Right now I don't think that Paypal has the grounds to charge a fee to us, even if they don't like that we are using the service this way. There is a careful distinction that I made with paypal; we are not buying or selling anything using the paypal service. Rather we are using the service to reimburse a friend who pays for the grain out of his own pocket for us (not through paypal). We then reimburse him for the actual cost and no profits or fees are collected for services. i.e. paypal claims a right to charge a seller, but we are not using THEIR service to directly buy
anything. Furthermore we don't have a seller based on paypal's user agreement definition of "seller". I did note that on the positive for them our buy was encouraging new paypal usership through new sign ups (hey you gotta try
).
Once I stated our position as such Paypal never responded despite two more follow up emails. Mainly because I believe they realized that they don't have a write to charge us until they rewrite their terms and conditions of the user agreement; will take a while if they choose to rewrite.
The only real issues that I see are:
1. They sort of imply with their language that they can limit, or remove paypal services from you for any reason they choose. They might be able to disable gift sending or even our accounts.
2. If you guys absorb the fee, our actions show that we believe the terms and conditions are set where we are responsible for a fee. I don't want to set that precedent.
3. Even if you guys absorb the fees, I still have to reroute the the total amount to the seller, and I might get stuck with another 3% on top of what you guys pay. then we are talking 6% in fees... um no thank you.
In short I believe that we have two choices:
1. Use paypal as before
2. Find a new service.
My follow up emails have shown my intent to use the service as we had in the past as well as my reasonableness to communicate with paypal. Since I have done that I am feeling better and better about taking the risk. However, if it hits the fan, I will fully hope and expect people toss in as needed to bail me out from absorbing all the fees myself
- as annoying as it may be to send me a payment of as low as $2 each or something.
If I don't hear from paypal by COB today/tomorrow, I think we will proceed as we have in the past, assessing no fees.