> Let's say I win an auction for $10, I pay $10 for a item, do I have to pay > 3% or does the seller pay it (out of the $10)?
Unless they've changed it since I signed up, it works like this: The person sending money never pays an extra fee to PayPal. People can get no-fee accounts if they never expect to receive more than a certain amount of money in a single month -- I think it's $300, but a quick check of the FAQ on www.paypal.com will verify or refute that. People who sign up for accounts that can receive more than $300 in a month, get a small fee taken out of payments they receive. People who do a Whole Lot More business qualify for a smaller percentage fee. I've heard some real horror stories about PayPal (take a look at <http://www.paypalsucks.com>), but personally I have not had any problem with them at all (including using their ATM card to spend money from my PayPal account in brick-and-mortar stores, and having money transferred from my PayPal account to my checking account). I'm not too thrilled with their recent changes to the list of what you're allowed to buy using their service -- it hasn't affected me, but the some of the specifics annoy me on a political level -- and have been considering signing up with a competing service so that anyone who needs to send me money but is boycotting PayPal can do so, but PayPal seems to be the ubiquitous online payment service, and my address is the one htat collects money for online CD sales for The Homespun Ceilidh Band, so I'm not going to drop PayPal unless they pull something that does affect me directly. As for the fee, I just factored that into the "shipping and handling" fee (call it part of "handling") for online CD sales, and when friends send me money for other reasons, the fee comes to a small enough amount that I manage not to lose sleep over it. Again, the _sender_ does not pay a fee. -- Glenn
