Paypal is cancer.
I ditched it a few months ago after they announced they will keep their fees after a refund.
Basically if you are seller and someone buys something from you and for any reason the order is cancelled, the buyer gets their refund, and paypal will keep their fees by taking it from the sellers bank account.
What’s worse is that this affects scam victims too. Anyone can send a sum of money to you for any reason. benefit from their “protection” and take the money back after a few months. Your will be left without the money and pay the Paypal fees.
It happened to me when I bought something from Ali, seller could not send the order and asked me for my pp account to send me a refund because refunding me on Ali would damage his seller status. I accepted, and 2 months later I was left without the money and paid the pp fees for the transfer because he could clam that the transaction was for something I sold him, and I supposedly did not send the product.
A prepaid card wouldn’t carry a cash advance fee if the payment was for goods. Same for credit cards, normally. The only explanation I have is that the transaction between PP and Alipay is showing up on the system as a cash transfer without the actual purchase of the goods. It is an escrow transaction to Alipay. Alipay then holds the funds until the package is shipped and remits the funds minus their fees.
On the credit card end (the funding source), the PP transaction shows up like a cash transfer. it is like using paypal to pay a casino, betting provider, or similar service where the purchased services are a cash equivalent.
Dispute it with your credit card company. You should not be charged a cash advance fee on a purchase. It’s the way that AE is acting as the middle man that is causing the problem. Chase waived mine after I offered to send them a screen shot of the purchases I made to confirm it was for goods and not gift cards or similar.
PP is going off the wall, and I’m close to ditching PP use altogether.
Sent 20bux f&f, completely domestic, nothing international, got nicked for 20.80. No mention of the “extra” at all, ’til after I saw my card statement. Like, wtf??
I purchased from the Convoy Store on 10/29 via PayPal and do not see any additional fees on my credit card. Just the amount for the purchase thankfully.
Putting it in as a cash advance causes your card/bank to charge you the fees. Makes it hard to do a charge back or to use any buyer protection that your card may offer.
So apparently Alipay has changed a lot of things for their IPO (which didn’t happen anyway). I’m sure it has some accounting reason or something they explored during the roadshow. The problem is I don’t understand why the fees are so high for some users (like, 10 dollars). It should be 2.99% across most consumer credit cards, my Amex platinum has 2.99%.
5% with a $10 minimum is fairly typical for cash advances, plus you pay a higher interest rate and there is no grace period on the interest for cash advances. Saves them the 3% they would normally pay to accept the credit card and if they don’t have the items in stock and ready to ship when they charge your card, like they are supposed to - they get your money right away and you can’t do a charge back on a cash advance to get your money back if they never deliver. Total scam.
After seeing this thread I googled it - from Paypal’s site
‘Note: If you make a cash advance purchase with a credit or debit card, the card issuer may charge a cash advance fee. PayPal has no control over third-party fees. To avoid incurring fees when making a cash advance purchase, you may want to use a different payment method, such as your bank account or an e-Check.’
So presumably this means if you use your bank account via paypal to pay rather than your card you should be able to avoid it?…. if the above is indeed correct.
I didn’t read the small print, but yes - a debit card or your own bank account have your funds available without resembling a cash advance transaction via a credit facility.
What I would really like to understand is what has changed on the Alipay end that would enable all of this. This wasn’t an issue earlier this year/before.
If you do that, you lose all protection of using a credit card, when they get your money it’s gone for good. And if you use a debit card, you will still get charged fees. Bottom line - don’t buy from scam sites.
I am only using debit cards and didn’t get charged any fees ever. I used like 400 different debit cards on Aliexpress, from which 380 were Revolut disposable virtual cards. Credit cards are in fact burrowed money, that’s why the banks will charge hidden fees and whatnot