New payment methods will cause new problems

Hello from near Zurich

This liltin' voice on the Video - notably from a Speaker of non-english origin - is following me
Furthermore I absolutely dislike the Content of said Video - especially the new payment methods.

CASH
It rarely happens to me that someone knocks on my door with a tenner in Hand

Delcampe should NOT promote "cash in letter" as payment Option, no matter it sometimes is accepted as small sum.
Cash in letters is NOT allowed by postal rules! Even R-letters with cash are NOT insured by Post and will not be refunded in case of loss or thefth.

CHEQUE
This is a payment form mainly used in France; because of the high bank fees nowhere else - at least not in my Country.
So why it has to be mentionned as a worldwide payment method?

BANK TANSFER
Sellers outside of the Euro-Zone will surely understand me: I don't want to have my bank Details automatically forwarded to ALL buyers worldwide.
As for myself, I have an Euro-account for SEPA-payments within the Euro-Zone, and a Swiss account for payments within my Country (free of Charge)
BUT
I don't want to pay Swiss buyers to my Euro-account (high fee)
I don't want to pay Overseas buyers to my Euro orm Swiss account (high fees)

until today, I could submit my RELEVANT bank Details to the buyers in question.
Or I could OMIT my Details to buyers I don't want to get paid by bank Transfer.

With those "new methods" (that hopefully never come) I else have total CHAOS.
Or I am forced to omit "Bank Transfer" as a personal payment Option.
But this might let me lose some potential buyers, who ONLY can pay by bank.

Al in all - very bad and thougtless made - just as that silly Video

I would agree with you about the video - I'm not sure what it is intended to do unless it is for people who can't read. There is also considerable feeling against it on the German forums, quite reasonably, as it is in English with no German equivalent. I assume there is a French version but don't know.

Payment options:

CASH - I have only had one cash payment in about 3 years - I think this is a hangover from when services like Paypal or Skrill either didn't exist or were in their infancy. My one payment was from China and perhaps given currency restrictions there, this is understandable.

CHEQUE - I only accept cheques from UK buyers or people with a UK bank account, and don't mind doing so as it saves fees, albeit with a certain amount of risk.

BANK TRANSFER - I don't advertise this but will accept IBAN transfers if asked. This seems to be reasonably common in France & Germany. In France, in particular, I think there seems to be an aversion by some to paying by Paypal or whatever, and I know many French sellers won't accept payment that way.

I think to be fair to Delcampe, they are only trying to cover all the options. About 95% of payments I receive are electronic payments, and about 95% of those are through Paypal, so the others are basically fairly irrelevant as far as I'm concerned, and I suspect for many other sellers as well.

I concur with your assessment of the % of transactions settled by PAYPAL and Skrill (mostly PAYPAL) at about 95%. I do still receive cash, cheque and bank transfers. Personally, I'd prefer to receive more bank transfers as my bank charge for this is relatively modest and I hate PAYPAL's extortionate fees!

I think Delcampe's attempts to address the automation of this issue is OK but respect the other comments made.



Alan Catherall

Yes, very fair remarks.

I do not accept IBAN payments mainly because Asian banks do not use that system. Recently, my sales on D to USA have increased quite a bit.......USA do not use IBAN either! I do have a UK bank account but the charges for euro payments are horrific

I do accept cash or Western Union but only as a very last resort after warning purchasers of the risks......I even have a regular buyer in the Middle East who insists on using Western Union only.

It's possible that some sales are lost in Europe where IBAN is widely used.......but I guess that I will never know....

When I first started on Delcampe I only offered Paypal and Moneybookers as payment options.

Every now and again I got a request for IBAN, but my bank charges for receiving payments.

For completely different reasons, about 3 years ago I had to open a current account with another bank. They don't charge for receiving payments, but do charge for sending them.

I decided to offer IBAN as a payment option, but since then I've possibly only had about 10 payments that way, so you won't be losing out all that much. The total I've received that way is in fact under £150 over 3+ years.

