I am pretty much recovered from swine flu now but it has left me with no energy!
I am pretty much recovered from swine flu now but it has left me with no energy!
Member since:21.10.2000
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As you know I have recently opened a shop on Ebay selling watches and clocks – the shop address is on my Ciao home page if you’re interested. I had quite a few overseas bidders ask if I used any of the automated payment sites and I had to say ‘no’ and request cheques including an extra £5 costs so that they could be converted back to sterling by my bank.
Clearly this isn’t a good idea and, if wanted my shop to be a success, I needed to sort out some kind of easy way for anyone to pay for the items that they had won.
I decided to go for Paypal for two reasons – firstly I read some of the opinions here on Ciao and it sounded good, and secondly that Ebay have just taken over Paypal and so logically it must be the ideal choice for proceeds of Ebay auctions.
Easy Registration
To register with Paypal is a piece of cake! They ask for the basic information of name, address, telephone number and your preferred currency. Obviously my preferred currency is pound sterling but the other options are Euros, US Dollars, Canadian Dollars, or Yen.
There are three account options to choose from – personal, business or international – here I chose international as I wanted to be able to receive payments from anywhere in the world where buyers could register with Paypal, which is pretty well anywhere incidentally.
I
also had to supply details of the bank account to which I wanted any withdrawals to be credited. A word of caution here, do take care at this stage because Paypal will charge you £15 for a returned payment due to your details being incorrect!
I then had to set up the details of my credit card, or I could have used a debit card, which I would use to add funds to my Paypal account. This is irrelevant to me, as I shall only be using Paypal as a receiving account. To make sure that the card you have registered is valid $1.95 is taken from that card, which was £1.28 when I registered, with the promise that this will be refunded to your Paypal account. Maybe this is only refundable if you use Paypal to pay for something rather than just receive payments, but I have never had my £1.28 refunded!
For security purposes you then need to complete the signing up process with two forms of identification.
The first is that you have to replicate some numbers shown on the screen, typing them in the box provided. This proves that you are an individual human being setting up the account, as opposed to a computer set up to sign in to accounts automatically with criminal intent.
The second thing to do is to type in a reference number, which will appear on your credit or debit card statement. This might mean a considerable wait for some people until the statement arrives, but it was quite easy for me as I can access my Goldfish account on line and I was able to see the information that I needed within a couple of days.
It is incredibly user friendly for a start. This is great for me as I was quite nervous about setting this account up. I had been happy to see cheques arrive in the post and be able to pay them into my bank account. I’m an old fashioned sort of girl at heart you see.
To be fair to Paypal, I was impressed straight away. The site is very clear and easy to understand. Navigation is simple and quick and it is easy to find my account details and history thereof.
Another thing I liked is that there are no adverts flashing away down the side of the screen and certainly no annoying pop ups!
The log in is easy being my e-mail address together with the password that I have chosen.
I am then presented with a home screen with simple tabs to click for my account, payments, receipts, history, paying out money, sending requests for money and Paypal shops.
When someone pays money into my Paypal account, Paypal send me an e-mail to notify me that these funds have arrived. This also gives me the registered address of the person paying so that I can then parcel up their goods ready to post.
Payments are made using the registered e-mail address of the person to whom you are making the payment. You can have up to eight different e-mail addresses linked to your account. This is ideal for me as I have an Ebay shop in the name of brave_rufus and an ordinary Ebay account in the name of Auburnsue, both of which have different e-mail addresses.
In fact I hadn’t thought to add my Auburnsue e-mail address and someone actually used it to pay me some money via Paypal. I panicked for a moment and thought it must be ‘lost in the system’, but no, I just added my other e-mail address and there was my payment showing in my account exactly as it should.
The Accounts and Costs
There are two types of accounts on Paypal.
One is a standard personal account through which you can send and receive cash payments. This costs nothing to administer apart from £1 administration fee for every withdrawal to your bank account. So it makes sense to wait until you have a few payments in the account and withdraw the whole amount in one go – thus only £1 administration charge!
I have actually set up a premier account, which means that people can pay me with their credit cards. The down side of this is that although the fees for withdrawals are the same there is also a handling fee charged on payments received of 20p plus 3.4% of the value of the payment. So, if you are then using this account to receive Ebay money it’s worth adding a small amount onto the final amount if the buyer is using Paypal so that you don’t end up out of pocket.
All this information appears in your account on Paypal. The gross and net payments received are shown so that you can see what the charges are.
Payments that are made from other countries are converted to sterling at source, but I understand that they could be paid to me in dollars for the conversion to take place at my end of the transaction.
Coming back to withdrawals for a minute – if you withdraw money to a UK bank account the transaction will take between 5 and 7 working days and will cost £1. If you withdraw money to a US bank account the transaction will take between 3 and 4 working days and will be free of charge. If you want to use your accrued funds to buy items from one of over 30,000 Paypal shops, you can do so straight away at no extra charge.
Final Thoughts
Well this has definitely dragged me into the 21st century! I have been very impressed with the efficiency of notifications of money received and the ease of administration of my account – which had to be good as I am an accountant by profession!
The other big benefit at the moment is that I have put a lot of items on Ebay under their ‘buy it now’ auctions so that people can get last minute Christmas presents, and obviously the sooner I receive payment the sooner I can send the goods. Good huh?
UPDATE
Just to let you know that I mailed Paypal about the $1.95 and they replied within 12 hours and paid the amount straight into my account, so if you haven't had yours - mail them!!
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Comments about this review »
Deru 10.05.2004 03:41
Been using PayPal ever since I started using eBay. It's quite handy.
barney_mcrury 02.09.2003 20:09
have just signed up, hope its ok!!
pleaseratemyreview 27.05.2003 19:42
A great op. I use Paypal, but after going to www.paypalsucks.com i have been much less keen on them. There are some real horror stories there, about frozen accounts and basically theft! JIM
Advantages: This service is fast, convenient, and free to individuals. Disadvantages: You have to pay a small fee to have a check cut, and some people might inadvertently believe that this site is one hundred percent secure.
Sarah_B 26.01.2002 (27.01.2002)
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Dec 15th, 2002
(Dec 30th, 2002)
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