Honestly, Beautifully : honey blade

2003-03-01 - 2:47 a.m.

Everyone, join hands with me and let us sing together.

PayPal is the devil's foot-cheese and deserves to burn in Hell.

I have never been overly fond of Paypal. Indeed, the only reason I started using it was because I started encountering sellers on ebay who wouldn't accept any other method. And after this little escapade I'm never using them again, and warning everyone I can get hold of not to use them either.

Why? This is why.

As you may know, I'm a big fan of Oz. HBO have released box sets of the first two seasons in the US but don't seem to be planning to release them in Britain. Hooray for globalisation and the simplification of international trade, sez I, and found a guy on ebay who was selling both box sets for a total of $75. I bought. Total including shipping from Canada to Britain = 87 USD.

PayPal recently started accepting Switch, which was great for me because it meant I didn't have to go through the process of waiting for funds to clear on one of my other cards before I could pay for my auction goods. So, I registered my card, waited almost a week to complete the registration, and then went to pay for my DVDs.

On the confirmation screen PayPal tell me I will be charged 89 GBP because of the exchange rate.

"89 quid??" I think to myself. "That's a bit weird since the dollar is usually quite weak against the pound." I put it down to a severe and sudden market fluctuation that I'd simply missed. But then I checked the international currency converter on xe.com, as that just didn't sit quite right. And sure enough, on there I get told that 87 USD only equals 55 GBP.

Horrified, I went straight to the PayPal FAQ and found their answer to "why is your exchange rate different from the one in the newspaper?" You know what their answer was?

"We have our own exchange rate. That's how we do things."

Let's do a bit of primary school-level maths now, people. PayPal have charged me �89 for a transaction that should only have cost me �55. The seller has gotten his money either way, so if we leave him aside this means that PayPal have pocketed almost �35 of MY money. This is money I don't have lying around, people! This is money I could have used to buy books for my course, or to contribute towards the expenses of making our film. Hell, I could have bought myself another kimono with that money if I'd been feeling outlandish!

Lets do some slightly more complicated maths now. If you use a service like Bidpay, you are charged an admin fee for the processing of the international money order. This charge is determined by how much money you wish to send. As I recall, for a money order of 15 USD you are additionally charged $3. So, you're looking at an additional charge of 20%. My transactions over ebay are not normally big enough for me to worry too much about a 20% charge as an extra $3 on top of the $15 I'm already paying is wee buns, as my dad would say. I haven't used cashier's cheques in a long time but as I recall the process is much the same.

When you pay VAT on an item here (not sure about international VAT), the VAT rate is 17.5% (and most things sold here are priced to include VAT so this doesn't matter so much). So, let's go back to our charge of $15. With VAT added on, that comes to a total of a little under $18. Much the same as what Bidpay charges in admin fees.

What PayPal have done here is NOT an admin charge, and is NOT VAT. They've charged me a massive sixty-four percent on top of the correct total. NOWHERE charges 64% on ANYTHING, except for maybe loan sharks and we all know to steer well clear of them.

This is an absolute fucking disgrace. I've sent a complaint to PayPal but I don't expect to hear a damn thing from them. Why should they care? They already have my money, after all. And I'm not the only one to get ripped off like this - I suppose I'm lucky that my transaction was relatively small-scale (which is little comfort since every penny matters to a student). Check *this* report.

So, here's what I've done, and here's what I'm going to do. I'm never using PayPal again. I've deleted all my credit card details from my account and wiped as much personal info as possible from it. I've written a letter of complaint to PayPal, I've posted my story on *paypalsucks.com*, and I've notified the BBC's Watchdog programme. I will also be getting in touch with the Office of Fair Trading to see what the legal situation surrounding usury is. And I'm also putting my story out in as many open forums as I can, urging as many people as possible not to use PayPal. I may even take this to the press. PayPal obviously just doesn't want to encourage international trade, which is an astoundingly stupid attitude to take when so many online stores now accommodate buyers worldwide. It's also bloody annoying for me because I buy my kimonos from Japanese sellers.

Now, here's the plan. If you've used PayPal and have had them mess you around in the past then post your story somewhere. Anywhere that it'll be noticed. Hell, if you want me to stick your story up here then I will. If you know anyone who uses PayPal a lot - especially for international purchases - then send them a link to this page (http://honey-blade.diaryland.com/nopaypal.html), or to the news site I linked earlier. Spread the word, basically. PayPal are a huge company and should not be allowed to get away with this kind of unscrupulous business practice.

You don't have to listen to me. But bear in mind that I'm not the first person to be ripped off by PayPal, will definitely not be the last, and it could only be a matter of time before they rip you off too.

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