Cheques (checks) bite the dust

As of 1st January, LL will no longer send cheques to people for any amount. The only option for cashing out under US$10,000 will be PayPal. For US$10,000 and above, they do wire transfers, but having just spoken with the billing dept. wire transfers are on the way out too.

Not that I ever see this being an issue for me personally, but that really bites for those who can't get a PayPal account

Not to mention the service fees... :/

I hadn't though of people who can't get a PayPal account - that's really bad.

The only info I have on wire transfers being phased out is the memory of someone in the billing dept., but that dept. doesn't deal with payouts - they just take money in - so it may not be accurate, and it may also have changed with cheques being dumped.

What service fees are associated with PayPal? I know about the US$1 fee that LL charges, but what does PayPal charge to put the money into my bank account?

I can understand the wire transfers - those are costly.

Paypal charges a 1.5% fee I believe, for monies received by business accounts...goes to look.....

Why wouldn't people be able to get a paypal account? Surely even those people with the worst credit rating can open up a standard current account and get a debit card. Thats all you need.

https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_display-fees-outside

You can have a personal account, but after 5 incoming transactions per month, you have to upgrade to a business account.

These are the US rates. Other countries linked below the table.

Not all countries are allowed by PayPal, unless they've dramatically changed since the last time this topic filtered through my brain.

Ahhh see im just thinking about merry old England. I forget there are a few other places in the world too.

I heard about this a few weeks ago, but could not confim it. Do you have a link to that info?

Apologies for the digression, but I love the way those two replies (unrelated, I hope) look next to each other...

Thank you Honey. 1.5% is a *lot* compared to LL's US$15 per cheque.

I've looked at the URL you posted, which seems to show that withdrawals to U.S. banks are free. I followed the link to "Fees for other withdrawal options" and selected United Kingdon from the drop down menu. Withdrawals appear to be free there too, both for Personal and Premier/Business accounts if over £50 is withdrawn.

Am I looking at the right stuff?

No link. It's a letter I received with a cheque from LL that arrived today. I can show it to you on webcam, but I don't have a scanner hooked up

lol. Wonderful observation

Paypal start hassling you when you hit certain levels of transaction which is annoying. After £3000 had gone though my account I had to answer loads of questions regarding the nature of my earnings. At £10000 they investigate you again to make sure your earnings arnt fradulant and that you are declaring them to the tax man etc. After that they have never hasled me again.

Imperialist.

I think the same rules apply in England as they do in the rest of the world.

We do still own most of the world don't we?

We had the same as we use Paypal for our RL business and had to supply passports, bank statements etc. as you say the only time paypal contact us now after all of that is if a large payment goes out etc.

Paypal has always been good for us and its not that expensive imo

That looks correct to me, Phil. With the addition of this line:

I had to go Premier years ago when I was doing ebay, but I never hit their "tax questions" levels, apparently

I've just been looking again and I think I may have been mistaken. I only looked at the "Withdraw funds" row, which may apply just fine, but the two "Receive payment ...." rows below it puzzle me. As far as I can tell, they'll charge me a fee to receive money from LL into my PayPal account and only one of them is free - and only for a Personal account. Any idea which row applies to receiving from LL?

I know that *every* payment I received through ebay (private purchasers though) was charged a small fee. But those fees added up.

When I did a withdrawal, PP did not charge me a fee to get the money...I think, but it took a few days to get it.

That's what I'm understanding from the page you posted. If receiving money doesn't fit the Personal:"Receive payments funded by PayPal Balance, PayPal Instant Transfer or PayPal eCheck" criteria, then the fee would be very large compared to the US$15 LL has been charging for cheques. It looks like it would be 2.5% for a US$5000 cashout, which is US$125. Quite a difference.

It was Trading Standards that actually investigated me. Paypal alerted them to my 'suspicious' account activity. Still unsure why they deemed it as being suspect, i did nothing wrong at all.

Try filling out a Trading Standards questionnaire explaining that you build virtual houses which are sold in a virtual world for a currency that doesn’t really exist. On a multiple choice questionnaire I just kept having to tick 'other' and provide endless explanations.

I think a much bigger problem is that PayPal is a private company which can decide to decline your service. This has _always_ been a warning about PayPal - that if an allegation is filed against you (and that can include "someone else paid you using a stolen credit card", they can lock your account, and then it's down to their internal arbitration system. You can get any money you had in the account out (although only after 6 months!) but they can just decide not to give you an account, and no court in the world can challenge that, because they are a private company and can choose not to serve you. And since they _do_ authenticate the real person, alts or spare e-mail addresses won't help.

That's the reason why I've never used PayPal - they are not a bank and are not accountable as a bank is.


I've emailed Zee about all this (his signature is on the letter) and I hope to have some answers before too long.