I just sent the following to PayPal, using up all but a few of my alloted 1000 characters.

I am a longtime PayPal member since its early days. I seem to remember that when tiered accounts were introduced I was upgraded to a Premier account for free - this was probably a few years ago. I do not receive payments very often and so I never realized that I was being charged a special fee. Today I received $400 and I was charged $11.90. This large fee prompted me to look into it and realize I was a Premier member. I do not appreciate being “upgraded” for free and then being charged additional fees. I have downgraded my account but I was told the $11.90 could not be refunded. I would like to appeal this decision based on the fact that I was not told about these fees when I upgraded. Payments I have received between then and now had a very small fee deducted and I thought it was standard - had I known that ONLY Premier members were charged fees, I would have downgraded long ago. I would appreciate a refund of my $11.90. Thank you.

I am really annoyed by this. It was a long time ago, back when they introduced tiered accounts, that they offered to upgrade me for free. I’m not even sure they charged separate fees for Premier accounts when the tiers first started. I’m not going to ask for retroactive refunds, but it would be nice to get my $11.90 back since I just now realized it. I’m not holding my breath, though. Fuckers.
Added: Well, that was quick - five minutes or less. Here’s what they said:

Hello my name is Rob, I will be happy to assist you with your question regarding our current fee structure.

While we will always continue to have PayPal as a free service for these consumers, there are also real costs associated with providing our service — particularly costs associated with processing credit card payments. Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express charge us for every transaction we process, and we need to pass this fee on to sellers to cover our cost.

After researching your account, it shows that your account has already been downgraded as per your request.

Thank you for being part of the PayPal community. Take care for now.

Community satisfaction and your experience with PayPal are very important to me. You may receive a survey from our third party vendor, Benchmark Portal, about the service you received.

I would appreciate any feedback that you can provide.

Sincerely,
Rob
PayPal Business Support
PayPal, an eBay Company

Sigh.