Paypal ([ic] wells fargo epay)

Jim Balcom interchange-users@interchange.redhat.com
Fri Jan 11 18:33:59 2002


On Thu, 10 Jan 2002, JT Justman wrote:

JJ>>Isn't the only reason to use paypal that it's free (transaction fees aside)?
JJ>>If you want to spend the money, you might as well just put out the cash for
JJ>>any one of the better-supported processors and save your customers the
JJ>>paypal account hoops. That is, unless the fabled "silent post" feature could
JJ>>be a reality. I suspect, however, that no matter what you do your customer
JJ>>will still be forced to complete part of their checkout on PayPal's server,
JJ>>where you have minimmal control over the checkout process. The customer
JJ>>could be unsure who they are buying from, and at the end of the transaction,
JJ>>PayPal states that "Your Transaction is Completed", which may lead the
JJ>>customer to close their browser window before looking at your reciept /
JJ>>thank you page, where you may relay important information about when the
JJ>>order will be shipped, not to mention do a little sales and encourage the
JJ>>customer to come back again.

I recently bought a printer on eBay a month ago. Even though the seller had
1143 positive comments, something about his verbiage and his threats in the
auction notice worried me. I didn't want him to have my charge card number.
He lets PayPal alert the winning bidder, so I clicked on that notice and was
taken to PayPal. I entered my charge card number and got the announcement
that he had been paid. But then, they were adamant that I was going to set
up an account. I had given them a phoney e-mail address because I didn't
want them to know that I had an account. They were not going to let me out
of there until I had gone through all of the gyrations of setting up the
account. I closed the browser window and shut them off.

I strongly suspect that once PayPal gets their mitts on your customer that
they aren't going to turn them loose.

There is also the problem that if you do more than $100 in transactions per
month where the customer uses a charge card then you have to go to a
business account. Once on the business account you have to pay for each
transaction in or out of your account, no matter the source of the funds.
This could get rather expensive.
(This is what PayPal told me about 6 months ago. It may be different now.)

-= Jim =-

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Tagline for Friday, January 11, 2002 at 18:20 PM:
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