Payments

[Celeste Stewart]

Paypal has several account types: personal, premier, and business. The personal account does not charge fees IF the amount is withing the account limit which is $500 US ($650 Canandian/$500 Euro/$250 GBP) for goods and eBay items. PayPal says the personal account is not intended for business usage. Thus, for those who exceed the limit, PayPal makes them upgrade to the premier or business account - and then the fees kick in.

This wouldn't be so bad on a $100 or $200 transaction ($3 to $6) but it's extremely painful on larger ones. Last month, my PayPal fee was $175. Ouch! That's where the frustration comes in. While Paypal is fine for the bulk of us, it's not so great for a few of us. CC is aware of the issue so I'm sure it will work out in the long run.

[lissie]

Thank you Celeste- I have got to say that the details are very well hidden on the paypal site. I am only getting the info for NZ account holders but I suspect this might be general: the only reason to have anything but a personal account is if you want to accept more than 5 credit/debit card payments a year. Obviously this would be the case if you are selling on eBay! But in the terms of what we are talking about maybe some of you need to invest in a new gmail account and a new personal paypal account linked to it - save you a fortune!

[jrichards]

Just wanted to link to our recent blog post about our new payments scheme.
http://www.constant-content.com/blog/?p=104

I've re-posted it here for those of you who generally read the forums but not the blog.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
We’ve been listening to your woes with Paypal and we’re changing the payment policy so that we can help you to keep some of your money!

Constant-content.com will start offering to do wire transfers for any writers who are owed $500 or more each time we do payments.

There has been some discussion about how much money people end up paying to Paypal to receive Constant Content payments and I wanted to try and clear the air a little. A personal Paypal accounts is allowed to receives up to $500 USD per month without any fees being applied to the incoming money. However, if you receive more than $500 in a month you will be asked/forced to move up to a business or premier account.

Once you have a business or premier account Paypal takes 3-5% + $0.30 USD per transaction on any incoming money.

With Paypal sending money is always free. Unfortunately, wiring money around the world is not free. As a consequence, for wire transfers we have to charge $15 to each author receiving a wire transfer payment (Hey at least, its cheaper than Paypal). Paypal’s business and premier account rates it already costs $15 to receive $500 so the wire transfers should put more money into the writer pockets.

If you are above the $500 mark at the end of the month we will be in touch to get your banking details so we can do the wire.

If you prefer to have your money sent via Paypal we are still happy to send money to your Paypal account.

Hopefully, this will be a good change that keeps your money where it belongs… in your pocket.

[Celeste Stewart]

Awesome! I was the guinea pig last month and the wire transfer was flawless. The money landed right in my bank account where it belongs. Thanks for listening and taking action.

[jak]

Thanks for all this info. I realised I had a Premier account and have just managed to get it downgraded so no more fees.

[Elizabeth Ann West]

Thank you thank you thank you. :)

[Amy W]

Jak, how did you manage to downgrade your account? I've been looking around Paypal's site, and I haven't found any info about downgrading.

Thanks,
Amy

[jak]

Amy - I called the Help Centre and they did the downgrade instantly. I'm in the UK and the number was on the UK web site.

[Amy W]

So I'm hoping the Canadian website has a help centre number, too. Thanks, Jak!

Amy