When buying MR items online, please be suspicious of anyone asking you to use PayPal and wants you to use the “family and friends” money transfer option. You will likely lose the protective coverage PayPal gives against failure of the seller to fulfill the deal. I ran into this with a seller who said he would greatly appreciate my saving him the usual transfer fee by doing this. I didn’t go for it, and found out this person is a scammer using an alias name and email address only when I pressed the “send money” button and his other name appeared. I remembered the name from an earlier warning on a buy/sell site. I immediately filed a complaint with PayPal and they refunded me within two hours.
In this case, the person lied to me in email and on the phone. I became suspicious initially because search engines could not find the false identity person in the city/county where he claimed to live. When I asked him directly for an address and phone, he was evasive, and gave me instead those of someone he claimed was his son-in-law, saying that was where he was temporarily living.
By leaving names out of this, I hope the moderator will not remove this post.
I purchase model railroad items on ebay and your post is helpful. I think a lot of us are cautious when purchasing items online, yet for lack of knowing certain ambiguous details in transactions, we can still get ripped off.
I don’t think that this would be a “Lock-the-thread” situation since you’re not bashing ebay or paypal, just informing us of something that those of us that are ebay shoppers should be aware of.
Hal,
Thanks for the heads up, Consumer Protection is a valid topic in my mind, Thank you!
At times it is harder to tell is these things are a company sponsored effort or not, so one must be careful!
Glad your situation was worked out, & sorry for the frustration you must have had.
Thanks again!
Let me say that it is not always a scam but could be valid if it were and upcharge. Once did it in addition to a valid e-bay transaction as I needed to send $5 for additional stuff I wanted from vendor. But do be careful.
However, as more and more people outside of E-Bay are using Pay-Pal some vendors are not prepared to accept the PayPal charge and want the customer to be the one who has to pay the fee. It is becoming more and more common and is not necessarily a scam.
Not necessarily a scam, but poor showing for someone doing ‘business’. The Paypal fee is still less than any of the major credit card companies would charge, although finally they are getting some competition from Square which even gives you a dongle for your smrtphone that can accept swiped credit cards with signatures, not just keyed in entries. If you are selling things, it’s another alternative to Paypal to allow you to accept credit card payments.
Just saw a thirty second flash on this subject on NBC Nightly News. Youngster didn’t check the seller (who had a remarkably low ‘satisfaction’ rate) and got his feathers singed.
Caveat emptor lives!
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - without any contact with Pay-Pal)
Paypal rates are 2.9% plus $.30 per transaction. If you are on Ebay, the Ebay fee is generally 10%, and that includes what you charge for shipping. When I sell something, it means that Ebay and Paypal take about 13% of the total including shipping between them.
On paper VISA is 2.1%, but there are other fees associated with the transactions. Probably about 4% total. So you are right- using paypal saves a merchant about 1%.