paypal on the rise?
- Thread starter sonnas
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C
Consistency
I hate paypal. See www.paypalsucks.com there is plenty on there that paypal do not want you to hear.
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C
Consistency
This is one of those areas that you have to have had an experience with them to understand. At the start of my business while waiting for virtual terminal, paypal seemed a quick easy answer. Then of ocurse you reach a certain amount of transaction value, or a suspicious transaction where they need extra verification.
We logged onto our account one day and was told they needed verification, yet again. No matter what we provided it still was not enough. The day after we found our account was frozen and we could not get our money back for 180 days due to the money laundering act. We phoned and we phoned and there was nothing they could do, it was all cr@p. Of course they are a law unto themselves. They froze over £1,000 and in the beginning of a business that was everything.
They are not governed by any body and are not regulated by any financial ombudsmen, or at least to the best of my knowledge. Has anyone read the terms and conditions before accepting a paypal account? It makes interesting reading and is alarming. After the six months was up and we tried to access that money because we had disturbed the account without authorisation it was frozen yet again for another 180 days. It was well over a year before we got that money back that was frozen for no real reason. The return of that money was of course interest free. No compensation, no apology, nothing.
It is a good earner for them. They are doing this regularly and I know at least three other business owners this has happened to. They froze over £11000.00 for a year on one of them (yes eleven thousand pounds) and he had no access to that money for twelve months. It was apparantly another security measure to stop money laundering.
My case is far from isolated, The link again www.paypalsucks.com .
Paypal certainly aint my pal!
We logged onto our account one day and was told they needed verification, yet again. No matter what we provided it still was not enough. The day after we found our account was frozen and we could not get our money back for 180 days due to the money laundering act. We phoned and we phoned and there was nothing they could do, it was all cr@p. Of course they are a law unto themselves. They froze over £1,000 and in the beginning of a business that was everything.
They are not governed by any body and are not regulated by any financial ombudsmen, or at least to the best of my knowledge. Has anyone read the terms and conditions before accepting a paypal account? It makes interesting reading and is alarming. After the six months was up and we tried to access that money because we had disturbed the account without authorisation it was frozen yet again for another 180 days. It was well over a year before we got that money back that was frozen for no real reason. The return of that money was of course interest free. No compensation, no apology, nothing.
It is a good earner for them. They are doing this regularly and I know at least three other business owners this has happened to. They froze over £11000.00 for a year on one of them (yes eleven thousand pounds) and he had no access to that money for twelve months. It was apparantly another security measure to stop money laundering.
My case is far from isolated, The link again www.paypalsucks.com .
Paypal certainly aint my pal!
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C
Consistency
It is a genuine link, it is a worldwide website as Paypal is for the worls over so covers loads of issues. Paypal have tried to stop this site but it is still there and it could be that paypal (with all their power which should not be estimated, Ebay and Paypal are the same company) have done something with this so people think it is phishing and do not enter and therefore less people will see what those affected have wrote.
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Paypal is great, as a buyer I always use it where I can and would more likely use a website that accepted Paypal due to convenience. I recently bought some printer ink refills, googled it had a quick look at the top few results all very similar on price so ordered from the one that accepted Paypal because it's easier than entering card details.
Don't really agree with the credit card/credit limit point. Paypal has to be linked to a bank account or credit card so in that respect it's no different from using a debit/credit card directly.
As a seller the fees are fair, you pay a fraction more not to have a fixed monthly cost can't complain at that.
Don't really agree with the credit card/credit limit point. Paypal has to be linked to a bank account or credit card so in that respect it's no different from using a debit/credit card directly.
As a seller the fees are fair, you pay a fraction more not to have a fixed monthly cost can't complain at that.
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As a buyer, PayPal can be quick and easy to use.
As a seller, it's a pain:
1) High commission rates
2) Customer and tech support is dire
3) Chargeback from customers can be extremely easy, and arguing/dealing with PayPal is difficult if not impossible
4) It's not easy for non-PayPal customers to skip through their hoops to make them join PP when they're purchasing from us
5) Billing US customers in £ Sterling is very hit-and-miss, which means pricing in US$ and losing heavily on their exchange rate
Advantage? Their invoice template system - we're developing one to work with our PSP.
As a seller, it's a pain:
1) High commission rates
2) Customer and tech support is dire
3) Chargeback from customers can be extremely easy, and arguing/dealing with PayPal is difficult if not impossible
4) It's not easy for non-PayPal customers to skip through their hoops to make them join PP when they're purchasing from us
5) Billing US customers in £ Sterling is very hit-and-miss, which means pricing in US$ and losing heavily on their exchange rate
Advantage? Their invoice template system - we're developing one to work with our PSP.
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A lot of my customers use PayPal, but then they do tend to be in the younger demographic so that might explain why.
