Options
How can a dealer afford to take PayPal?
topstuf
Posts: 14,803 ✭✭✭✭✭
With the thin margins on coins, how do they manage to absorb the pp fee as a commercial user?
Ebay doesn't want anyone ADDING paypal charges to final price. I dropped PP for a different reason but when we had the pawnshop, it amounted to making the cost about 10% if PP was used for the purchase.
I didn't mind on the pawn stuff like camcorders, tools, etc. but on the coins.....I just didn't list them with a paypal option.
I use Bidpay now.
Ebay doesn't want anyone ADDING paypal charges to final price. I dropped PP for a different reason but when we had the pawnshop, it amounted to making the cost about 10% if PP was used for the purchase.
I didn't mind on the pawn stuff like camcorders, tools, etc. but on the coins.....I just didn't list them with a paypal option.
I use Bidpay now.
0
Comments
BidPay is nice, but not a complete solution. For higher priced items, the cost to buyers is extreme.
09/07/2006
I can't figure what is wrong with using a check or money order. I use money orders to buy almost exclusively. The grocery stores here in Calif have post offices and it's no sweat at all to get MO's.
And as for checks, how URGENT is the coin?
It's a coin that the buyer has gone his whole life without and now it's a hardship to wait a couple weeks.
OR
Supply references.
WANT FAST? Money order
WANT CONVENIENT? Have some patience
I don't even consider Bidpay an option. I was going to use it way-back-when I was first trying online payments. I almost died when I saw the fees that the buyer had to completely absorb - it was obscene.
However you slice it, the market will determine the value. Paypal auctions will generally fetch higher prices than auctions without or with Bidpay.
2 Cam-Slams!
1 Russ POTD!
I have to agree with the other poster in that I will likely own the coin for a long time so I can wait a few more days and send a money order.
MY COINS FOR SALE AT https://www.pcgs.com/setregistry/collectors-showcase/other/bajjerfans-coins-sale/3876
<< <i>I can't figure what is wrong with using a check or money order. I use money orders to buy almost exclusively. The grocery stores here in Calif have post offices and it's no sweat at all to get MO's. >>
No sweat? Compare:
PayPal: click click click done. Seller gets money instantly, sends coin.
MO: Get in car. Drive to PO. Wait in line. Pay 90c for MO + 37c for stamp. Mail MO. Wait long time for coin.
MOs are an enormous PITA compared to PayPal.
Furthermore, consider it from the seller side. With PayPal, you get the money right away. With a check or MO, you wait. Is the money coming, or isn't it? Who knows? In the meantime, you've got capital tied up in inventory, just sitting around. An online payment mechanism like PayPal allows you to get money faster, buy more inventory, sell more, and ultimately generate higher profits.
For Items less than about $200.00 paying by other means other than paypal is a royal pain in the arse.
Tyler
Absolutely ARROGANT and ABUSIVE treatment. While I was in bizz and paying the FEES, they were glad to even add my account to the GUARANTEED SATISFACTION section.
But....as soon as I retired and went to the FREE PAYPAL ACCOUNT (Bwaaahahahahaha) it was a whole different story.
Same email.....same name.....same person.......but now I am.........SUSPECT.
Now what do I do to resume offering Paypal? Sell 175 junk coins at a buck apiece so they get a good FEELING for me?
Maybe I should add that while I was having no trouble with Paypal..........THEY WERE NOT YET OWNED BY MONOPOBAY.
Scuse the vent, but I offer good coins, infrequently, with impeccable references and good funds.
P on PP
If it's a regular, routine purchase, I won't even bother if the seller doesn't take credit card funded PayPal. It's just not worth my time. There's a lot of sellers out there....
MY COINS FOR SALE AT https://www.pcgs.com/setregistry/collectors-showcase/other/bajjerfans-coins-sale/3876
I groan when I hear that a check is coming. Now I can look for a check in the mail, travel to the bank to deposit it and hold the package on my desk for a week. Then hold my breath that the bank doesn't call to tell me the check bounced and I owe them $25.
