Gregory's Server
@pnorman @simon @batalanto @adam it depends. If you have a crappy local bank than yes fees are often sky high. If you use Wise, the fees are usually fairly cheap for smallish transfers. For large transfers, international wires are usually the cheapest option unless you bank is exceptionally predatory. PayPal fees are, in my experience, excessive, but it’s highly situation dependent.
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18 comments
@ianthetechie @pnorman It’s a bad idea to use Paypal in the 1st place but if you do, then you should get money out of PP ASAP. Yet if you operate that way PP fees are higher. @ianthetechie @pnorman @batalanto @ianthetechie @simon Banks are the same issue with closing accounts because they don't like your transaction history. This is why the OSMF had to move banks. @pnorman @simon @ianthetechie Paypal is not a bank. Paypal escapes banking regs. Paypal can freeze your acct for countless trivial reasons such as not liking your IP address or being unable to solve a broken CAPTCHA. I got locked out of my account for a long time once because their software had a endless loop bug in the login process. Paypal can suddenly demand docs & lock your acct until you provide them. @ianthetechie @simon @pnorman I had no activity on a paypal acct for a while & logins worked fine. Then I got a payment from a family member for <$50. Paypal froze my acct & demanded a copy of my passport. ID is unnecessary because paypal relies on banks to know their customer but PP does a money grab whenever they can. I provided my passport but PP did not unlock the acct. A bank would not get away with that. @pnorman @simon @ianthetechie If a bank tries to deny you access to your money for some bullshit reason & they give you no option to remedy it, in the US you can file an FDIC depositor’s insurance claim. Even though the bank is not insolvent, your money is lost from where you sit. The FDIC does not like being pestered with this so they put heavy pressure on the bank to fix it. It’s a hack but works. @ianthetechie @simon @pnorman Since Paypal is not a bank, they have a lot more freedom to deny you access to your money. Banking regulators are useless to consumers trying to get a remedy. The best you can do is sue them like any private business. In most of Europe, that’s broken from the start because there is no small claims courts in most if not all of the EU & court fees are not awarded when you win. @pnorman @simon @ianthetechie So a lawsuit is only worthwhile for disputes over €10k. This makes Paypal a stupid risk to Europeans. Americans have better access to courts & could sue Paypal for small amounts. It’ll cost <$100 in court fees to file & serve but the loser pays that. OTOH, Paypal most likely has an arbitration clause in their ToS which neuders that option. @ianthetechie @simon @pnorman I would love to sue Paypal for ~$150 (what they took from me + court fees), but PP didn’t burn me in the US so I’m stuffed. I have no viable recourse. @pnorman @simon @ianthetechie Consider the bottom line as well- if a US bank does a money grab & that goes public, the loss of trust is crippling as consumers have ~6000+ other banks to choose from. When Paypal does that, PP need not worry because of the monopolistic stranglehold they have. Consider that PP cut off Anonymous & Wikileaks at one point. They got burnt but they continue patronizing PP anyway.  @batalanto @pnorman @ianthetechie pls stop, the reasons why the OSMF offers paypal as one of a number of payment options has already been explained. @simon @ianthetechie @pnorman That’s irrelevant because the payer decides. If Paypal were the only option (as it appeared initially) they’d be getting zero from me. The fact that there are other options is precisely why exposing #Paypal’s wrongdoing is important. @batalanto @mnalis @pnorman @simon @ianthetechie You’re talking nuts & bolts of the CC option under a premise that a payer is trapped with #Paypal processing. Yes paying with CC via PP is much safer than paying with a PP acct. But then you still have PP sharing data from your CC transaction with 600+ corps & you still feed PP financially. So by boycotting PP I don’t just refuse to usa a PP acct, I avoid PP getting my CC info. @batalanto None of the expenses I called out are from the bank. They're in time spent dealing with the transfers, or in time spent dealing with the fraud consequences of publishing an IBAN on the web. I don't think anyone involved *likes* Paypal, it's just all the alternatives for dealing with small donations to a place you can't visit in person suck just as much or more. @pnorman Nonsense. You said “Pretty sure bank transfer expenses exceed PayPal fees”. If you meant to compare xfer *time* to Paypal *fees*, that wording doesn’t work. Also, it’s wrong to assume time is money. To quote RMS: “time ain’t money when all you have is time”. @pnorman IBAN numbers are not the same as US bank acct №s. An IBAN is not vulnerable. You can put it on your business cards, publish it on the web, put it on letterheads, flyers, etc. If someone gets your US bank acct № they can print their own checks & forge your sig. Not so with IBANs. |
@ianthetechie @pnorman
IIUC, this subthread is regarding payments to the Irish bank account, correct? If so, I think you would be hard-pressed to find a bank that even charges a penny for SEPA→SEPA which is typically gratis. That beats Paypal in price, privacy, and ethically.
Of course non-SEPA→SEPA is typically a shit show. Although Paypal is always a shit show at least w.r.t. privacy & ethics.
@simon