As an update to their services terms was announced, they NOW charge for refunding transactions.
Effective Date: Aug 10, 2010
* Amendment to the PayPal User Agreement
Refund Fee. Section 8.5 (Additional Fees) is amended to add a new refund fee. If you refund a Purchase Payment, we will retain the Fixed Fee portion of the Purchase Payment Fee. The buyer’s Account will be credited with the full Purchase Payment amount and the Fixed Fee portion of the Purchase Payment Fee will be deducted from your Account in addition to the amount of the refunded payment. The Fixed Fee will depend on the currency of the Purchase Payment and is listed in 8.4(c).
When is someone going to finally regulate this stupid company?
The bottom line here is that PayPal are looking to make $$$ for their stakeholders just like any other business is. I assume no-one using Paypal’s services is being forced to use them if they are not happy with them. That would be a ridiculous situation to put yourself in.
I have set myself up so that it is easy to change to someone else or another method for handling online payments if I ever became disatisfied with Paypal. Currently I don’t have issues with their service or charges.
Paypal is a business providing a service and not a charity.
If you’re not happy with the service, go to someone who can provide what you need.
If you’re selling a large number of faulty or unreliable products then you might have to increase the price of each product by PP’s transaction fees to handle your high number of refunds.
Otherwise, if the number of refund claims is relatively very small compared to your total sales then you should be able to absorb any cost of refunds and put it down to the cost of doing business. At the worst, you should need to increase your product price by no more than a fraction of 1%.
The bottom line here is that PayPal are looking to make $$$ for their stakeholders just like any other business is. I assume no-one using Paypal’s services is being forced to use them if they are not happy with them. That would be a ridiculous situation to put yourself in.
Just to clarify, all NA merchant aquirers charge transaction fee’s for CC refunds, unless the agreement is to process on net gross. Very few merchants have net gross agreements, and virtualy all SMB pay fees on CC refunds.
You may think it’s stupid, but there are costs involved for the aquirer in processing a refund and they need to be recovered. Unfortunately the merchant pays, it is a cost of doing business.
Thats good you can get away with that in Australia. Not in the USA
4.5 No Surcharges. You agree that you will not impose a surcharge or any other fee for accepting PayPal as a payment method. You may charge a handling fee in connection with the sale of goods or services, as long as the handling fee does not operate as a surcharge and is not higher than the handling fee you charge for non-PayPal transactions.
I can confirm that Chase Paymentech, Global Payments and First Data all do as a regular business rule. Those three acquirers represent over 60% US market share. I can’t confirm that Elavon does, but would be suprised if they didn’t.
All major Canadian acquirer’s charge transaction fees for refunds; Elavon. FD, Moneris, Global, TD and Chase.
Paypal now does. 2checkout and Authorize.net also charge for refunds.
Just about everywhere in Australia add the Paypal fee onto the price they charge because it is legal here to do so and Paypal doesn’t have any say in the matter. The same applies to any credit card fees for credit card purchases. All those fees can be added on to the regular purchase price and can be deducted from any refund.
You just wouldn’t be able to use the refund option in Paypal, you’d have to deduct off the fees and pay them that amount instead.
Yikes Been considering getting away from Paypal because of all the other nonsense they’ve been pulling, but now I think this is pretty much the last straw.
I am a happy customer and a returning customer with PayPal :stir:
If you are experiencing a large number of claims for refunds to the point where the charges are significant then maybe you need to look at why the number of refund claims are so high in the first place.
I would look at my products and business plan to work out how to reduce the number of refund claims.
But I also said *good companies. You know, like the ones you used to see. ONes that cared about their customer, because they understood, that a happy customer, is a returning customer.
You’ll find some merchant accounts do charge fees on refunds. They price everything per-transaction, and a refund is a separate transaction.
Regarding PayPal, this isn’t that big a deal. They are only keeping the fixed portion, which is $0.30, regardless of the purchase size. So if someone buys something from you, and you issue a refund, you’re out a whole 30 cents. If I issue 3 refunds a month, it’s not even a dollar. You’re not going to have to raise your prices to handle this fee.
Been considering getting away from Paypal because of all the other nonsense they’ve been pulling, but now I think this is pretty much the last straw.