Well worth the money IMO.
2 Cam-Slams!
1 Russ POTD!
I also don't bid on non paypal sellers.
Glenn
???????????????
We'll use our hands and hearts and if we must we'll use our heads.
Joe
When I .....had....the "brick and mortar" (stucco and drywall) store, I took Paypal. Never offered coins with Paypal option .... just pawn crap. That had plenty of margin. (And was stuff I wanted to "get rid" of.
I never worry about coins because when I had the shop, I sold crap wholesale and NICE stuff retail, shows, phone calls and ebay. And the coins I put on ebay would draw bids from ANY serious buyer as they were nice stuff. I had no trouble getting top dollar for top coins as collectors of top coins are not foolish enough to let ...good...stuff get away.
Now my "brick and mortar" (real) surrounds my papyrus, wisteria, bonsai, and water lilies and the chair I sit in to drink beer and pet the dog.
I sold ALL the crap coins on Jan 3 to a "glorp buyer" who unloaded the safes and the back room of boxes of crapola and the 15 jillion Whitman pages that never got emptied (waiting for tomorrow).
Any coins I have left don't need additional "convenience" to tempt a buyer. And any coins I actually SHOP for at shows........same thing. I no longer HAVE any wheaties or steelies or clads or dateless buffs.
So, for my OCCASIONAL sale on ebay, I will sell the coin...........or rather the coin will sell itself ...... to someone who can visualize it in his collection. And if he needs refs, I can supply names that will leave no doubt as to whether there is any reason to worry about a couple extra days.
And when the time comes to kick the bucket (the old Jeweluster bucket) my wife can consign the almost unliftable safety deposit box to an auction house and let them dispose of the stuff.
Paypal treated me rudely as an individual and I don't have to put up with it so I won't.
I still don't see how (or why) dealers can absorb the additional 3% on good coins. Modern and promo stuff, sure, but not the nice stuff.
C'est la vie.
If the coin "you'll be a lookin at" is generic in nature and so available that you can find similiar items elsewhere meeting your self-imposed restriction......then you're not collecting rare coins. More like warehousing common ones!
Certainly none of the great collections were built that way! PayPal wasn't around back then, of course, ....and business transpired just fine.Seems a bit unrealistic and irrational to limit your choices for material because you're too lazy to go to the post office or bank and get a "hard copy" for good funds. If it's a coin i want really fast (without using PayPal)....i get a Postal Money order and "Express" ship it overnight to the seller. Most times a part of a day is needed for a seller to package the item for shipping.......and by then the money is in their hands! What's the problem here? Expensive shipping of a payment on a $20 coin for sure! But when the coin is $300, $1,500, or possibly $5,000........not a big deal "Express" shipping payment to elicit the coin getting shipped quickly.
Also, there is always the safe option of having substantial funds for a coin purchase "bank wired" into a sellers bank account! A whole lot safer and almost as quick!
And then you're forgetting there are a LOT of sellers/buyers out there (like myself!)who have been burned by PayPal at one time or another. Many of them were once vocal supporters of this bank wanabe. Until you know the frustration of dealing with an unregulated company that freezes your funds unjustly...... you won't understand why so many fairminded and professional business owners want nothing to do with it. Don't presume there isn't reasonable justification for the refusal to accept Paypal, and that it's just because of the "fees" imposed or we're trying to make things inconvenient for you!
Maybe we just want to hang onto the money we're worked hard for! (in my case $1,800 was taken from my "Cleared" account balance never to be seen again! "Cleaned" out more like it!!!!!)
Joe T
Once again resides with Legend, the original purchaser "raw" at live Eliasberg auction. Laura and i "love" the same lady!
Add to it the extra business I get from people who, like me, will bid another couple of bucks for the convenience (or like others who've posted, wouldn't otherwise bid at all) and I can easily rationalize the extra expense.
Also, before PayPal came along, I was already accepting credit cards. The fees are about the same so I guess I had already gotten used to them.
