PayPal worth it?

[WylieE]

I'd like to get some feedback from the AC community.

We currently accept Visa/MC/Amex online. We have had a number of requests from our customers for PayPal. We're doing quite well with our current payment methods, but we know PP is common in the music gear industry. (slush funds, impusle purchases or ways to hide gear purchases from spousal units....) We could reasonably expect to see *some* increase in sales, but it is difficult to quantify how much increase and if it would offset any additional costs.

Has anyone added PP as a payment option in addition to their own CC payment gateway? What are your experiences? What sort of increase did you see (percent is fine.) and would you consider PP worth it? I can see our transaction costs would increase and I've heard there can be delays in receiving payment. Of course, there have been a few horror stories of PP closing accounts without notice.

Still, have you found PayPal worth it if you already have reliable payment methods and gateways??

Thanks,

[compunerdy]

I have used paypal as my only merchant account for years with no problems. The fees are less for me than any other I could find. You can transfer funds to another account in 2-3 days for free. I mainly use the debit card though and purchase items with it for the 1% cash back which I have made over 3k off of.

[William M]

If Paypal didn't exist, would they invent it in it's current form? Likely not. I've yet to find a ecomm forum where Paypal isn't one of the most discussed problem areas.

I like to keep things simple. If you don't need it.....

[AbleMods]

I started out using PayPal exclusively with AC7. Then I had a horrible experience with their acceptable-use people. Apparently PayPal is very anti-gun and I sell hunting accessories like rifle scopes, weapon magazines, laser sights etc.

When PayPal detected this (8 months after using them), they told me my account was now locked and I could not access the funds for 180 days. No warning. No advance notice. I couldn't even capture pending authorizations, so I automatically lost 11 orders worth of money on goods for which I could no longer get paid. Not to mention the embarassment and suspicion with the customer....

It took 5 weeks and some seriously email yelling to finally get a response. I was told my site was now "in compliance" yet I had changed nothing.

If you read their terms and conditions in detail, you'll lose all interest in making your business financially dependent on PayPal. I did.