Paypal asking me to upgrade my account - why?

drunknmunky

Hi all, i've only just started seeling stuff on ebay and have just sold a pair trainers. The buyer has paid through paypal, so when I log in to paypal and choose to accept payment, i get a page displaying the following....

"The ability to accept credit or debit card funded payments is reserved for Premier and Business accounts. To accept this Pending payment, please upgrade your account now.

If you upgrade your account, you will receive a range of premium features in addition to the ability to accept unlimited credit or debit card payments. The fees on incoming payments are low - just 3.4% + £0.20 GBP to receive payments. If you refuse this Pending payment, you may continue to receive money from PayPal members who use a bank account or their PayPal balance to fund the payment. To continue to receive payments for free, make sure that the people who pay you fund their payments with their PayPal balance or with a bank account."

Now I dont know much about using paypal, but am I right in thinking...

1. that as the buyer has tried pay via debit/credit card through paypal, i am only able to accept the payment if i upgrade my paypal account and pay the extra paypal charges.

2. However, if i dont want to upgrade my account, I will have refuse the payment and ask the buyer to use their bank account or their PayPal balance to fund the payment.

3. In future auctions, would I be able to state in the item desctription that buyer will have to pay for the cost incurred to me for me to have the ability to recieve credit/debit card payments, or is there any way around this?

This is probably very obvious, but i'm new to all this so im not too sure what i am doing. If you are still reading this - well done for staying awake! your advise would be much appreciated....

Many thanks
Munky

smartie1976

1. that as the buyer has tried pay via debit/credit card through paypal, i am only able to accept the payment if i upgrade my paypal account and pay the extra paypal charges.

Yes.

2. However, if i dont want to upgrade my account, I will have refuse the payment and ask the buyer to use their bank account or their PayPal balance to fund the payment.

No you cannot refuse them if you offered paypal - you really need to be aware that buyers often pay with accounts funded by a credit card, and if you advertise as taking paypal, you have to accept whatever method their PP is funded by.

3. In future auctions, would I be able to state in the item desctription that buyer will have to pay for the cost incurred to me for me to have the ability to recieve credit/debit card payments, or is there any way around this?

No - you have to pay the fees, you cannot ask the buyer to do this. The only way you can accommodate this is in your P&P price, but even then that has to be reasonable.
The only thing you can do is NOT list the paypal icon, but put in TEXT in your advert that you will accept paypal payments funded by debit cards, and that the buyer should contact upon upon winning about this. Not ideal though. Looks poor.

dodger65

Smartie posted while I was writing the below and everything smartie says I would concur with.

With a personal account you can only accept payments that come from other ebayers paypal balances (your not allowed to take payments from cards and can only recieve frm people who have verified their paypal accounts to allow them to pay from a bank balance).

Getting your account verified allows you to take payments from anyone whatever their paypal standing is and whatever funding option they use
Verification is simple they just send a couple of payments between 0 and 99p and these 2 payments form a password that you type in to prove you own the bank account. This will take about 3/5 days.
I imagine your also wondering wether or not to send the trainers - pretty sure that if the payment is confrimed it will sit waiting for you to verify your account and then you can accept it (but give paypal a call to check - phoneline help is pretty quick and reasonbly informed in dublin I think).

As for wether or not to get verifed if you wanna make any cash on ebay fraid your gonna have to bite the bullet and let them have their 3%. But on the upside getting your account verified means that you will get the £500 buyer protection icon in all your listings and this will increase your bids and hence final sale price especially if your selling any high priced goods.

drunknmunky

cheers for that smartie, live and learn i guess!
thanks again for the quick reply.

drunknmunky

... and cheers to you dodger aswell!

smartie1976

No probs. Sadly, ebay and paypal have the buyers and sellers tied up in knots with fees, and there is really no escape, sadly.

To not offer paypal on your listing will likely see you sell your items for less as well.

frivolous_fay

Ahh, that's defeatist! Fight back! bank transfer

soolin

frivolous_fay wrote:

Ahh, that's defeatist! Fight back! bank transfer

I send my bank details in my end of auction emails and probably only get 1 buyer in 200 actually use it

Soo

Contains_Mild_Peril

Verification is not the same as "upgrading" an account. A personal account can be verified, but you still need to "upgrade" to receive payments made using a credit or debit card.
Drunknmunky, similar questions to yours come up every so often on this forum - here's another thread which you may find helpful
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=181704

JohalaReewi

smartie1976 wrote:

No - you have to pay the fees, you cannot ask the buyer to do this. The only way you can accommodate this is in your P&P price, but even then that has to be reasonable.
The only thing you can do is NOT list the paypal icon, but put in TEXT in your advert that you will accept paypal payments funded by debit cards, and that the buyer should contact upon upon winning about this. Not ideal though. Looks poor.

However, you can open a Nochex account (https://www.nochex.com) and take credit card payments via that. The fees are lower than Paypal, they put money into your bank faster, the seller protection is better, and if the purchase is less than £100, the buyer can pay by credit card without having to open a nochex account. The downside is they only take UK credit cards (unless you pay for a merchant account) and Ebay try to make everyone pay by Paypal and rubbish everything else. However, there is now the Nochex checkout for Ebay (https://www.nochexcheckout.com) which makes things a lot easier. Just tick the 'other methods' box when you list items to sell (don't tick the Accept Paypal box).

drunknmunky

cheers for that JohalaReewi, i might give that a bash.
Is nochex popular with others on ebay? Have you used it or ever expirienced people not wanting to pay via nochex because they've never heard of it?