I've honestly had no problems with them, but have heard plenty of horror stories so fingers crossed.
I'm interested in people who say they're expensive. Looking at their rates, it is 2.9% plus 20p if you turn over 1.5k-6k monthly. This doesn't seem over the top to me, especially when you consider there are no fixed charges associated with that.
Is it really any cheaper to go through the expense of getting a merchant account, or using another payment gateway?
I've honestly had no problems with them, but have heard plenty of horror stories so fingers crossed.
I'm interested in people who say they're expensive. Looking at their rates, it is 2.9% plus 20p if you turn over 1.5k-6k monthly. This doesn't seem over the top to me, especially when you consider there are no fixed charges associated with that.
Is it really any cheaper to go through the expense of getting a merchant account, or using another payment gateway?
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S
silvermusic
Mine are the opposite, mainly 35-50 and over. Probably down to the age groups my stuff is generally aimed at.
Us older folk are quite well up on this computer interweb thingy nowadays.
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I had a payment issue with Paypal the other day, but it was completely my own fault - with my details held by Paypal being out of date.
I had to contact Paypal support, thinking I'm never going to receive a reply before this ebay seller hits me with a bad buyer marker on my account, but surprise surprise, I had no less than 3 lots of email correspondence with the space of an hour, and the issue solved.
I had to contact Paypal support, thinking I'm never going to receive a reply before this ebay seller hits me with a bad buyer marker on my account, but surprise surprise, I had no less than 3 lots of email correspondence with the space of an hour, and the issue solved.
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J
JoomGuru
I'm a strong advocate of PayPal as a payment solution for small businesses and can tell you that in 99% of cases where a person has a problem with PayPal its generally the users fault. PayPal are very fast to respond and very reasonable in costs and very reliable. Remember all banks have horror stories, you never hear the full story.
One area where I refrain from commenting is the link between PayPal and eBay because so often the deals done on eBay force PayPal onto their backfoot in legal terms they have no choice but to follow international law which is more stringent in some countries as opposed to others.
PayPal is the fastest growing online banking and CC processor in the world and it has so many benefits you have to be nuts - totally nuts - not to use them in business.
I write articles on PayPal try looking at my site under articles:
Hope this helps balance the argument
regards
Les
One area where I refrain from commenting is the link between PayPal and eBay because so often the deals done on eBay force PayPal onto their backfoot in legal terms they have no choice but to follow international law which is more stringent in some countries as opposed to others.
PayPal is the fastest growing online banking and CC processor in the world and it has so many benefits you have to be nuts - totally nuts - not to use them in business.
I write articles on PayPal try looking at my site under articles:
Hope this helps balance the argument
regards
Les
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We have nothing but good things to say about paypal to be honest and without them we would not have been able to get ourselves off the ground. We havn't necessarily noticed an increased in paypal sales but we have seen alot more "big" sites now offering paypal as a payment option so you could definately say they are on the rise.
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I'm looking into Paypal Pro vs StreamLine and Sagepay/
Paypal Pro is £20 a month and then
(based on monthy sales up to £1,500)
3.4% + 0.20 per transaction
This is actually quite a good rate. The down side are the horror stories you hear about Paypal freezing people's accounts etc.
Compared to Streamline and Sagepay.
I'm assuming Streamline is obtained through FSB.
Streamline:-
%2.0 transaction fee per month
SagePay
£20 a month (but Google 'Getting Britian Online Scheme - and this fee is removed for the first 3 months)
Transaction charges are (for 3D authed transactions):-
Credit Card 2.5%
Comparing both based on sales of £1000 a month made up of 10 * £100 transactions
Paypal Pro
£20 monthly fee
£36 transaction fees
Total
-----
£56 a month
StreamLine (through FSB so no joining fee) + SagePay
--------------------
SagePage
£20 monthyl fee
£25 transaction fees
Streamline
£20 in transaction fees
Total
£75
Paypal works out cheaper unless I am missing something?
Paypal Pro is £20 a month and then
(based on monthy sales up to £1,500)
3.4% + 0.20 per transaction
This is actually quite a good rate. The down side are the horror stories you hear about Paypal freezing people's accounts etc.
Compared to Streamline and Sagepay.
I'm assuming Streamline is obtained through FSB.
Streamline:-
%2.0 transaction fee per month
SagePay
£20 a month (but Google 'Getting Britian Online Scheme - and this fee is removed for the first 3 months)
Transaction charges are (for 3D authed transactions):-
Credit Card 2.5%
Comparing both based on sales of £1000 a month made up of 10 * £100 transactions
Paypal Pro
£20 monthly fee
£36 transaction fees
Total
-----
£56 a month
StreamLine (through FSB so no joining fee) + SagePay
--------------------
SagePage
£20 monthyl fee
£25 transaction fees
Streamline
£20 in transaction fees
Total
£75
Paypal works out cheaper unless I am missing something?
