BEWARE OF PayPal & EBAY

PayPal and Ebay are in cahoots with each other to make lots of money off of Ebay sellers by forcing them to switch to their more profitable "PayPal Premiere account". Now they are guaranteed to pocket a fee % on every transaction funded with PayPal. That's IN ADDITION to Ebay's seller fees.

For years I had sold items on Ebay without ever paying any fees as long as the seller had a "cleared" balance in their PayPal account, sufficient enough to cover the purchase. To avoid fees I would simply notify buyers that I did not accept payment unless it was a "cleared" balance - not payment based on a recent credit card sweep.  If payment was based on a credit card sweep then it took 3 - 5 days for that money to sit and "clear" in their PayPal account.  PayPal evidently complained to Ebay about my tactic, and one day my auction suddenly got cancelled by Ebay because they had instituted a new rule that basically stated that sellers were not allowed to put any constraints on PayPal purchases.  But I reacted by simply toning down the language in my ebay listings (instead of requiring payment based on a "cleared" balance I would politely ask for it) and then I would instruct auction winners to only pay me with a "cleared" PayPal balance. 

Well apparently PayPal still wasn't making enough money off of sellers.

Suddenly one day in July of 2007 (after I had made a sale) PayPal would NOT let me accept payment from a buyer UNLESS I "upgraded" my PayPal account to a "PayPal Business" or "PayPal Premiere" account.  PayPal called it an "upgrade" but in reality it is a DOWNgrade for the account holder because PayPal gets to automatically charge you between a 1.9% and 2.9% fee on every transaction!!! How convenient!!!  So now I was being FORCED to pay a % of all sale transactions that happened to be funded via PayPal!

Then in 2008 Ebay took it a step further. Now Ebay won't even let you list an item for sale unless PayPal is checked off as one of your payment methods that you accept. 

In the 2nd quarter of 2007 Ebay's revenue from PayPal rose 34 percent to $454 million.

So at this point in time why does PayPal even bother offering a "personal" account?

PayPal Fees