Dear Paypal,

I recently sent you a letter with regards to the page I’m forced to view each and every time I log in. It’s been happening for a couple of weeks now and out of curiosity, I sent an email to customer service. My letter read:

Every time I log in to my account, I’m faced with an agreement that I always opt to “Accept Later”

What is this?

I do NOT wish to upgrade my account in a way that will cause me to pay fees. I’ve made careful arrangements with associates to insure they are paying in cash to avoid fees and breach of Paypal terms.

Is this something I’m going to be forced to do or should I just keep on clicking the accept later option?

What I received in return was:

Hello my name is Kenny, and I will be happy to assist you with your
question regarding the “upgrade” link that you are receiving.

At some point you may be required (emphasis mine) to upgrade due to the volume of payments that you are receiving. The way PayPal is set-up the recipient of the payment pays the fees, not the purchaser. This is because the person receiving the payments is using it for business purposes. If you are required to upgrade again you will be required to stay upgraded as your account has already been downgraded once.

Thanks again for writing, and thank you for being part of the PayPal community.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I have NO beef with a company that’s as useful as Paypal needing to make a little money, but when a person such as myself has taken careful measure to insure the service is simply a funnel system to get cash from one hand to another, I don’t see that I should be forced to upgrade and pay hundreds in fees monthly.

If I use an ATM that’s not associated with my bank, I kindly accept the fees that apply up to $3.50 per transaction. I could easily see it being in the interest of Paypal to perhaps charge a per transaction fee for all us folks who are not upgraded rather than forcing us to upgrade to collect a larger fee on a service that is normally free.

As you can see by the image copied from your website, the service is FREE. It doesn’t say a thing about limitations whatsoever. Furthermore, I’ve never been allowed to accept a credit card payment without your service trying to force me to upgrade, yet the terms state that I’m entitled to 5 transactions per one 12 month period with fees applying.

Of course further down I see it states:

** Personal accounts may not receive payments funded by credit card, debit card or Buyer Credit for eBay or eBay Express transactions without upgrading to Premier or Business accounts.

I can certainly understand that, however, I’ve had transactions not related to eBay that I’ve been forced to decline because I choose not to upgrade.

Perhaps rethinking the position on fees might be something of value to Paypal. I’d happily pay a transaction fee that was comparable to that of an ATM – $1.50 to $3.50 – but to take more than that for a CASH transaction is not right and has me rethinking my position with Paypal and the number of payments I receive through the service.

Sincerely,

———————

I’m curious as to what others are using as a means of receiving payments and how they feel about paying fees on money they’ve earned.

To me, it would be no different than taking child support out of the non custodial parents check after taxes – sending it to the custodial parent and then taxing it again.

Many of the affiliates I’m associated with are already paying fees on the same exact money – because they accept credit cards for goods and services they provide.

So, in the end, wouldn’t that mean that charging fees twice on the same funds, is sort of double dipping?

Call me a cheapass but I’m not willing to pay so much in fees on money that I’ve worked very hard to earn.

Thoughts? Ideas? Anyone?

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Tagged as: business purposes, fee, funnel, payment, paypal, purchaser, transaction, transaction fee, way