As paypal goes, if the money is sent as a gift, and the person does not send the merchandise...YOU HAVE NO PAYPAL RECOURSE. You "gave the money as a gift". Yes, it does save fees. But...if you get burned by someone and they take your money....not really saving ANYTHING are you?

And according to your paypal agreement, you may NOT charge someone more if they pay with paypal versus another method. It's in the same realm as retailers telling you there is a minimum transaction amount if you want to use a credit card. It's against visa/mc policies.

ETA: if a retailer is trying to avoid fees by having their customers choose "personal" it is the retailer that will get in trouble. Like, account suspension/investigation type things. Purchasers? Meh...it's your money to lose, I guess. I've never heard of a purchaser getting in trouble for sending "gift money" because just losing your own money is enough of a deterrent, kwim?

The fee for a transaction of less than 100.00 is very minimal and is worth the Paypal protection.
Glad someone brought this up.

i've been guilty of trying to avoid the fees so am definitely not speaking from my high horse.

i've since learned that if somebody does that favor, they have no protection if the transaction goes wrong. soooo ... on top of being sneakier than i care to admit, i was asking somebody to take an even bigger risk than we already take when buying from strangers in cyber-space.

double shame on me. :hunf:

i hope everybody else has figured it out, too. sellers should be prepared to pay the cost of doing business. buyers should exercise all options available to protect themselves.

ive done both with no problems.. I guess its just a matter of how much the person is trustworthy or not..

Link to pay pal fees:
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_display-fees-outside]https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/websc...y-fees-outside[/url]
Not that expensive.

i would never use "gift" when sending paypal funds because you will not have a leg to stand on if there's an issue.

if you use "goods" and the items are never sent to you and the person who was supposed to send the items can not prove delivery thru a conformation you can raise a complaint and receive your funds back.

my credit card has reversed paypal funds 3 times for me over the last 8 or so years.

they would never have reversed those charges if i had said it was a "gift".

I am not thinking I should go to the fee calculator and figure out how much additional to send to cover the seller's PayPal fee. I do agree with another who has posted here. Accepting payments by PayPal is part of the cost of doing business. And even if we are not operating a storefront, we are conducting businees, of a sort.

I actually have had one or two people offer to send me paypal via that route, as a 'gift' so as to not charge me fees. Very sweet of them, but I didn't know it left them without any recourse. It's good to know. Yes, the paypal fees are part of doing business and although I don't like the fees like everyone else, it's worth it for the protection of both parties.

For heaven's sake! Isn't that right up there with stealing cable T.V., stiffing the waiter etc? PayPal is a service that protects all of us who use it. It's a convenience to me to be able to see within seconds that an item has been paid for and I can then proceed to ship it. Who wants to wait a week for a check and then another ten days for it to clear.
I noticed that some seller was asking for an extra fifty cents. I would not buy from that seller. If you're doing business with someone, that's the cost of doing it, and darned little at that!
Happy to support PayPall!
Karen

HI - PP fees are pretty easy to figure - flat 30 cent fee plus 2.9% of total . So on a $10 transaction, it would be 59 cents.
Money coming from a foreign country, the % is a little more.