First off, a big thank you to all the people who are helping us out during this BETA launch. In just a short few days, we already topped 11,000 USD in sales! We sincerely appreciate it, and we couldn’t have done it without you. Like any BETA release, there are bound to be some changes, and today, we’re implementing a significant change to the way transactions are conducted.
Starting today, sellers cover ALL fees associated with every transaction. We have noticed that the biggest bottleneck during transactions are the unnecessary negotiations on who covers what. This creates confusion, forces everyone to use math (eww), and prolongs the whole process due to the extra replies needed to get things done. So, I will repeat it again, starting today, sellers are responsible for ALL fees associated with a transaction. So, I please ask all vendors to adjust their prices accordingly. And how much should you increase your listing to cover these expenses? Let’s go over the current fees to answer that question.
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PayPal transactions, if approved by staff, are subject to an extra 10%. Why so much? Because as a middleman, we receive the payment first (1x fee), which we later send to the seller (1x fee). PayPal rates vary from country to country, and they go as low as 3.9% to 4.7%. To make things easier, we’re rounding the amount off to 5%, and two times 5% is 10%.
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Wire transactions have flat fees depending on the amount sent and the location of the receiver/sender. Transactions under 1000 USD usually cost 25-35 USD to send one way. Transactions over 1000 USD can reach 50-60 USD per wire. The good news is, the 50-60 USD is the cap (at least for our bank). Even if we wire 50,000 USD, the fee would still be 50-60 USD.
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Other payment methods will be discussed within each individual transaction, but nonetheless, they will still need to be covered by the seller.
In short, if the payment method is PayPal, and you want (for example) 100 USD for your property, you will need to list it at 120 USD. This is because our service fee is 10%, and two PayPal fees equal to 10%.
Perhaps some of you may not be happy about this, but the biggest complaints we have received are about the cumbersome checkout process. This will eliminate 50% of the messages within each ticket, and won’t create any confusion for the buyers (or even sellers).
Our Terms of Service will get updated shortly, and this is the only change we are making to the payment system (so far). We still reserve the right to refuse any payment method we deem risky, from any users, based solely on our discretion. We are also keeping our limits for each individual payment merchant.
Thank you.