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
tl;dr Figured I’d add my experience to this as it hasn’t been fun thus far. Fair warning for anyone about to buy something from AE through PayPal. If you do, at least don’t split the transactions up just to save $1 and get charged $10 in fees from your credit card company because the charge was billed as a cash advance. Ugh.
Rest of the story:
I bought several items on 11/11, split into three orders so I could use some AE coupons. Big mistake, as all three transactions were charged as CASH ADVANCE and Chase gave me a $10 fee for each one of them ($30 total) and adding insult to injury, a 24.xx% interest accrual from the moment of transaction.
PayPal customer service has been of no help, refusing to address my concern about the TYPE of charge (cash advance vs. purchase) and would only repeatedly say “we do not charge any fees”. I told the rep (via chat) that the fee was not my concern but the type of transaction. They just didn’t seem to get it and kept repeating that the fee wasn’t their problem. So I told them that (as advised by Chase) that the only option would be to dispute the charge, and the PP rep said to go ahead.
AliExpress Help Chat through the robo-rep “Eva” was a similar experience. They make it very difficult to tell when they switch you from the robot to a human. All of the responses were canned, but later on some were edited just enough to make me believe someone was really reading the messages and customizing a template response. In any case they also said that cash advance is an issue with the credit card company and not AliExpress. I really can’t be sure if they understood the problem at all.
So back on the phone with Chase, thankfully I got a human in about 5 minutes hold time. This rep was very understanding and transferred me to the Dispute department, 10 mins on hold there and the rep agreed to submit disputes for all charges. PayPal now has 30 days to respond if I understand the procedure correctly.
I can’t imagine making any more purchases at AE because of this. Thankfully some sellers will allow you to circumvent the payment system and pay via PayPal directly to the merchant.
Thank you for sharing your experiences with this situation. I am glad we BLF folks come together and share all of this. What a horrible system for us to deal with just because we want to give someone our money.
It appears that Aliexpress was designed to work with Alipay predominantly, paypal doesn’t seem like a hassle-free option.
IMO the issue is with paypal and aliexpress/alipay, they are informing the cc issuer that they are charging the card for a cash transaction.
Darn, it looks like this problem is systemic rather than a bank-specific anomaly.
I expect any future purchases I make on AE will be with PayPal, but not until they announce a fix.
I don’t think AE is to blame here, but it seems that it’s now cool to blame the chinese for everything so everybody is trashing Ali without knowing the facts.
I am a programmer and in the past I’ve used Paypal’s Api and there was no control from my part over the actual payment process. My app only asked paypal for the amount and they handled the rest. So my guess is that your issue is either Paypal, or at your card issuer/bank. Last time I used Paypal was just months ago and I had no such problems except their large fees, so it’s most likely the bank. You say their rep was understanding - that’s actually not a good sign. I think they are well aware of everything
It’s a US-specific “anomaly”. Probably another one of the China-USA economic war consequences, that ordinary people pay.
