Update 3/21/20: PayPal has announced that due to COVID-19 this is currently being suspended:
At PayPal we are here to support you and we know that the spread of COVID-19 and its impact on the global economy has serious implications for your business. We have seen that you have been particularly impacted by recent customer behavior and so we would like to offer a temporary refund policy on your account. This means that from today until April 30th, PayPal will not withhold any of the transaction fees when we process a refund on your behalf.
Hat tip to DDG
Update 9/18/19: another email went out today on some Paypal accounts indicating the change will go into effect on October 11, 2019 at which point you won’t be refunded for the fee on returns “in line with industry practice”. (Maybe the earlier May 7 date was for personal accounts and this new one is for business accounts? Not sure, in any case, if you are a business owner, you’re going to want to keep an eye out on the fees.)
Original Post:
Paypal sent out an email today with an update today to the Paypal terms which will go into effect on May 7, 2019. Here’s a link to the new terms. There are 3 changes mentioned there, here’s the one we are focused on:
We’re changing how we treat refunds. If you refund (partially or fully) a transaction to a buyer or a donation to a donor, there are no fees to make the refund, but the fees you originally paid as the seller will not be returned to you.
The new terms seem to indicate that the entire 2.90% + $.30 fee will not be refunded in case of an order cancellation/refund. Currently the policy is that the $.30 does not get refunded, but the 2.90% fee does. This makes sense: Paypal likely gets hit with some small transaction fee which gets covered by the $.30, and then there’s the interchange fees which are not charged in the event of a refund.
This is literally insane! It means that an eBay seller or online retailer who makes a $1,000 sale and gets an order cancellation will lose the $29 fee charged by Paypal.
It’s likely larger websites who accept Paypal (e.g. Walmart.com) have special deals with Paypal and won’t be affected by this change. For eBay sellers and other online retailers, this could result in a nice spike in cost of payment processing, depending on what your rate of return/cancellation is.
Hat tip to u/Golden-Squirrel on r/ebay
i just noticed this today… But is this even legal? Can paypal actually do this? we received duplicate payment from a buyer so we refund one(full amount), $12 fee . so basically the 2nd payment is not a successful sales and they still charge us the $12 fee?
This seems to be the route other payment processors are gravitating towards as well. Stripe, WooCommerce checkout all have this same policy. Square and Amazon Pay don’t, but they support far fewer countries than Stripe or PayPal (this only affects you if you have lots of international customers). I wouldn’t be surprised if Square and Amazon Pay announce similar policies soon. Monopolistic policies…
The online payment processing network is a buyer’s dream / seller’s nightmare right now.
Paypal sucks!!! I had a claim for a seller sending me a facemaks. It was just a piece of foam with a piece of plastic on it claiming it was a respirator. It fell off immediately and no filters. the seller closed their ebay account. it was supposed to be from california but came from china!!!!!!!!!
so anyway paypal closed the claim without even telling me- no text, no call, no email!!!!
I filed a bbb claim against paypal!
BEWARE! I just got f****d by PayPal on this today! Some random person sent me a payment for several hundred dollars in error and when I tried to deal with them and rectify the situation, PayPal demanded that I add a bank account and pay extra to cover the fees. Support has thus far refused to give-in and has held strong that everything stays locked until I give in to their demands. Are you freaking kidding me? Making matters worse, you can’t message them thru the portal or on social media, as they have their bot auto-reply and kick-back anything sent to them. They’ve mostly hidden their phone number on the site and when you do call, it advises against holding to wait due to low staffing.
I’ve had an account with them for over 20 years, but they’ve become such a bureaucratic mess , engaging in the most ridiculous struggle for more and more power and control. That, coupled with the CFPB being stripped of most of their authority to deal with them, I fear this is the end for me. I feel like the only way to protect myself is complete and total destruction of my account, following by service (certified letter) to their corporate office that no further use of any of my accounts or information is authorized. Things are getting crazy out there, no doubt.
Same happened to me. A person bought from me and cancelled the transaction within 10minutes. Well, here goes my $8 paid to paypal that were NOT refunded. They definitely still CHARGE FEES.
Also I could not confirm information that PayPal waived 2.9% fees anywhere else but this post.
Have anyone successfully gotten the fee waived? (just being charged the $0.30) Or is this a targetted offer, cause I have not received any email.
Thank you!
Per the post, the policy before this change (and before it being waived) was:
[Currently the policy is that the $.30 does not get refunded, but the 2.90% fee does. ]
That could be why you are still being charged .30.
a question that I buy a led lights on ebay March 20 (2 days ago) does chinapost work?
2 weeks ago buy a screwdriver
it took 10 days to (reach the hands of chinapost)
but the question is now is chinapost working?
If the seller provide me tracking by chinapost, singapoore, winit.
I don’t care how long it takes 2 weeks to move. 😀
Somehow I think this is broken. I had to issue a refund to a buyer this morning. Fees were not refunded.
Sad that ebay selling is limited to two options: paypal or ebay managed payments. To use ebay managed payments you need to jump through some hoops with no guaranteed result. You first need to “express your interest” here https://pages.ebay.com/seller-center/service-and-payments/managed-payments-on-ebay.html and if ebay will choose you, you may be invited. Personally I am horrified to sell anything with paypal, because that means you’re playing lottery with your items, either you get paid for it or give it away for free.
Down with PayPal
Just as a dp, I sold something on ebay on Aug 24th 2019 and refunded the buyer the day after on Aug 25th. I was refunded the whole transaction fee from PayPal. My account used to be a business account (converted to personal late 2018) and I had gotten special treatment in the past with PayPal because of the high volume I was running through them. I did not get either of the emails you had referenced. Not sure why.
This is why I removed the pay immediately via paypal on my high dollar listings. Now the client must contact me to arrange payment, which more often than not ends up going via square.
Make sure that your Square invoices state all sales are final and non-refundable, just because some pretty shady buyer’s out there.