PayPal Frustrations

Please, please, PLEASE can we possibly get rid of PayPal being the only form of payment for sims? I tried once again to buy licences for a couple of simulations, but, despite having more than one Sterling card I was not allowed to pay in Sterling due to living in Ireland. The only way to do so was to give a third party my personal details and set up an account with them. Upon setting up the account, I was charged an extra $1 (plus conversions costs) on top of the cost of the simulations for the ‘privilege’ of ‘allowing’ them to access my personal details.

Bottom line – I am not impressed!

Mark.

Please, please, PLEASE can we possibly get rid of PayPal being the only form of payment for sims? I tried once again to buy licences for a couple of simulations, but, despite having more than one Sterling card I was not allowed to pay in Sterling due to living in Ireland. The only way to do so was to give a third party my personal details and set up an account with them. Upon setting up the account, I was charged an extra $1 (plus conversions costs) on top of the cost of the simulations for the ‘privilege’ of ‘allowing’ them to access my personal details.

Bottom line – I am not impressed!

Mark.

Gwasanaethau in post 107006 said:

Please, please, PLEASE can we possibly get rid of PayPal being the only form of payment for sims? I tried once again to buy licences for a couple of simulations, but, despite having more than one Sterling card I was not allowed to pay in Sterling due to living in Ireland. The only way to do so was to give a third party my personal details and set up an account with them. Upon setting up the account, I was charged an extra $1 (plus conversions costs) on top of the cost of the simulations for the ‘privilege’ of ‘allowing’ them to access my personal details.

Bottom line – I am not impressed!

Mark.

Work out the conversion from euros to £ (Google helps....) and do it that way.

Simples!

Ar88 in post 107010 said:

Gwasanaethau in post 107006 said:

Please, please, PLEASE can we possibly get rid of PayPal being the only form of payment for sims? I tried once again to buy licences for a couple of simulations, but, despite having more than one Sterling card I was not allowed to pay in Sterling due to living in Ireland. The only way to do so was to give a third party my personal details and set up an account with them. Upon setting up the account, I was charged an extra $1 (plus conversions costs) on top of the cost of the simulations for the ‘privilege’ of ‘allowing’ them to access my personal details.

Bottom line – I am not impressed!

Mark.

Work out the conversion from euros to £ (Google helps....) and do it that way.

Simples!

You're showing a complete lack of understanding of how exchange rates work in the real world.

Gwasanaethau in post 107006 said:

Please, please, PLEASE can we possibly get rid of PayPal being the only form of payment for sims? I tried once again to buy licences for a couple of simulations, but, despite having more than one Sterling card I was not allowed to pay in Sterling due to living in Ireland. The only way to do so was to give a third party my personal details and set up an account with them. Upon setting up the account, I was charged an extra $1 (plus conversions costs) on top of the cost of the simulations for the ‘privilege’ of ‘allowing’ them to access my personal details.

Bottom line – I am not impressed!

Mark.

Could you sidestep that if you went through a UK proxy server?

Gwasanaethau in post 107006 said:

…

Work out the conversion from euros to £ (Google helps....) and do it that way.

Simples!

Just to be sure, turning off the currency conversion via https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_profile-merchant-pull-funding doesn't work?

Upon setting up the account, I was charged an extra $1 (plus conversions costs) on top of the cost of the simulations for the ‘privilege’ of ‘allowing’ them to access my personal details.

Gwasanaethau in post 107006 said:

Upon setting up the account, I was charged an extra $1 (plus conversions costs) on top of the cost of the simulations for the ‘privilege’ of ‘allowing’ them to access my personal details.

I suspect that that will only be a temporary hold on the $1 to confirm your card details are correct. It's basically getting a valid authorisation from your bank for a nominal amount of money just to check that the details are correct. For example, I've currently got a £1 authorisation from Amazon showing on my bank account following a recent purchase on their site - it's showing as a pending transaction on the bank's app, but I know for certain that it will not come out of my account because, well, for starters, I haven't recently or in-fact ever bought anything for £1 on Amazon. It is purely to verify the card details are correct. After a certain period (any and all pending transactions usually have a set time limit for the processing company to 'claim'/'process' before the time limit expires and...) the transaction becomes void. At that point on my bank account, the pending transaction will just vanish.

I'd be very surprised if you were charged any conversion costs, the $1 transaction should not go through fully to the point of actually charging you.

So is everything ok now?

FWIW I did enquire as to other merchant systems. Some don't have the integration that PayPal has (ie you buy a license and this website issues the license automatically) and all were more expensive for me up to a certain breakpoint which is way more than the current sales.

Jan in post 107015 said:

Just to be sure, turning off the currency conversion via https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_profile-merchant-pull-funding doesn't work?

You have to sign up for an account to do that… :(

Gwasanaethau in post 107017 said:

Jan in post 107015 said:

Just to be sure, turning off the currency conversion via https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_profile-merchant-pull-funding doesn't work?

You have to sign up for an account to do that… :(

"Gwasanaethau in post 107006 said:

Upon setting up the account, I was charged an extra $1 (plus conversions costs) on top of the cost of the simulations for the ‘privilege’ of ‘allowing’ them to access my personal details."

But you have set up an account, your very words!

Hi

I am in Ireland and have bought lots of Simsig licenses via Paypal, without issue.
My card is Irish and it happily works out the exchange rate automatically.
Not sure what the problem is here.

Chris

I think you might have missed the point of my post. That is indeed very convenient if the only card I had to use was a Euro card, but why should I have to pay PayPal’s somewhat arbitrary exchange rate when I already have Sterling to use?

Gwasanaethau in post 107114 said:

I think you might have missed the point of my post. That is indeed very convenient if the only card I had to use was a Euro card, but why should I have to pay PayPal’s somewhat arbitrary exchange rate when I already have Sterling to use?

Can you wangle it so that someone in the UK uses their credentials to pay and you then reimburse them (or would that screw the allocation of the licences to you)?

Paypal Ireland will use the offical currency of Ireland, therefore any money used for payment would initally need to be exchanged to that currency first if using anything other than Euro incurring a fee (most likely by card provider). Then you are paying in Sterling, which will then need to be exchanged from Euro again possibly incurring a fee.

Even tho Paypal is Global they still have to operate according to Local laws that maybe why you cannot use guest checkout in Ireland but you can in the UK

I actually wanted to avoid getting a PayPal account in the first place, but the only way to pay for sims using a guest login is if you live in the UK or you wish to pay for your sims in you local currency and have PayPal convert the currency for you.