Pay Pal Exchange Skimming

[sightfx]

I just sent some money over to my wife's (Canadian) Pay Pal Account to buy some >5mW lasers from DX.

The purchase was a little over so they pulled the rest out of her bank account.

Exchange rate was 1 Canadian Dollar = 0.970822 U.S. Dollars

According to better sources the exchange is almost even but that's not the scam this thread is about.

I then sent her the difference and exchanged it using there currency exchange. That transaction showed 1 U.S. Dollar = 0.978325
Canadian Dollars.

All transactions were made in the same hour let alone the same day.

Hmmm which is it:
1 Canadian Dollar = 0.970822 U.S. Dollars
1 U.S. Dollar = 0.978325 Canadian Dollars

Only one word for this...Scam.


SightFX

 

[Scotty 757]

Wow. That is scam. Cheaters

 

[lange5766]

Hello SightFX,


First excuse my bad english.
In Germany Paypal say :
"Transactions in different currencies, exchange rate includes a charge of 2.5% transaction fee for foreign payments."

regards :lange5766

 

[sightfx]

An up front fee is one thing. This is just an inexcusable scamming. Flip flopping the exchange rate so it's in there favor coming and going.

 

[photonaholic]

Whoever said paypal played fair??

The douchers make money and cost us money every time you use them.

Just this week they tried to grab $5 from my savings account for a $8 transaction while I have a 98.50 balance in my paypal???

I say "tried" because at that moment I did not have any money in my savings account, now the bank charged me $30 for a "non payment" fee.

I sell a lot of stuff on ebay, so I'm stuck with paypal, like them or not.

 

[lasersbee]

You need to look at PayPal like a Credit Card transaction...
If you are a Seller with a CC Machine the Credit Card
company charges you 3-5% on that sale for accepting
the CC..

But yeah... It sucks... because it is above and beyond
the eBay/PayPal Insertion Fees and Final Value Fees...
They are BTW the same entity....

Jerry

 

[sightfx]

You need to look at PayPal like a Credit Card transaction...
If you are a Seller with a CC Machine the Credit Card
company charges you 3-5% on that sale for accepting
the CC..

But yeah... It sucks... because it is above and beyond
the eBay/PayPal Insertion Fees and Final Value Fees...
They are BTW the same entity....

Jerry

Hey Jerry,

This is not the same as a Fee.

I really have no problem with transaction fees. They perform a service and have operating costs. Good for them for being #1 and making a profit for it. Merchants can look at those fees and use those services or not.

I do have a problem with deceptive practices like having two conflicting exchange rates where they skim off some pennies per dollar when the money is either coming or going.:tsk: I'm pretty sure it's not even legal. An exchange rate is based on the value of two currencies and is an objective value each day.

The issue to me isn't the money. Both transactions were for a buck. I made the transactions to prove they were being unethical or at least have a mistake in there system. When I called them on it I was put on hold for 30min and then hung up...Why don't they want to give me an explanation? :thinking:

 

[bootleg2go]

Hey Jerry,

This is not the same as a Fee.

I really have no problem with transaction fees. They perform a service and have operating costs. Good for them for being #1 and making a profit for it. Merchants can look at those fees and use those services or not.

I do have a problem with deceptive practices like having two conflicting exchange rates where they skim off some pennies per dollar when the money is either coming or going.:tsk: I'm pretty sure it's not even legal. An exchange rate is based on the value of two currencies and is an objective value each day.

The issue to me isn't the money. Both transactions were for a buck. I made the transactions to prove they were being unethical or at least have a mistake in there system. When I called them on it I was put on hold for 30min and then hung up...Why don't they want to give me an explanation? :thinking:

Hi Sightfx,
I'll give you the explanation.
It isn't just paypal that does this, it happens whenever you exchange currencies and you are NOT a bank.
The reason you're noticing it is becuase the current USA CND exchange rate is very close to 1:1.
Say for instance they are exactly 1.00 USD to 1.00 CND dollar as listed on the international exchange rate for that day. If you were to take a US $10 bill to a Canadian bank and get it coverted to Canadian currency, you would not get $10 Canadian, you would get a little less than $10. It might just be a percentage point or two or maybe even a flat rate amount added in addition to a percentage. So for instance you might get $9.50 to $9.80 back in Canadian money. If you then took this back to the USA and wanted to convert the $9.50 in Canadian cash back to USA dollars, you would not get $9.50 back, but maybe something like $9.20. You can see that if you did this a bunch of times, you would eventually lose all your money.
It's just a fee that all banks charge the public to convert currency from other countries.
You won't really notice this if the exchange rates are not equal (at least if you don't have a calculator handy)
Part of this is for them to make money on the deal and the other part is to ensure they don't lose money on the deal as when you exchange your money at the bank, they don't exchange it bank to the originating countries bank at that instant, they do all the days transactions at the end of the business day and since the exchange rate changes all through the day, they adjust the price they are will to pay you for your dollars as it's kind of a bet as to if the price will go up or down by the end of the day and you can bet the banks are not about to lose money on any transaction they can if they can help it.

 

[lasersbee]

Our PayPal account is in US Dollars but when we transfer funds
from it we want Canadian Dollars transferred into our Canadian bank
account....
As bootleg2go stated there is an Exchange Rate fee when changing
currencies...
If we transferred US Dollars to our Canadian bank account... our bank
would charge us the exchange rate if I wanted t6o withdraw Canadian
Dollars...

Jerry

 

[Tech_Junkie]

If you are a Seller with a CC Machine the Credit Card company charges you 3-5% on that sale for accepting the CC..

7% were I live.

Now that's a scam.

 

[HIMNL9]

I'm wondering about a thing ..... about the legality of that "funny flying rate exchange swaps" .....

I really don't know about where the legal site of paypal offices are settled, and about the laws there, anyway, so i can be in error, but ..... here, the exchange rate for different values are set-up from national bank ..... sorta of "official value" ..... and, here, is illegal to give different rates for different exchange transaction (i mean, you can add a fee for the service, but you can't say that the exchange rate is different from the "official" one) ..... wondering if, where the paypal legal site is settled, there's some similar laws, and in this case, if this "fancy exchange rates" can be reported to LEAs ..... :eg:

If yes, i think paypal deserve it .....

 

[Tech_Junkie]

Maybe, its worth a look.

In Holland the exchange differs from where you exchange the money. By searching around we almost doubled our money by not using the main exchange businesses. Might be the same for the US, and Canada. Worth a look though. If its not the same then you might have a huge class action lawsuit.

 

[JLSE]

IIRC, paypal goes by the favorable rates (for them) in the past 48hrs. When I noticed I was losing on exchange, at a time that I shouldnt have been, they claimed that A- they are not a bank, B- there is a fee, and C- they dont have to give 'todays' rate.

Needless to say, I no longer exchange through them.. You local bank will probably give you better rates.

 

[lasersbee]

At one point I had asked eBay/PayPal where they get their daily rates
from and was told here...

XE - Universal Currency Converter

They remove ~3% on what they give... So if the exchange rate
was $1.00 US = $1.00 CND they would give me $0.97 Cnd...

Jerry

 

[Don't Laze Me Bro]

Ehh I hate paypal just the same... They suck, but a lot of times its the only way../

 

[Byrnz93]

PayPal is the largest player in their market..not like anyone has much of a choice in the matter.