I am a bit worried about the "nightmares" I've heard others having with PayPal. In fact, that concerns me way more than the fees. At this point, I'm taking the risk due to the convenience. I am mitigating the risk where possible, but also hoping further government regulation of PayPal and other similar quasi-banks kicks in before my luck runs out.
WH
<< <i>It all depends on the coin for me. I send checks, money orders, cashiers checks, and paypal. Even Cash on occasion. mdwoods >>
You sent me food stamps.
*******************************************************************************
they don't give a damn what anyone thinks about their questionable (read that as borderline illegal) practices.
If they had any real competition that showed even the slightest bit of professionalism, they would be out of business in short order. In fact, if a few state
attorney generals get their way, they will be out of business in several states very soon.
I was very sorry to see eBay purchase them. They would have gone belly up under the flood of lawsuits without that cash influx.
And yes, I will admit that I do use them for small purchases, for the same reasons of convenience listed above. Having said that, I will never use them as a
seller. The nightmare stories you hear about are not only true, they are just the tip of the iceberg.
John Marnard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, 1920, page 235ff
As a seller, I gladly accept checks, money orders and Paypal. I do cringe when a buyer says that they will be sending a check (and I don't know them), because that's A LOT of downtime. Roughly a week to get the check, 10 business days to make sure the check has cleared my bank (please don't spout off at how most checks clear within 4 days etc. I'm not calling my bank on a daily basis to find out whose checks have cleared and which haven't!) and then another week for the buyer to receive the coin. Basically a month, probably a bit less. All that, and then the buyer may want a return. At least with Paypal, or even a money order, transactions can be settled, one way or another, in a relatively short time. A week for Paypal transactions, and two weeks for money order transactions.
As far as "affording" to take Paypal, it's basically the same as the credit card fees that are charged, and the benefit of having access to that cash flow is WELL WORTH the 2.8% they charge me.
LSCC#1864
Ebay Stuff
* I HATE the extra task of having to monitor whether or not my check/money order made it to the seller -- this uncertainty adds a layer of worry I don't need. Waiting for my stuff to get to me from the seller is enough of a worry, thank you.
* MONEY ORDERS ARE THE WORST -- On top of having to worry about the seller receiving my payment, I now have to go get the money order (a pain if you are a busy person) and almost always wait on line too when I get there. No thanks.
* CHECKS SUCK because now this one purchase is a month-long adventure that I need to spend energy being concerned about. We also often have to wait 10 days for the check to clear. I don't want to buy something on-line and then deal with it for a month, thank you.
* BIDPAY fees are way too much for me, the Buyer, to absorb.
* PAYPAL allows me to end my responsibility and worry, IMMEDIATELY. I also get a 2% kickback when I use my Fidelity College Rewards card, heh.
I'm sure accepting PayPal gets a lot of people more bids -- I know I am also willing to bid a little higher too for the convenience. I understand that some item and sellers won't get the extra or higher bids from using PayPal, and that's fine. But to many I think it's worth it to have people like me (trouble-free fast-paying responsible Ebayer) pay them with PayPal. I make it convenient and worry-free for you, so make it convenient and trouble-free for me.
When I see sellers that only want money orders or cashier's checks (personal checks aren't even good enough) I definitely won't pay them attention. It's one of the first things I check. I also tend to skip over sellers that I think are not trying to AVOID making money on s/h/i charges. I only bid on sellers with a buyer-friendly set up, and in exchange they get zero problems or games.
Paypal is convenient, but shaves a lot off the bottom line.
Tyler
I don't think $20 is a lot for many sellers who will get more bidders on that coin.
"Come on, taking twelve seconds to write a check, stamp it and send it off is not too much to ask a bidder to save fees all around"
It's not writing out the check that's the issue -- it's now worrying about it getting to you, waiting for it to clear, making what one wants to be a convenient on-line purchase into a month-long monitoring task combined with some more to worry about. No thanks.
Plus, Redcents offers some ways to even make it less of an issue.