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C
Christiane
In what order do you display your payment options at checkout?
I tend to get more card payments (Sagepay), but age group here is also over 35.
I must admit I like Paypal as a buyer, saves reaching for the card, but hate it as a seller!! LOL
Is googlecheckout really that popular? I don't use it, neither personal nor business.
I tend to get more card payments (Sagepay), but age group here is also over 35.
I must admit I like Paypal as a buyer, saves reaching for the card, but hate it as a seller!! LOL
Is googlecheckout really that popular? I don't use it, neither personal nor business.
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C
chris.quinn89
Paypal is perfect for me, it's easy & cost effective. I looked into a virtual terminal but there is a monthly fee of £20 & normally a setup fee.
My paypal account was frozen a couple of weeks ago, I was really concerned because of all the horror stories....
I phoned paypal & they asked for me for suppliers invoice, ID and proof of postage from recent sales. I provided suppliers invoices & my ID but couldn't provide proof of postage because the items where sent standard royal mail.
The paypal representative told me to wait a couple of days until I received feedback on ebay from these transactions, I received feedback for 3/6 of the transactions phoned up again and my account was unfrozen & I was up and trading within the hour.
Then last week I had a buyer issue a charge back against me, paypal found in the buyers favour then a week passes and my paypal account shows a payment from paypal for the amount of the charge back. Now I don't think this is standard practice as I wasn't covered by paypals seller protection, the only thing I can think of is that paypal decided to cover my loss or the buyer cancelled the charge back which I find hard to believe.
As far as Im concerned PayPal is the best online payment processor and you would have to be mad to not use it, as many before me have said buyers love it!
My paypal account was frozen a couple of weeks ago, I was really concerned because of all the horror stories....
I phoned paypal & they asked for me for suppliers invoice, ID and proof of postage from recent sales. I provided suppliers invoices & my ID but couldn't provide proof of postage because the items where sent standard royal mail.
The paypal representative told me to wait a couple of days until I received feedback on ebay from these transactions, I received feedback for 3/6 of the transactions phoned up again and my account was unfrozen & I was up and trading within the hour.
Then last week I had a buyer issue a charge back against me, paypal found in the buyers favour then a week passes and my paypal account shows a payment from paypal for the amount of the charge back. Now I don't think this is standard practice as I wasn't covered by paypals seller protection, the only thing I can think of is that paypal decided to cover my loss or the buyer cancelled the charge back which I find hard to believe.
As far as Im concerned PayPal is the best online payment processor and you would have to be mad to not use it, as many before me have said buyers love it!
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J
JoomGuru
PayPal is ideal for customers - if you want to sell more - make it easy to buy from you.
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Yes, your info seems incorrect - Paypal are MORE expensive.
Standard FSB Streamline/Sage Pay and rates are:
Credit cards - 1.95% - 1.98%
Debit cards - 30.5p
(In my last month, I had roughly a 50/50 split between the two types of cards - debit cards are much cheaper if your average order is £100).
Additionally, if you are achieving volume, then you can ask your rates to be reviewed - so the above rates should be max really.
On the downside, integration for this is more expensive than PayPal (unless you're looking at the Pro version, which might be the same).
All in all, if your in it for the long haul, I would recommend FSB Streamline/Sage Pay combo over PayPal. As others have noted, there have been some real horror stories with PayPal. I like them as a buyer, but haven't chosen it for my site for concerns over what others have said.
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J
JoomGuru
I think you have to make two decisions.
Are you collecting payment online?
Go with PayPal
Are you collecting paynet offline?
Go with FSB Streamline
If you are doing both - simples go with both. U have to look at your transaction charges as a cost factor and build it into your pricing. The decision is not whether it is more expensive, cheap or whatever if you think this become a beancounter.
The whole thing is based around making it easy for your CUSTOMER to do business with you.
Do what works for them and sort your priorities out. The differencs in costs are peanuts compared to the upsell in business by making it simple for people to part with their dosh.
Are you collecting payment online?
Go with PayPal
Are you collecting paynet offline?
Go with FSB Streamline
If you are doing both - simples go with both. U have to look at your transaction charges as a cost factor and build it into your pricing. The decision is not whether it is more expensive, cheap or whatever if you think this become a beancounter.
The whole thing is based around making it easy for your CUSTOMER to do business with you.
Do what works for them and sort your priorities out. The differencs in costs are peanuts compared to the upsell in business by making it simple for people to part with their dosh.
