What just happened to accepting Paypal?? looks like they are trying to drive us away
i may have over reacted... for some reason PayPal wants to drive me into a business account. Looks like the fees are the same so not sure what that is all about, I'm just suspicious by nature
If you switch to a business account which is pretty easy you get a merchant ID, enter it here, and move on. If you don't want to do that then they make it very complicated to fill out forms, etc. I gave up and switched to business, made up a bogus business name and am moving on...
Although I hate to say it, it does look like the new Ebay managed payments system will work out better for the hobbyists. They also have to report to the IRS sales of 20k or 200 items BUT they do not know or care about any monies received via PayPal friends and family so at least it should be an accurate fair reporting from eBay.
Lula. The figures are 200 sales or $20,000. Which is a stupidly low figure as some of our hobby items can cost that or more on its own. And this is from a personal account. I have had " dealings" with the IRS and PayPal over this for the last 3 year’s. PayPal at present does not differentiate between actual monies received from sales and gifts from friends and family sources. This results in them sending the IRS incorrect and untruthful statements which then costs time and money to resolve.
David, PP only reports our sales to the IRS if you have 100 sales and a significant total of around $50,000. in a year, I believe. It might even be 200 sales....but you have to reach both categories to be reported. Having a business account seems to mean it's income from a "business" no matter how limited.
I think its like the sales tax thing, one day it shows up and we have to pay sales tax on everything.....I think this is a path for the IRS to track your transactions for the purpose of taxing us as "Business" people earning income.......First its yard sale money and now its business income..........What else could you call it ?? I think it started when the "big" stores came in like the Music Room, and other big dealers in used audio and made it big business ........... Will
When one switches to a business account, it opens up the possibility of IRS looking at our sales as income....and thus legally reportable when filing taxes, and obviously subject to federal tax, as well as state taxes.
I use my personal paypal account to send money to family. It's my understanding that that is not available with a business account. Does this mean I will now need 2 paypal accounts in order to buy/sell on Audiogon?
We have monitored the frustration and confusion around the recent PayPal changes and wanted to address them directly.
To start, with no warning, PayPal removed the marketplace solution that Audiogon has used for many years, which allowed individuals/hobbyists to sell products using a Personal Account. This is no longer supported. All marketplace PayPal transactions now require both an email address and a merchant ID.
To see your Merchant ID in your PayPal account settings you have to either be a Business Account or a legacy “Premier” Account (which is like a hybrid personal-business account they no longer support).
Obviously, this is not ideal for our users, nor for us. We are requiring our users to adopt this solution, because it is what PayPal has forced us to adopt.
We are actively working on a more elegant solution, but needed to implement changes quickly to alleviate the hundreds of transactions it would impact.
To clarify a few claims and questions we have seen:
1) Yes. You can use a Personal Account to “sell” an item. A regular PayPal support agent may have even told you this. However, it has been communicated to us that for transactions on our site—now that they have removed their marketplace solution—PayPal disallows it. Here is a direct quote from their Merchant Support Team:
“Now, this is the fun part for your personal account clients but I’ve tried to simplify it as the point of personal accounts is not to sell but there is still that sort of secret ability. (PayPal would rather the clients just set up a business account but the ability is still there)…”
Doesn’t make much sense to us, either.
2) There are no differences in the fee structure between a personal and a business account. In addition to the other benefits a Business Account provides, it can hide your email address and name from appearing on the transaction, a privacy matter some users may find appealing.
3) We do not make any money off PayPal transactions, nor from you upgrading to a Business Account. There is no revenue split, or kickbacks. PayPal Transactions happen through PayPal and all the fees are collected by them.
We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused many of you. In the meantime, we appreciate your patience and will do whatever we can to support any issues or address any grievances you may have.
Well ebay and paypal got divorced a few years back and I am sure ebay figured out they could make huge money off payments as well as sales fees. They have undercut paypal rates by a whopping 0.1%, lordy I am going to save so much with ebay……...
Obviously somebody has to pay for a service but the switch to business account is not the right way to handle this. A quick google search shows Audiogon is not the only site that paypal have targeted to switch over.
However this was handled badly by both paypal and audiogon imho.
I'm with Mitch too, we can debate all day whether or not the fees charged here are worth it, but the idea that this should be a free service is way off base
Ok, I don't sell there (yet) but I did recently purchase stuff there using PayPal. eBay must have figured out they can make money off the transactions.
Mitch I am fairly sure it is all driven by PayPal right now although Audiogon could have done a much better job of letting its members know the deal imho
I don't get why anyone would want to fork over another unnecessary fee for what should be a free service.