The dealers who say they can't afford to are kidding themselves. How do the major coin dealers like Pinnacle, Legend, Anaconda, Heritage pull it off and the others cannot?
Paypal does have the worse service but if you learn how to manipulate the system it can work out and you can avoid having your account frozen. Paypal assumes everyone is a crook. I started with them assuming they would block my account and prepared myself.
Read here how to avoid having your account frozen and other nasty paypal tactics.
Bottomline, not taking paypal or some other service is bad business and you will get fewer bids. There is a seller who missed out on about $100 more in bids from me as I did not feel comfortable bidding on his auction as he had low feedback. With paypal I would have some recourse.
And, for you sellers who think PayPal is the cat's meow because you get your money "instantly" and don't have to wait and worry about an NSF personal check, here's a tidbit: The same thing can happen with PayPal. It's called a chargeback and, unlike a personal check which is worrisome for a couple weeks, a chargeback can happen months later.
Oh, and in case you don't know how a chargeback works; the money is yanked from your account first, and questions asked later. No notice, it's just gone and then you have to prove why it's unjustified. The buyer doesn't have to prove a thing.
Russ, NCNE
I am willing to take the PayPal fee hit as a seller because it ends the transaction fast. With checks and money orders (obviously checks are worse) I have to wait for snail mail to get me the check or money order and with checks I have to wait for the check to clear. And as many of you know there is no guarantee with money orders anymore (roll the dice).
One particular example shows the difference between using PayPal and getting paid with a check. I put up two auctions selling basically the same thing. Both auctions sold for about the same amounts. One paid via PayPal and one paid via check. Both auctions ended Friday night. I received the PayPal payment that same night (that the auction ended). I mailed the coins on Saturday (the next day) using Priority insured mail and the buyer received the coins on Monday. With the other auction I received the check on Thursday (6 days after auction end - not too bad really). I deposited the check Friday afternoon (which is business day Monday). So, I then waited for two weeks and then mailed it to him (3 weeks and a day after auction ended). Now, here is the really funny part. In the meantime, I posted a new auction and it ended and the same PayPal buyer bought this auction and paid for it and received it the same way as the last (weeks before the other buyer received the coins from the first auction).
In conclusion, PayPal just lets me get the auction over with faster with a fee. I will take the hit.
As a buyer, I will rarely bid on auctions anymore that do not accept PayPal (or some other means of receiving credit card). Checks just slow everything down.
Numonebuyer
Mentioning how there was once no PayPal and things were fine is not a counterpoint in any way. It's here now, and we are discussing why so many people expect and want it. In other words, saying there once wasn't gas-guzzling cars and people still got around isn't a good point when people want the convenience and speed of their own cars. As for your point about chargebacks, that's true -- but that is just once slice of the pie and it certainly doesn't negate the overall benefit of not having to go thru the month-long adventure and inconvenience of check-paying and money orders.
Perhaps BidPay should lower their fees as catch market share! I also think more complaints about PayPal will probably cause them to be more user friendly. Until then, I really don't want to pass up the convenience of ending my paying obligations with a few clicks, getting my stuff much sooner.
<< <i>With the thin margins on coins >>
Great transactions with oih82w8, JasonGaming, Moose1913.
Just my 0.02
You are absolutely free to keep ordering coins from paypal sellers. If I run a coin that you want, you will have to send me a check or a MO.
I buy with MO's myself. I have a PO annex in my grocery store and it is no trouble at all to pick up a MO.
I get rocket shipping and I provide rocket shipping.
I will not allow Paypal to steal $2000 from me again.
I..........do........know how to run a business. It consists of not losing money. NICE coins will sell to good buyers even if I required fence posts in exchange.
As a seller it's also convenient, you get payment and can mail the item right away, no trip to the atm to deposit checks and then waiting for them to clear or sending right away and having the occasional one bounce, you get deposits in your paypal account that you can use as a buyer.
for all this, to me personally, it's worth the 3% or so fee, but can understand that thinnner margins or bad experiences can turn people off it, or maybe people just dont like the principle of having to pay for a convenient service, and probably also don't shop at 7-11 because it costs 5 or 10% more but is 2 miles closer than the grocery store.
folks has different priorities i guess;, but I like and use paypal unless/until it bums me out with a freeze or rip off of my account.
