public service announcement

[arethinn]

It is against PayPal's terms of service to charge a surcharge to someone for using PayPal. Yes, if you have a business account they take a service fee, and you may think it's unfairly high. But you are not allowed to charge a surcharge to make that up. If you just can't handle it, either raise all your prices, or build it into your shipping charge, or something (you can charge a "handling fee" as long as you charge it to everyone). Otherwise, it's known as "the cost of doing business". Eat it.

Comments

[starlightforest.livejournal.com]

I think that's not just their policies, but US law. "Cash discount" is weasel words as far as I'm concerned. The concept of "minimum purchase to use a credit card" is more sensible -- "they charge us a minimum fee; please at least make it worth our while".

(I believe it's legal to charge such a surcharge in the UK, for example; PayPal's policy used to correspondingly be that a surcharge was ok if buyer and seller were in the UK and the transaction was in £ sterling, but I don't know if that's still the case.)

[lupabitch.livejournal.com]

Paypal fees go under business costs for tax purposes, far as I'm concerned. Yes, it's still a cost, but it's well worth the convenience.