it sells the second time around some of the fees are waived.

The trick to making profit on eBay is to buy low and sell high. If you are just "disposing" of something you can probably do better running an ad in the classified section of the newspaper unless the item(s) is something rare and desirable. You have to consider too weather or not there is a market for what you want to sell in your area.

The extent of my selling on eBay is to purchase items known to me to be worth far more than I will pay for them and then "turn" my money on eBay. (Example: A set of dishes I purchased for $5.00 sold on eBay for $600.00...I would have taken $200 for them in a heartbeat but two ladies got in a "bidding war" over them). My second "rule" is that I rarely put up on eBay anything that is not collectible. There's something about the word "collectible" that drives buyers wild. My third rule is I don't put up anything I want for myself just to see what I can get for it.
My fourth rule is to be completly honest in my description of the item and use lots of photos to illustrate my description.

Despite some of the shortcoming eBay is fun and profitable to me and finances my other hobbies and interests.

 

[shaygetz]

I sell on Ebay alot...as Fred points out, you must be careful because of the sales charges. I primarily sell items for club members, as well as the disposal of a fellow modeler's estate for the benefit of their families (too many "friends" turn into buzzards when this happens). I'm quite happy with the results so far and I've been doing this for three years now.

BUT...a close friend who uses PayPal (and still does) sent me this link to consider carefully since you plan to offer it's services in your sales.

http://www.paypalsucks.com/forums/showthread.php?fid=6&tid=1529&old_block=0