I am trying to find out if anybody uses money order options exclusively (BidPay, PayingFast, etc.) and does this affect the number of bids they receive. Do you negotiate the fee involved? Do customers complain about the fees?
I used to use cheque and money orders exclusively. But found out that I was losing money by not using Paypal as well. But I never had a complaint about the fees a customer had to pay to send me a money order through Bidpay. I have found that I was always waiting for my money and this was a pain as I needed it to purchase more to sell. No you do not negotiate the fees. They are set fees involved. Now the fees I pay with Paypal do not outweigh the advantages. Money is instant and I can ship right away. Customers are thrilled to receive their purchase quickly. JMO.
I have to agree with all that Don said. I started using Paypal several months ago and my only regret is that I didn't start earlier. Time is money, and the time I've saved in paperwork, and dealing with cheques and money orders is more than worth the Paypal charges. I never had anyone gripe about the fees involved with Bidpay or Payingfast, but since accepting Paypal, I've only had maybe 2 of those types of payments.
I've always used Paypal. It certainly has its flaws, most notably the risk of chargebacks. But its does get the money to the seller faster and therefore the product to the customer faster.
I can't complain about the fees though. And the buyer ultimately pays for them anyway as I'm sure we all inflate our prices to cover them. Bidpay and Payingfast are much more expensive, probably because they can't just help themselves to the funds in your account if someone claims non-delivery or does a chargeback. Perhaps the on-going litigation Paypal is involved in will slow that practice down a bit .
You are not allowed to surcharge fees... ebay doesnt accept this.
For the fees, if you check carefully to be able to accept credit cards payments on the web, you can check as many companies as you want, fees are almost the same everywhere... you even often have to pay a 19.95$/month fee just to keep your account open!
So I dont think that Paypal is overcharging us... I checked many other companies to be able to accept credit card payments by myseld and the price is the same...
The only problem I see with paypal, is for people that dont already have a paypal account set when they want to pay us. They have to wait till they receive their statements to be able to pay cause they have to confirm their credit card account.
So we dont have many other options available... thats why I resigned to use paypal.