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No... it's more a case of:
If you are doing volume online -> go with Sage Pay and FSB Streamline
(with option of adding PayPal if your target market use this)
If you are doing low volume + your target market use PayPal -> go with Pay Pal only
IMHO, you need to balance 'making it easy for the customer to do business with you' with risk of chargebacks etc/not being able to control frozen accounts and a decent level of customer service from your chosen payment service provider.
If you are doing volume online -> go with Sage Pay and FSB Streamline
(with option of adding PayPal if your target market use this)
If you are doing low volume + your target market use PayPal -> go with Pay Pal only
IMHO, you need to balance 'making it easy for the customer to do business with you' with risk of chargebacks etc/not being able to control frozen accounts and a decent level of customer service from your chosen payment service provider.
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J
JoomGuru
Question:
If you could increase your close rate by 30-40% on online order by providing PayPal because the type of goods lends itself to that genre, why would you NOT use it?
If the reason is because people have horror stories, do you listen to them or make up your own experience - generally I find the experienced gained from taking into account other peoples views while I actually l learn for myself [costs me nothing] is the route to success.
If you run a good business with a quality admin and management of stock, ordering, returns and Customer Services and believe that business is about delivering on customers expectations - try PayPal for 6 months add it to existing payment processes and see if after 6 months it is working for you, if not nothing lost, but experience gained.
You lose nothing, you could gain a 40% increase in online business. go figure!!!
If you could increase your close rate by 30-40% on online order by providing PayPal because the type of goods lends itself to that genre, why would you NOT use it?
If the reason is because people have horror stories, do you listen to them or make up your own experience - generally I find the experienced gained from taking into account other peoples views while I actually l learn for myself [costs me nothing] is the route to success.
If you run a good business with a quality admin and management of stock, ordering, returns and Customer Services and believe that business is about delivering on customers expectations - try PayPal for 6 months add it to existing payment processes and see if after 6 months it is working for you, if not nothing lost, but experience gained.
You lose nothing, you could gain a 40% increase in online business. go figure!!!
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C
Consistency
I do learn from my own experience. I do not simply go by the horror stories. I used to think that paypal were good, quick and easy until I got shafted. Over a thousand pounds of my money was frozen for over a year and I had done nothing wrong, I could not get anything from them in paperwork, sent round the houses. I had not got a fax machine and that was the only way they would accept evidence so I had to keep going to places and paying and in the end they just said "sorry there was nothing they could do and I could have my money after 180 days. I tried after 180 days and still could not access my money but saw a message to say that my money was still unfortunately frozen and I could access it in another 180 days. This was 360 days.
The route to success my friend is not only to go by your own experiences but also by other peoples as it could be you next, unless you work for paypal of course! they are the only ones truly immune.
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I guess the problem with PayPal for us is the customer service. Last year it took them 6 months to sort out access to our previous transactions, while our accountant was tearing his hair out (what do you mean a bank can't give you a transaction record?). There was a fault with their system.
I never found a way of picking up the 'phone and getting through to someone who could help, without going through the whole story again. I was passed from customer service in Ireland, to Belgium and eventually, as no-one could help, I called PayPal in the States, where it was easier to get through. Via their contact form, you had to battle your way through their automatic responses, and even their email responses weren't convincingly from humans.
Tech support and customer service would seem such a simple and straightforward priority, but in our experience, it doesn't exist. If anyone has phone numbers, for UK-based customers, for either tech support or customer service queries, I'd be grateful.
And an additional whinge is their invoice system is illegal for a UK-based trader without using naff workarounds (dates / registration numbers / sales to EU countries etc.), which is why we're developing our own with SagePay / Streamline.
I never found a way of picking up the 'phone and getting through to someone who could help, without going through the whole story again. I was passed from customer service in Ireland, to Belgium and eventually, as no-one could help, I called PayPal in the States, where it was easier to get through. Via their contact form, you had to battle your way through their automatic responses, and even their email responses weren't convincingly from humans.
Tech support and customer service would seem such a simple and straightforward priority, but in our experience, it doesn't exist. If anyone has phone numbers, for UK-based customers, for either tech support or customer service queries, I'd be grateful.
And an additional whinge is their invoice system is illegal for a UK-based trader without using naff workarounds (dates / registration numbers / sales to EU countries etc.), which is why we're developing our own with SagePay / Streamline.
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Apologies, you are correct. SagePayGo is £20 a month with no additional percentage fees. I was getting confused with their merchant account.
If you are a new start up, check out https://support.sagepay.com/apply/default.aspx?PartnerID={605162A7-67C1-48D2-9D75-1268308B0122} (Getting Business Online - three months free from sage Pay for new startups).
If you are a new start up, check out https://support.sagepay.com/apply/default.aspx?PartnerID={605162A7-67C1-48D2-9D75-1268308B0122} (Getting Business Online - three months free from sage Pay for new startups).
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