Irks me to no end when I see ads in the classifieds that state things like, "Buyer pays PayPal fees" - when this is meant to convey that the seller accepts PayPal, but he's going to charge a surcharge from the buyer, on top of his asking price, to cover PayPal fees.
The reason this bothers me is because it tells me up front that I'm dealing with a seller who is in total disregard of his contract with PayPal! I believe that a seller should be honest in honoring his contract with PayPal's User Agreement.
To break it down, a person who sells an item and wishes to have the convenience of offering PayPal must pay a fee on the transaction. This is part of the seller's cost of business, and this cost should be considered by the seller when he arrives at an asking price. In other words, get enough money for your item to cover the fee you know as a business person you must pay!Accepting Payments From Buyers for Goods and Services
Receiving personal payments
If you use your PayPal account to receive payments for the sale of goods and services or accept donations, you must not ask your buyer to send you money using the “send money to a friend or family member.” If you do so, PayPal may remove your PayPal account’s ability to accept payments from friends or family members.
No surcharges
You agree that you will not impose a surcharge or any other fee for accepting PayPal as a payment method. You may charge a handling fee in connection with the sale of goods or services as long as the handling fee does not operate as a surcharge and is not higher than the handling fee you charge for non-PayPal transactions.
It is a violation of the PayPal User Agreement to charge a customer a surcharge for using PayPal! The price paid by a PayPal user should be the same as a price paid by any other method. If a seller charges any fee on top of his asking price to a PayPal user, he or she must charge the same fee to buyers who do not use PayPal.
None of this is rocket science. In the past when things like this have been brought up in this forum, always there have been discussions about why some people feel justified in breaking the user agreement. But there can be no question that sellers who require buyers to pay extra on top of their asking price to cover PayPal fees are in violation of their merchant users agreement with PayPal.
So discuss it if you want, but as a long-time seller using PayPal, I know what the agreement is, and I only post about this because I see it in the classifieds and am hoping maybe offenders are unaware of the agreement they have with PayPal and will benefit from this post -- to the end that they will ask enough money for their items up front, and stop requesting buyers to pay additional fees ...
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