Thursday, December 4, 2014

The PayPal rip-off

As regular readers will know, this blog used to be updated from an Apple Macbook but is now updated from a Nexus 7 tablet on the grounds the Nexus 7 does everything that's needed for 90% of online usage. As more astute readers may well recall, the Nexus 7 has a $9.95 keyboard cover that I got on eBay. The cover is looking a little dilapidated due to having been used heavily since April when it was purchased.

Today there was a cover on eBay that I saw and wanted to buy. It was listed at $7.86 Canadian which works out at $6.92 US. PayPal, however, wanted to charge $7.20 for something the seller had at $6.92. One can only assume that PayPal was charging a premium to convert $US to $CD then charging the seller (in China) a further premium to convert to Yen.

There is an unholy alliance in this world of eBay and PayPal. eBay at one time and might still own PayPal. What they do is to feed clients from one to the other as a monopoly. eBay skims a bit from each transaction. PayPal skims a bit from each purchase and skims more when funds are transferred to a bank account. It's really a skimming operation for something that really should not be costing any money. No work is performed nor goods produced. What's happening is people are being charged through the nose for being allowed to push a few electrons around on somebody else's servers.

The following are photos of the listing and photos of the PayPal page. The unholy alliance of PayPal and eBay is exactly why I chose to drop this transaction and go to my local flea market on Saturday instead.

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