Comparison of an L$ sale - IGE vs GOM

I have periodically cashed out L$ over the past year or so using IGE for the most part. Nothing against GOM per se, I had just always had a great experience from the start selling with IGE and had no compelling reason to switch. Yesterday, I decided I would give GOM a try. I first cheked IGE, and they were paying $38.50 for 10k L$, or $3.85/1,000. The same block size on GOM was selling for $3.91. I decided I would go with the higher amount and deposited 70k L$ into my GOM account. I fulfilled a couple of buy orders at $3.91 each and the end result was $265.30 in my account after GOM's fees, or $4.20 less than the price I had been quoted by IGE for 70k ($269.50).

The money was transferred to my Paypal account, and this is when the true difference between GOM and IGE became apparent. Had I sold to IGE, the amount in my Paypal account would have been $269.50, as there is no Paypal fee for receiving money through IGE. The GOM transaction incurred a $10.65 fee. The end result of the transaction was $254.65.

The transaction that started out appearing as if it would actually pay out slightly higher than IGE's rate actually ended up $14.85 less than what IGE would pay for the same amount. That works out to a final rate of $3.63/1000 L$.

End result:
IGE $269.50
GOM $254.65

I know that the fees from GOM would have varied based upon transaction volume in a month - but unless you are regularly trading, the fee structure is the same as what I experienced. Additionally, I am not sure why IGE absorbs the Paypal fee - perhaps the volume of business they do with Paypal has allowed them to work out some kind of deal. Regardless, the end result is not an insignificant price difference if you are looking to maximize the amount you receive. It comes down to individual preference and that the two sites operate differently- I just wanted to share my experience to illustrate one of the differences that I was unaware of.

Thats odd Cris as I have never incurred a fee from GOM to Paypal. The only fee I have is the transaction fee from GOM which varies. Do you have a Personal, Premiere or Business acct with Paypal? I think that is where the problem is.

Hmm, I have a Premier account. Why would there be a fee for GOM and not IGE though?

are you sure you dont mean GOM's transaction fee? Ie, their commission on your sale?

But yes, in any case, I found IGE's bottom line to be far better than GOM's once all is said and done. (I got a much better rate than you tho... IGE were actually offering above GOMS daily rate anyway at the time, so the difference was even more significant).

I don't know. Maybe Ricky can answer that. This is the reason why I didn't upgrade my paypal acct though.

So I guess it would vary on using IGE or GOM depending on the type of Paypal acct you have as far as which is the better price. I have never used IGE so I have nothing to compare to.

I think once you are a premiere acct holder for Paypal that you can't drop back to a Personal also. Or is what I seem to recall my friend saying.

No I am referring to this:



Looking at Paypal's fee structure, it does seem related to the account type - but it doesn't explain why IGE's transactions incur no fee, but GOM's do in this case.

Could be a volume deal.

When was the last time you sold on IGE? When did you upgrade to Premier? Check your history and verify that you haven't been hit when using IGE.

Yeah, can you double check? I can't find anything saying world sellers can send funds for free to premier accounts.

This is a quote from GOM's site under the information/fees

The way I understood it, the fees are placed by Paypal to receive money (for Premier and Business accounts), from where ever it may come. The source of the funds shouldn't make a difference. Definately very strange.

Blaze,

I have had a premier account for more than a year - before even dealing with IGE I believe, I definitely know it has been quite awhile. My last IGE transaction was about 2 weeks ago. I reviewed all of my IGE transactions and noticed something really interesting that I had not noticed before. All of the IGE transactions since March of 2005 have no fee. Prior to that they did, but those fees were less than the GOM transaction fee charged for the same amount of money (perhaps Paypal's rates have gone up since then).

Hi,

I also have a premire PayPal account, and thus get hit with a transfer fee when a payment from GOM (or just about anybody else) comes in, but not IGE. Very strange indeed.



-Shaun

Under the Paypal fee schedule it says that there is this fee for a premiere acct. Its free to the Personal Acct holder.

What is confusing is that you don't incur this charge from IGE. Something GOM needs to look into? Or how/why is this happening.

I'm not sure where IGE is based but GOM is based in Canada and so it's PayPal transactions are subject to higher PayPal International rates (almost 1% higher than Domestic rates, if I remember correctly off the top of my head). This may be where you are seeing the difference.

Possibility this may be related to utilizing the developer network which lets you auto post transactions.

I've posted some messages on an ecommerce forum where a paypal support guy hangs out, will let you know.

But that doesnt explain why the Personal Paypal accts dont pay this fee. Its only charged to the Premiere Acct holders of Paypal. Whats confusing is the Premiere Act holders don't incur this fee from IGE just GOM.

Actually, Rathe, that's only on purchase and it works out to be about 10 cents per transaction difference. Not really significant.

That's down to Paypal, they just don't charge personnal accounts for receiving money. As for not getting charged for receiving from IGE with premier and business accounts, I haven't a clue.

Not true. See that 1.9 - 2.9% above someone posted. It's 2.9% for international transfers. I know because I got hit with a big fee once from GOM as well using my Premiere Business PayPal account.

Thanks Blaze. I'm definitely keen to hear their reply.

And thanks for bringing this up, Cristiano. I knew that Premier account holders would take a hit when receiving a payout, but didn't realize there might be a way around that. I'm going to get in touch with our PayPal liaison to see if something can be worked out. Given the non-negligible amounts we deal with, it would be nice if they would throw us a bone.

IGE's Paypal payments are listed as IGE USA LLC. I believe they have offices in New York and Miami.

should of withdrawn your money via Money order, they only cost 8$US

Rathe, I think those are just the fees for received funds and the difference between a Personal and Premiere Act. The Currency Transaction fees are below.

You're welcome - I hope you can work something out with Paypal - it will help to even the field a little more for you.