I was somewhat aware of this problem, but did not know about the May 7 change and had not seen the Rossmann video. My awareness of PayPal’s fee structure was from over a decade ago, so I knew that my knowledge was obsolete from a numbers perspective.
If I was a merchant, I would not accept PayPal and this helps explain why many of the AliExpress sellers I’m now seeing are not accepting it. I imagine that May 7 triggered these changes.
Coincidentally, I’ve recently found out that criminals are using PayPal to send donations to some open source projects using stolen accounts or credit cards. Guess what? This costs the recipient, a penniless open source developer, the PayPal fees every time PayPal turns around and refunds the fraudulent charge! In other words, they punish the recipient of the donation as though they were guilty of fraud.
And that was before PayPal changed the 2.9% policy. I’ve even seen claims that people are donating through PayPal with fraudulent accounts on purpose just to drain money from open source developers (or anyone) who the idiots perceive has “wronged” them.
In other words, Louis is dead-right about losers on 4chan doing this just to screw with merchants like him. PayPal is thus culpable in this travesty as their policies have created this form of attack, even if the attackers themselves make no money from the strategy. Basically, PayPal profits from the misfortunes of merchants.
There are no non-PayPal options which have (had) the widespread acceptance of PayPal . Regardless, I sincerely hope that this policy change kills PayPal. Keeping their 2.9% for every refund for any reason is simply wrong.
To be fair, however, I do want to admit that PayPal has operated their business with much less overhead than a company like Patreon, which now has hundreds of employees for no obvious reason. How many people does it take to run a website? They surely aren’t hiring people with advanced degrees just answer phones.
Also, PayPal allows me to use my credit card as a payment source with no extra fee. I don’t know how they do this, as credit card companies charge more than 2.9. Some charge 9, which should also be illegal (I’ve hated Discover for decades as they should not exist and would never accept their cards as a merchant).
Let’s be honest. We consumers are pretty stupid, as we now insist upon credit cards that pay us 1-2% “cash back” when it’s our own money they are paying back to us. To get that 1.5% cash back, the card companies have all raised their merchant rates by 3-4!! The card companies make out quite well, but merchants have to charge 3-4 more for their products and services just so we can have 1-2% “cash back”.
Abbot and Costello once did routine where one would trick the other into giving him two 10’s for a 5. Well, it’s not comedy anymore. We’re that stupid. The credit card companies ask for 3-6% extra, give us back 1.5%, and we think we’re financial geniuses. “The card that pays you back.”