[member=53640]caseman[/member]
It's a paypal feature and there's nothing illegal about it. paypal collects the fee EITHER way, with a few exceptions that are set by Paypal. Example 1: if you're the seller and accept 'regular' paypal transaction you pay the fee out of your receivables. Example 2: if you're the seller and insist on 'friends and family' payment, then the buyer pays the fee to paypal for the convenience of using paypal, or because they want the product and not burden the buyer with the expense. How one goes about is has more to do with how motivated a seller is, etc. This is just a simplified explanation, because there are a whole lot of variations on the fees, the type of paypal accounts, business or personal, etc,etc. When they introduced paypal mobile, i believe they waived some fees for a while to promote it. To look at what's available currently it's very easy to look it all up on the paypal fee page. Also this F&F practice is not only being conducted here--it's fairly common on other forum classifieds and becoming more so as more people find out about this relatively new feature. Once you understand how it works it's actually easier to specify F&F than go into all the fine print and percentage specifying in your ads like: "asking 350 unless you're paying PP then add 3%, unless you're my brother-in-law, in which case add 12% and a case of beer...
[member=5277]Alex[/member]
Paypal makes a lot of sense for a lot of reasons and that's why it's becoming such a standard globally. For example, if some joe schmoe wants to hang out in his underwear in his mom's basement and conduct a global business selling widgets or services or whatever, he can do that and pay per transaction rather than the old way of setting up all kinds of banking and credit card acceptance memberships. You can also get your money quicker rather than waiting on a check to come to you in the mail. It also acts as a go between so that you have some protection from unscrupulous buyers or sellers. Paypal still needs to work on some areas, and there are now all kinds of competing systems for these type of services. You still have to read the fine print to see what's the most beneficial for what you want to do, because for others, who have all kinds of time on their hands, a service such a paypal is not needed or wanted. In some ways it's what discount brokerages are doing for someone that wants to buy ten shares of a stock at 2 in the morning--you just pay a fairly small fee for the transaction rather than buy a seat on some board exchange or pay a broker.
