[Finance] Re: [Theforum] note from Nick Bradbury

[William Anderson]

Madhu Menon wrote:
> At 01:56 AM 12-01-03, Marlene Bruce wrote:
> > Stupid PayPal doesn't list that in the at-a-glance
> > amount so I didn't realize that 'til now.
>
> I just remembered. I'm afraid I won't use Paypal for anything. When I
> tried to buy something off the Web using Paypal, I noticed that they
> added a very small line (and also in light grey) saying "a membership
> fee of $1.95 will be charged to your credit card."
>
> That's absolutely unethical, and attempting to hide it like they did is
> repulsive.

Right kiddies, let's look at this 'properly' shall we?

The full fees list is available at
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/gen/fees-outside and says
nothing of a membership fee.  Madhu, what you've noticed is their admin fee
for signing up to the service - this happens when you first sign up, and
happens again when you add another credit card to your account.  This
happens for some US accounts, and (IIRC) for all International accounts.

The fee is used to validate your account - a 'member ID' appears on your
credit card statement, either online or dead tree, and has to be keyed in to
the PayPal system to allow you to use your credit card for sending or
receiving funds - and that fee is later refunded to your PayPal account once
your credit card has been successfully validated.

If you're an existing PayPal account holder, you won't have this levied when
you make payments.

They do not hide this, it's in the terms and conditions and user agreement
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/gen/terms-pop-outside section
III) 1) i) and ii) and is simply a slight increase on the $1 validation
charge they have used since the days of x.com.

Before we kneejerkedly attack PayPal, can we check these kind of things out
please?  I've used PayPal without any issues whatsoever for over two years
now - perhaps I'm in the minority, I don't know, but I'm happy to continue
to endorse them as a means for us to accept donations.

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