There have been occurances lately of sellers requesting gift payment or asking the buyer to pay the paypal fees after terms of a transaction have already been agreed upon. The following change has been added to the FAQ:

NA does not endorse the use of gift payments. All accepted NA purchase transactions are assumed to be via standard goods payment with the seller paying the fee. If other arrangements are made, users do so at their own risk and all terms must be disclosed and agreed upon prior to the transaction being accepted by both parties.

An example of a standard transaction:  FS: Little Samson $50 shipped

PM from user to seller:  "I will take your Little Samson for $50 shipped"

PM response from seller:  "Okay, transaction sent" 

Transaction accepted by user.

Under this scenario it is the sellers responsibility to accept a standard goods payment.  The seller is not to send a pm with their paypal address saying payment needs to be made via gift or the the buyer add 3%. 

If you have any questions about gift payments please see this thread:
http://www.nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=6&...

Thanks!

Hmm. Yeah, payment terms should be agreed upon up front, and a seller should not mandate payment terms after a transaction has been accepted.

I always request gift payments on here but I never force them on someone. However, if someone is really trying to haggle me down I may respond with something like "Well, okay but only if it's gifted". And once again, that is done way before any transactions are accepted.

So yes, buyers be careful out there when dealing with people you don't know or trust. And sellers need to make sure that all terms of the transaction (including payment details) are laid out before anything is accepted.

Edit: Little Sampson eh?

That's why it's only $50 shipped! 

I give my buyers the option. Gift it for X dollars, or add 3% for the paypal fees. My only problem is that they completely ignore that. 

For instance, I recently sold a few items to a user. I was clear that they can do A (gift) or B (add 3%).  I've easiely eaten over $20 in paypal fees because no one reads entire messages.

What does NA suggest I do if the buyer fails to follow directions???

100% agreed, and this is an issue that has been bothering me for a while. I don't want to sound like I'm cheap, but when I make an offer of $20 for an item, and the seller agrees, and we make a transaction, and I say "What's your PayPal?" and then they say "Its [email protected]. Please add $3 to cover the fees or send gift." it's just stupid.

SELLERS: calculate the PayPal fees, and INCLUDE them in your prices. Either that, or at the very least say something like "everyone add 3% on top of my prices to get the real price you'll have to pay".

Thanks to the admins for recognizing this issue!

Get them to agree one way or the other before accepting the transaction.

Rare variant, I thought you knew?

If you are telling the buyer that they have to either gift or pay for fees after a price has been agreed upon and a transaction has been set up, its wrong. If you are stating up front that your prices don't include a 3% additional fee then you're o.k.

I wish that people would simply calculate the fee into their shipped prices and not openly try to circumvent PayPal fees though, it would be better for everybody. It is the sellers responsibility, by default, to pay for any PayPal fees. You are the one requesting that method of payment. It is also much more professional to do things by the book, in my opinion. I paid thousands in PayPal fees last year and I am perfectly o.k. with it, its part of running a professional business and using a valuable service.

Honestly we shouldn't take the credit, as someone brought this to my attention.  Then BA and I worked on a change in the FAQ to address this, and viola.

So we can't take credit for this, but really would prefer not to say who brought the issue up.

This may seem hypocritical since I do most of my forum transactions gifted, but if I were running a business I'd gladly accept normal Paypal payments and eat the cost of a transaction.  From paypal's policies:

4.6 No Surcharges. You agree that you will not impose a surcharge or any other fee for accepting PayPal as a payment method. You may charge a handling fee in connection with the sale of goods or services, as long as the handling fee does not operate as a surcharge and is not higher than the handling fee you charge for non-PayPal transactions.

Trades / sales between casual collectors is one thing, but someone who does large recurring transactions on a frequent basis should have paypal fees built into their bottom line. 

I would suggest you not ship the items until you receive the full payment that was agreed upon. It doesn't matter how the end figure was arrived upon.

This ^^^^^

This is a great addition to the FAQ. I think most non-business collectors aren't too familiar with Paypal's transaction fees and the etiquette/expectations on who is supposed to pay them.

I've had several trades where I was asked to cover the fee after the transaction was agreed upon and finalized. It's always been a small amount, a few dollars at most, and I don't think anyone is out to scam me for that. Usually the message has been along the lines of 'oh, and can you cover the fee or send gifted'. I think people just aren't familiar with how it's supposed to work, which is that the seller pays the fees unless explicitly agreed upon prior to finalizing a transaction.

So, again, thanks for bringing attention to this.

great addition for sure

Work the fees into the price folks, that is what we should all do. I pass every single FS thread once I read payment via paypal gift. Anyone that requires a gift payment will not be getting my business plain and simple. I NEVER ask or Request gift payments and I never will

I'm not surprised this came up. I'm tired of seeing "Gift me money or pay a fee".

Just work "no gift payments" into "da roolz" and be done with it. The only time I've ever used gift payments is for something shipped for like $5 because I use fresh packing materials and only net like $2 before any costs are factored for that amount.. Or if someone was using Paypal to repay a loan.

Exactly.  If you were a business accepting credit cards, you'd have to build the CC fees into your bottom line as well.

I don't agree with that I'm sure some people would like to have the option to gift to people they trust to save them both a few dollars.I know people on here that have had alot of transactions together over a period of time.Even though it's only a couple of bucks it can add up.

I don't think the buyer should have to calculate how much the final price will be. I pass on FS threads that have "add 3%" at the top. It's the people who price their items clearly and request a goods transfer that I trust the most.

I'm not against sending gift payments to people you trust; that's at the discretion of the buyer.

If that is the case, there's no real need for involving NA.  Having a "no gift payment" policy merely keeps people from asking for them... if a buyer offers to help out a "friend" so be it.  However, if you're going to use a service which charges a fee, you should be willing to pay it (I hate paypal/ebay as much as anyone, but they are a necessary evil and I know what they cost up-front and still use them).  If you don't want fees, use a different payment method... just sayin'.

Why should it matter if someone ask for gift payments?The buyer's don't have to buy the items and some people have already said they won't buy from people that ask for gift payments.It's a choice just like it should be.

I use NA because I don't want to pay any fees. I have been requesting that all buyers pay with gift. I thought that was the norm once you had some feedback. I didn't know some of you guys frowned upon that.

The main reason beyond all that has already been said is for fraud! If people do trades on here and use regular payment we can try to help out with ripoff scenarios. If people gift payments... umn You're Screwed.

I'm just tired of seeing "news" filling my inbox related to things like gift payments (which are an abuse of paypal policies). I couldn't care less what people do with their money, after all... it's their money. However, this is not the first time that gift payments have created much ado, and it's already been stated that NA does not condone their use. I don't see why there isn't a "no gift payment" policy just to stop these threads from happening. Then again, I only use NA B/S/T forums to offload dupes as opposed to some users who essentially run an NA store... so my opinions are likely in the minority.

Oh well... Once upon a time, I cared. Now, not so much. Carry on... I'm gonna unsubscribe from the news forum anyway.

EDIT: Apparently not... there doesn't appear to be a way to unsubscribe.  Looks like further notices are getting >/dev/null'd