Liberty: Parent of Science & Industry
<< <i>I may suggest that they transfer from THEIR CC to THEIR PeePal account and then to MY account. >>
Can a buyer do this? If so who if anyone pays fees?
To me as a buyer -- and if I ever become a seller -- time is money and PayPal saves me the time to write and mail letters, make extra runs to the post office and/or bank to wait in their lines, and I get my item (or money) quicker. I agree, their service sucks ... but it's far and away better than eBay's!!!
I've thought for a while now that -- if I had the business/technical team and the financial backing -- it would be easy to take eBay on with a similar service that focuses exclusively on numismatics. This is a major source of business for eBay and would hurt them if they lost a sizable chunk of it ... and all it would take to take it away from them would be good service at a competitive cost. The real challenge is that you'd have to set up (sooner or later) a service to compete with PayPal.
Come on over ... to The Dark Side!
when selling, one thing that annoys me are when a buyer buys 2 smaller ticket items ($5-30) and we combine shipping but they use PAYPAL to pay for both items (and PAYPAL snags more money) - I would guess about 80% of sales are paid by PAYPAL
I feel there are enough people out there that do not bid if no PAYPAL, that the extra bidding action covers the cost - this is the same reason I sell on eBay rather than YAHOO (extra bidding, higher after cost net to me)
when buying - I bid about $5-10 less than I would if they offered PAYPAL, and then I send cash, rounded up to the nearest dollar - I figure that getting a money order or cashiers check is a big waste of time and money given to someone else ( I must be slow or stupid or something but it takes me 10-15 minutes to write the letter, address it, get it to the post office, etc)
say does anyone know how to pay eBay fees with PAYPAL???
At least with paypal, I have recourse, and by using my CC's, I can contest the charge should malfeasance on the sellers part arise.
I will actually bid and pay more than the "going rate" just for this protection. It's worth it to me for the peace of mind.
I am a gold powerseller, and bless the day that paypal became a viable option. My sales have increased and I obtain higher prices than those of my competitors with the same merchandise who are still of the MO/Cashier check mentality. Keep telling yourselves that Paypal is a bad and expensive option. It's good for me.
I couldn't agree more. Also, to what many others have said, it is a royal pain to have to mail check/money order AND to have to worry if it got there, etc. I like the instant closure (that's just me) and peace of mind I get as a buyer with PayPal. I have way too many other things to deal with & have to think about. NOT having to worry/think about whether the seller got my $ needs to not be one of them.
As a seller, I've gotten scammed every way conceivable over the last 12 years and only one of those times involved PayPal. It's all a numbers game and PayPal seems as safe as most - granted not as safe as receiving someone's check & waiting for it to clear but the BENEFIT of the EXTRA security of ONLY receiving payments that way doesn't outweigh the costs & benefits to the seller of taking PayPal & the slightly higher risks associated with it. Although there are times where I prefer to mail a check to a seller I know & trust especially if is a large amount. My personal paranoia kicks in when moving too large amounts of $ & the less 3rd parties know about it the better. As to the costs - PEOPLE CAN AFFORD 2.9%+ .35 MAX AND .7% + .35 MINIMUM IMO IF THEY ARE IN BUSINESS IN THE FIRST PLACE OR AT LEAST JUST GET A PAYPAL ACCOUNT THAT DOESN'T ACCEPT CREDIT CARDS IF JUST A PARTIME/HOBBY THING.</FONT>
<FONT face=Verdana size=1>(BTW what is the true cost of verifying if a check has cleared - Don't you call directory assistance - about a buck - to get the bank's # to then call & see if cleared - usually very time-consuming AND money orders/cashier's checks can also be stopped unless you're holding them to see if cleared as well) </FONT>