Thanks for the tip.
One thing that keeps me away from eBay is PayPal, which seems to be the preferred
method of payment for most auctions.
I went as far as registering with PayPal so I can buy from folks who will take
VISA payments but not everyone's offering this choice, especially individuals.
I'm probably shortchanging myself for not setting up a PayPal account.
PayPal used to allow one to receive credit card payments free of charge. Then they put a limit of $100 per month on the amount of credit card payments one could receive. Now they have a two tier system.
There are Personal PayPal accounts and Business/Premier PayPal accounts.
Under the Personal account there are no fees, but one cannot receive credit card payments. One can send credit card payments. If someone attempts to send a credit card payment to a Personal account, Paypal makes it look like it worked to the sender, and then encourages the recipient to upgrade to a Business/Premier account with all the attendant fees. This is highly irritating, as the holder of the Personal account must continuously explain to buyers, "No, your payment did not go through, even though Paypal made it appear so."
The folks on Ebay who accept PayPal but not credit card payments have Personal PayPal accounts.
Under a Business or Premier PayPal account, PayPal charges something like $.30 per payment and 2.9% on top of that for payments from a domestic source. For sources outside the US, it's $.30 plus 3.9%. These fees apply no matter what source of funds the sender uses! So, if 90% of your buyers are using bank account funds to pay you, you still pay these fees, even though you really only need the Premier account to handle the 10% using a credit card.
So, you can see why a lot of folks would not want to accept credit cards through PayPal.
I have two PayPal accounts, a Personal and a Premier. The Personal is the only account ID I give out, so that all the non-credit card payments get directed there. If someone wants to pay with a credit card, they must email me for the Premier account ID.
However, I still lose a chunk of money on those credit card payers. So, I used to have a clearly stated surcharge in my item descriptions for folks who pay with a credit card through PayPal. But Ebay stopped allowing that when they bought PayPal (they really want their 3% - 4%+) so now I just charge everyone a handling fee that covers the cost if they were using a credit card.
I hope that clears up some of the motivations of the sellers, which are driven by PayPal.
Jeff Walther
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