PayPal charged me 13% (not including eBay fee)

[albarks]

I sold an item for $50 and PayPal charged me $6.53 as the fee. This does not include the eBay fee which is $4.95.

This is a 23% total selling fee!

PayPal support have only sent automated responses when I attempt to contact them.

All my other PayPal Fees are around 3% but this one's much higher. Has this happened to anyone else??

[albarks]

I think it was a person, she emailed me again and apologised and said they're looking into it.

But thanks for your responses!

[digital*ghost]

---

@albarks wrote:

I have recieved a response from a person at PayPal since I started this thread and I'll quote you some of it:

"Thank you for contacting PayPal.

I can confirm that you have received a payment for $50.00 AUD minus the payment receiving fee of $6.53 AUD.

Transaction fees can range from 1.1% to 2.6% + $0.30 AUD. If you receive a payment from a non Australian PayPal account, you're charged a 1.0% cross border fee.

There is no fee when you pay for a purchase or when you use your PayPal balance to send money or make a payment."

---

Jeepers, since they're so fond of explaining the math, perhaps they might try doing some. 

i.e. The PayPal fee on a $50.00 payment (if domestic transaction etc) should have only been $1.60. If you add eBay's FVF of $4.95, you get $6.55, so not quite the fee you've been charged (2c off), but I do know that eBay was contemplating taking FVF automatically from PayPal payments at one stage, and I have vague memories of rumours it was being trialled (in the US, not 100% certain on that so I could be way off base, but I would not be surprised if the eBay FVF was levied in error, TBH). Does your eBay account history show a payment of the FVF at all, just out of curiosity?

Either way, I think you're probably going to have to call them to try and sort it out. Explain up front that the fee deducted is considerably higher than their standard rates. 

EDIT: Just saw the latest reply - glad they've picked up on the issue and will look into it. 🙂

[toygirl70]

Threaten to report it to the police as online theft if paypal do not respond positively

[cq_tech]

The police can't do anything but the Financial Ombudsmans Service certainly can.

https://forms.fos.org.au/OnlineDispute

[albarks]

Is $5 worth reporting to the Financial Ombudsman?

PayPal emailed me again and said a website update affected the seller/merchant reciever fee pattern for a very short period of time.

(If that makes sense.)

Surely I can't be the ONLY person this happen to? I only sold 2 items yesterday.

Everyone should check their PayPal fees for yesterday around 15:40 AEST!!

[cq_tech]

Is it worth reporting? You bet it is, especially if it's happening to other users. We could theoretically be talking millions of dollars on a world-wide basis. Paypal have a legal duty of care to their clients to keep them informed of any issues or problems with their accounts and that's clearly not happening, which is why the FOS needs to be informed immediately.

[bobbiegower]

---

@albarks wrote:

Is $5 worth reporting to the Financial Ombudsman?

PayPal emailed me again and said a website update affected the seller/merchant reciever fee pattern for a very short period of time.

(If that makes sense.)

Surely I can't be the ONLY person this happen to? I only sold 2 items yesterday.

Everyone should check their PayPal fees for yesterday around 15:40 AEST!!

---

I have an $800 payment of which $198 was deducted in fees

Just got off the phone to Paypal and was told it was part of the glitch and "should sort itself out in a few days". Great, so close to $200 of my money is floating around out there in cyberspace with no guarantee if/when I'll see it again. Didn't even make an attempt to rectify it over the phone, totally useless grrrr.

[charmony]

This happened to me too, and is apparently part of another glitch where payments didn't show up at all for 24+ hours. I called Paypal and got a rather defensive rep whose only explanation was that the Paypal email I received about the payment was a fraud, and to forward it to phishing.

5 minutes later he called me back sounding rather sheepish, in the hope I hadn't yet forwarded the email (I had) and admitted the staff had had an email that day (apparently he doesn't read his emails) saying there was a bug that was stopping some payments showing up, and overcharging fees.

I'd sold an item that day (Wed), got the "payment received" email immediately (with a transaction ID link that led to an error page), but the payment didn't show up until today (Friday) and Paypal took 25% in fees.

[indigorosey]

---

@charmony wrote:

This happened to me too, and is apparently part of another glitch where payments didn't show up at all for 24+ hours. I called Paypal and got a rather defensive rep whose only explanation was that the Paypal email I received about the payment was a fraud, and to forward it to phishing.

5 minutes later he called me back sounding rather sheepish, in the hope I hadn't yet forwarded the email (I had) and admitted the staff had had an email that day (apparently he doesn't read his emails) saying there was a bug that was stopping some payments showing up, and overcharging fees.

I'd sold an item that day (Wed), got the "payment received" email immediately (with a transaction ID link that led to an error page), but the payment didn't show up until today (Friday) and Paypal took 25% in fees.

---

There seems to be a lot of these errors, always in Paypal and eBays favour.  Can anyone post here if they have been undercharged, ever?

Given that our funds are earning interest for them, it might be worth collating these errors and presenting a request to FOS that any financial errors must be communicated to sellers. They really need to be accountable for this, and not just rely on the vigilance of their customers to follow up and ask for refunds.

[Anonymous]

Can you prove our funds are actually earning interest for Paypal or Ebay?