Completely seperate from the new check-out procedure and before this was thrown at us, I was actually considering to remove all payment options apart from Paypal.

At the moment I provide my customers with my full name and address in the "message to buyer" box in the invoice, in case they should wish to pay by cheque.

In big bold letters I state "No Cash" and Bank transfer from Eurozone countries and UK only and payment in GBP only.

However, over the last few weeks I've received a cash payment from one buyer in 2 different currencies (USD and Euro), which I've rejected and sent back once I received payment in GBP.

I also received a IBAN payment from Switzerland - my bank does not charge to receive international transfers, yet the payment was made for the correct amount in CHF, but I received about £2 less. I can only assume that my buyer's bank made a charge and he passed that on to me.

By removing all the information, at least I feel, that I am a bit more in charge as to how my customers can pay me and I can refuse to provide the information, if it is not one of my accepted payment methods.

Thanks, Mainly. Do you mind telling me the name of the bank as it might be useful to have IBAN capability for several reasons. Thanks

However.....the big site seems to get away with offering paypal only as the sole option......nothing to do with the fact they own pp of course....

Die Informationen sind nicht mehr verfügbar, da das Konto dieses Benutzers gelöscht wird (DSGVO-Grundverordnung).

I use Nationwide. No charge for receiving, but a great big whopping £25 for sending money abroad which would be a potential problem if I would have to refund a buyer for any reason.

My bank is exactly the same. There have been minor differences between the £ sterling rate received and what was on the invoice in the very few transactions I have had by IBAN, and I had wondered whether this was because the buyer had asked the bank to pay an equivalent in their currency, Euros or whatever, instead of just asking them to pay an amount of £ sterling? - I've not enough experience to make a firm judgement.

In any event the differences have been smaller than conversions via the very poor exchange rate Paypal offers, so I have just taken this as a loss.

Die Informationen sind nicht mehr verfügbar, da das Konto dieses Benutzers gelöscht wird (DSGVO-Grundverordnung).

I don't intend to advertise that I accept IBAN, in the same way that I don't do it at the moment. I realise that there is still some aversion to using payment systems such as Paypal in some countries, but even the most diehard refusniks seem to be coming round - I suspect because eBay / Paypal almost insist that you pay by this method, and to be fair to the buyer, it does give a level of protection to the buyer that other payment types don't.

Until recently I didn't even have internet banking so such payments were a bit of a pain, having to check lodgements manually, in effect!!

Usually the differences are pennies. I tell my buyers to use the Delcampe converter as a guide. Most of the time I've been a few pence short (but less than the Paypal fees would have been) and once it worked out slightly in my favour.

Except for the one experience with my Swiss buyer (coincidentally not Eurozone), but I was reading on the German forum that they use a different method and some Swiss banks charge for transactions.

The difference is due to the fact that typically your (European] buyer will be paying from a Euro account. The bank(s) set the conversion rate. I always convert the sterling due into Euros and ask the buyer to settle that Euro amount. There will still be a difference because the bank(s) set the exchange rate but at least I am in control of the amount that is paid by the buyer. Since I'm not paying PAYPAL fees it usually all works out ok.

Alan Catherall
[Hoatzinstamps]

Hoatzinstamps has correctly pointed out that this happens because in the Eurozone we have EUR-only bank accounts: for example my online bank allows me to send SEPA bank transfers only in EUR, and when in the past I had to send payments to Czech Rep. or Poland the sellers gave me the amount to send in EUR, although these countries do not belong to the Eurozone.
I suppose that to send a bank transfer in GBP I ought to go physically to the bank, and they would charge me 8-10 EUR instead of the 0.5-1 EUR charged for an online bank transfer...

That is exactly what would happen ... therefore I operate as described in my earlier thread so that my expectations and the buyers are in synch. And the buyer doesn't incur any stupid charges for the transfer.

Alan Catherall
[Hoatzinstamps]

Thanks everyone for all your responses re the benefits or otherwise of IBAN.

I'll give it a miss.....