Once again I have a premier account with PayPal. Those fuckers will screw you over any way they can. In order to accept credit card payments, you have two choices: upgrade to Premier and be charged 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction, OR maintain your Personal account, pay a higher fee to receive the money, but don’t get charged fees on non-credit card transactions. You can only accept five such payments in a year; after that, you are prompted to upgrade.

Unless, that is, you are selling things on eBay. Then, no matter what, you have to have a Premier account. Now, I’ve been a PayPal member since 2000. When their tiered program debuted a couple of years later, I was automatically upgraded. I thought this was a nice thing to do, and I never lost anything major due to the fees. Then someone paid me something like $400 and I lost $12. I discovered that you can downgrade from Premier to Personal, but you can only do it once. So I did!

But now I’m trying to sell some stuff on eBay, and I was forced to upgrade just now in order to accept the payments. In the past I’ve been able to talk to people and get them to pay with a linked checking account, but I am selling several things at once right now, and I might try to sell more stuff. One time I tried posting an auction that said “please pay with linked checking account” and they closed the auction. So yeah, basically PayPal just hates you and me.

I used PayPal for a couple of years with no problems. Now I have had more problems in the past six months than ever before. For my own documentation purposes, here’s what I just sent via their Contact Us form.
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My first payments from PayPerPost came through today, via PayPal. I got $5 for making a referral, and I got payments of $6 and $10 for a couple of my early posts. As of this post, my total earned to date is $266.91, with $21 already paid and $245.91 pending.

The company seems to be doing rather well. It’s not obvious who writes the official blogs - several posts are listed as by “Anonymous” or “PayPerPost” - but they have entries like their holiday party, charity events, etc. as well as notification of things like server downtime and new projects they’re working on.

I could probably be making a lot more money than I already am, if I wanted to write about things like UK-based credit card companies, humidifiers, etc. - but I don’t! Instead I am just collecting a few dollars here and there, and getting them all via PayPal. I think it’s silly to pay individually - weekly payments might be better - but as long as I can wait to move them into my bank account whenever I please, I’m okay with it.

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:
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