I personally HATE Paypal. I think their fees are way out of line.
When they started, they marketed themself as "Accecpt credit cards from anybody with an email address". They charged a nominal fee and a percentage. They still have their fees set up in a similar fashion to any merchant account (30 cents plus 2.9% per transaction).
This is VERY flawed in my opinion.
Not all transactions are credit card related. People do keep balances in their PayPal account (which they invest in a money market, draw 6-7% on and then they think they are doing us a favor by giving us 1.7% or whatever it is).
Anyway, lets say I have $1000 in my PayPal account. I want to buy a name from a fellow DNForum member. We agree on a price of $500. I go to paypal, send the $500 from funds that are already available. The money arrives in the destination account, MINUS the fees that supposed to be merchant fees.
What did paypal do?
NOTHING besides make a subtraction from my account and add one to the other member. NO MONEY CHANGED HANDS. All they did was add two records in a database... yet they still collected their outrageous fee for doing this. . .
Ever notice when you need to buy an item and you do not have the funds to cover it, they STRONGLY try to get you to transfer the money from your bank account? (the default is set to transfer from a bank account. You have to go through 2-3 more screen to change it to a credit card). Reason? Because then they will have to pay merchant fees on a credit card transaction. They try to entice you not to use a credit card by "entering you in weekly $1000 sweepstakes giveaway".
Every try to get ahold of PayPal customer Service? Unless they changed things, don't bother. You will never get through. They intentionally do not give out their information. . .
But alas, Paypal is the preferred method of payment here, so I am stuck using it.
If you want a straight merchant account to accept credit cards, do not use PayPal.
-Bob
