Hi folks
I've entered uncharted territory (for me) this week. Selling things and being
paid via PayPal. Quite a learning curve. ( I mentioned once or twice before
that I am also a fern nut, and in my spare time (with a friend) I have produced
a complete list of all the ferns of the world, about 12,800 of them, along with
their synonyms (alternative scientific names), geographic distribution,
references and so forth. I sell this on CDROM now.).
I think for USA citizens it is a lot more straight forward, but for me living
outside the USA there are a few hurdles to jump. For a start, all currencies
get converted to USA dollars. I wanted to be paid in New Zealand dollars. No
go. This means I have to pay the cost of currency conversion (in addition to a
fee for this which amounts to about 50n 60 - 70 dollars NZ.). That seems
straight forward enough? They say they use the up-to-date exchange rates.
I'd like to know WHOSE up-to-date exchange rates. Not those of ebay. Not
those of the online currency converter I use <http://www.xe.com/ucc/>. Not
those in my daily newspaper. They pitch the rate about 5% to my
disadvantage; for example if the average rate is about 1:2.13588, they used
1:2.0249.
I ended up losing 14.5 0n the whole transaction which included queueing
my funds to be transferred from the PayPal bucket to my bank in New
Zealand. It seems I can't even get a PayPal Mastercard and take the funds
out locally using an ATM. 5% would have been OK in my view, but 14.5 0s
far too much, in my opinion.
PayPal is convenient, but the cost takes some dealing with. I am trying to
understand all the fees that apply to me; but I still haven't got an answer
from
them about why they use the exchange rate table they do. That is a hidden
significant cost.
I will be investigating other ways of paying. Now I understand why most
sellers on German eBay do not use PayPal.
Brian
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