Why should advertising be a “free service”? There are certainly costs associated with maintaining this site and I believe this is a business and not a charity or tax-funded government entity. Did you ever place a for-sale ad in a newspaper - we paid for those too. In terms of advertising power, it is probably the most-viewed audio site for sales of used stuff.....I just hope they don’t screw it up.
Between how much the selling fees have risen here in the last couple of years, and now this, I just won't sell here anymore. If Paypal insists on this for other sites, I will close out my account and be done with them too. Money orders work just fine.
Yeah, I am stuck in a current transaction that I am unable to complete the checkout process on. I have entered my merchant ID, unclear how this will resolve because apparently both parties need to have it if I’m understanding correctly? No "heads-up", no email outlining new policies, no prompt whatsoever from Audiogon or PayPal other than what I’m finding here from a Google search. This will be my last Audiogon purchase.
I have bought and sold tens of thousands of dollars in audio stuff... without so much as a hiccup in doing so...with no fees mind you... A+ in my book!
Mitch As far as I am aware there was just a tiny header popped up when I logged into the Gon about 5 days ago and that was it. No large blurb or even an email would have been nice. I guess if you missed it well then you missed it as far as the Gon is concerned. And I refuse to sign up as business just to satisfy PayPal because I AM NOT a business and never will be.
Are you guys serious? Am I reading this correctly? It will be necessary for both myself as a seller and for my buyers to adopt PayPal Business accounts so that we can complete simple transactions for items being sold on this site? I have been buying and selling here for almost 20 years and have a hard time believing this. Was there no general announcement from Audiogon explaining what they were doing and why? Did I miss something? Geoff, are you not already a business?
tried to list an item accepting PayPal and was required to get Merchant ID... tried to do it without "upgrading" to business account but the process is so convoluted I gave up and upgraded... listed item and sold it a few days later via PayPal and the money is in my PayPal account
so I would say so far so good but I, like some of you, am very skeptical about what the next step will be as I can't believe they are doing this without some other motive, which seems to me will involve extracting more money from me
Peter You are correct. Just another reason to avoid PayPal altogether. At this rate I will go back to waiting and sending a USPS money order in the mail!
On PayPal transactions there is a fee, typically 3% for domestic transactions. If the customer wants to return the item bought paypal credited the fee they charged you back to the customer as well end result being that the customer would get a full refund.
As of the middle of next month this goes away so a full refund is not happening. Later on they will probably tag on a fee to refund the money as well.
Thanks for that info. Like you this might be my last sale here given the fees are very high and now this. It's a shame, I've been on here since 2001 and Audiogon has been slowly declining for the individual seller.
I sold something unaware of the PayPal/Merchant ID issue and my buyer could not pay. I followed the instructions sent by Audiogon to get the Merchant ID without upgrading to a Business account. I pasted and saved the ID in my Account Profile. The buyer still cannot complete the transaction and I've asked Audiogon for further assistance. What a pain...
I did not have too much of an issue with using the Merchant ID thing but I have just sold an item here in the last 20 minutes so NOW will be the real test. Will I get paid via Paypal or not. We will see...…..
I spent two hours just trying to list my components today. I got frustrated also because they wanted me to be a business owner and then sign up with stripe> I was nervous about stripe. I don't get it. I wanted to pay with a credit card my fee and they would not let me. Really frustrated. I am waiting to hear from Audiogon.
Same issue. Moving on to another site. Too much trouble (the "find your merchant ID" thing didn’t work) and they are probably just setting up an increase in fees for "businesses" in the future. Honestly Audiogon is hosting way too many dealer ads now and they repost all the time so if you are a daily viewer, you keep seeing the same equipment all the time on the newly posted sort.
Same issue here, this is what I’ve got from Audiogon’s customer service: "There is no question that this is being required by PayPal but most of the time their customer support is not aware of these things. It is going to be implemented on many sites that use PayPal. It surprises us how often they give out inaccurate information via PayPal support."
And do not forget that eBay are also trying to force customers away from PayPal too with their "managed payments" system which they say ALL sellers will be enrolled in by 2020 thereby leaving PayPal out in the cold for millions of transactions.
a conspiracy theorist might assume that Audiogon was trying to force us over to Stripe, whatever that is. But I passed along these concerns to Audiogon and was promised they would try to get answer on Monday
So in order to complete the transaction I ended up having to send payment directly to the sellers email account associated with his PayPal account. Others may have to do the same if they want to make a purchase here.
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