Got the latest currency exchange rates, confirmed seller agrees to the exchange rate, and wired the funds plus enough to cover my wire transfer fees. You'd think I'm done.
Nope.
Seller says HIS bank then deducted a wire transfer fee equal to $8.40, which he says I still owe him, which he recommends I pay by Paypal to avoid my wire fees, and his wire fees, both of which each exceed the amount I'm to wire. Ok. So I Paypal him $8.40. You'd think I'm done.
Nope.
Now he says Paypal deducted $0.56 from the amount I sent, so I still owe him that spare change.
Are you shitting me? You won't even eat that to make this deal done.
Fuuuuu
But with each jab I'll get better at this, right? So the next transaction will be like, "Ok, so I owe you x, but what are the wire fees on your end, so I can be sure to cover that up front as well... and by your accepting this amount means you agree it means I've paid in full, regardless of any unanticipated fluctuations in currency or fees on your end." Boom.
A Youtuber I'm subscribed to recently had a charity livestream on Twitch, where he played Super Mario World. He mentioned he, or the charity, couldn't use PayPal since it was proned to fraud.
Anyway, be careful it's not fraud. Because I smell fraud.
> Anyway, be careful it's not fraud. Because I smell fraud.
I'm perpetually paranoid, that's a fact. But if I'm ever to get some of these otherwise impossible and "rare" finds from international sources, I need to test these waters with some faith. I'll follow-up how it all works out.
There's no learning curve. PayPal tells you at every step of the way what will happen. It seems that you selected "I'm paying for goods or services" instead of "I'm sending money to family or friends".
Yes, you may not have been sending money to a friend, but unless you agreed with him that he would eat the PayPal transfer fees - which there always are - then your only option to eat the fees yourself is to select the second option.
It's not like PayPal is terribly opaque about this fact, either. Note the words "Free for you. The seller pays the fees.":
Now here's what it says when you select the second option. It tells you explicitly what the fees will be depending on your payment source - and before you say it, yes, it says the same thing when you have a USA-based account:
Don't get huffy with PayPal because you didn't read the clear-cut description of the transaction. Like it or not, PayPal is not a bank, which means they ultimately can't make money by fractional lending on the reserves in users' account - all funds must be liquid at all times. Therefore, the only reasonable way for them to make money is by charging a percentage for each transaction. Whether you pay the fee or the seller pays the fee is entirely up to you, but they're upfront every step of the way as to what the end result will be. If you were not paying the fee yourself, what else do you think would happen?
>Don't get huffy with PayPal because you didn't read the clear-cut description of the transaction.
Nay. I'm not huffy with Paypal. I'm huffy with the expectations of the foreign seller who thinks all HIS fees are my responsibility, but didn't put this up front in the invoice.
If he chooses to accept money only by wire transfer, and tells me how much to transfer... and that's enumerated on the invoice and instructions provided by the seller, if he expected that I pay HIS end of the wire fees, he should have had that in the invoice up front.
Then he switches to Paypal to save $8.40 in wire fees ON HIS END (He doesn't give a rats ass how much the wire cost me to send it)... again he didn't account for the commercial Paypal fees ON HIS END, which is, at this point chump change on a thousand dollar purchase. At what point does the seller just accept the cost of doing business?
Basically any commercial transaction that doesn't involve the customer handing cash over in person is going to extract some kind of fee for handling the transaction from the seller.
U.S. sellers, generally, get this point.
Me dealing with foreign sellers with expectations that significantly differ from mine is new for me. If this happened with a seller here, the invoice would over-ride his whining full stop. My learning curve is this.... I've learned I need to help THEM specify all their expectations up front before money starts flowing.
Were he not the only source, and were my money not already irrevocably wired out, I would have nixed this sale. As it is, I need to learn to make these sketchy transactions work, because its the only source I know of in the world for what I need. I sucked it up to make this guy happy in the hopes I'm not getting screwed from the gitgo anyway. This entire transaction requires every part of faith on my part with no risk on his.
Tom is right, if this is a scam, I'm done for without recourse... but if I have any hope of getting said items from the only source I know of in the world, faith is required here on my part if I hope to get the goods. Learning curve.
> Now he says Paypal deducted $0.56 from the amount I sent, so I still owe him that > spare change. > > at this point chump change on a thousand dollar purchase. > At what point does the seller just accept the cost of doing > business?
Yes, he is behaving badly - very badly. Fretting over every cent is being ridiculous. I regularly eat additional transaction fees over what was expected because of the strange and convoluted ways that people can send money for purchases. Last week I ate $55+ in extra, never before seen fees on one transaction because of the way the purchaser sent money. (We are talking a purchase of around $300 here). I never ask for the extra money to cover the fees. Just eat it. It's a cost of doing business.
A happy customer is way, way more important than what is usually less than $10 in fees. And even if it is way more than $10, I don't care - a happy customer is the most important thing.
> If he chooses to accept money only by wire transfer, and tells me how much to > transfer... and that's enumerated on the invoice and instructions provided by the > seller, if he expected that I pay HIS end of the wire fees, he should have had that > in the invoice up front.
Every person (company or not) I've ever dealt with has. The problem is you dealt with a moron. Where he lives is beside the point. Even if it was his first international deal, that still wouldn't be an excuse.
Remains to be seen. It already arrived at my contact address in China! Only took like a day, so either the supplier is across the street from my contact, or it's super efficient mail in China
Step two now is to see if this contact comes thru and actually ships stuff to me as promised. Awaiting an invoice for the shipping and handling.
Step 3 will be to see what customs does. I requested a certificate of origin just to be safe, but not even sure I needed one. Google was no help on this.
All a learning curve... all based on faith... need to have true faith.
It was a custom case for a foodservice ice shaver made in China so that the company emblem is formed into it. To try to reproduce the same case from scratch stateside was cost prohibitive.
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Ugh. International transactions are a learning curve!
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