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PayPal Is Not My Pal

Paypal sent me an email in Feb 2006. Here’s what they said (emphasis theirs):

Dear Alastair Rankine,

Welcome to PayPal Australia!

We are pleased to confirm that as of 2 February 2006, PayPal Australia Pty Limited is now providing the PayPal Service to you.

You do not need to take any action, however we do recommend that you review the updated and localised user agreement and privacy policy at a time convenient to you.

[“Tip of the Day” elided]

Sincerely,

Paypal

For the benefit of anyone else who received such an email, here’s my best attempt at translating it from PalSpeak into English.

Dear Chump,

Welcome to PayPal Australia!

We are pleased to confirm that as of 2 February 2006, your PayPal account is now vaguely associated with the country of Australia, but probably not in the way you expect.

You to not need to take any action, just prepare yourself to get fleeced when you next receive an AUD payment. Because we’ve secretly kept your “default currency” as USD, we can now charge you currency exchange fees to convert an AUD payment into USD and back again! So instead of the regular 3.4% fees, you’re now looking at upwards of 10%!

Isn’t that great — for us? Why we chose to keep your default currency as USD is a complete mystery to you, and that’s the way we like it.

If you don’t like this arrangement you can always choose to not use PayPal whenever you next sell something on eBay.

Ha ha! No, of course you can’t. That’s just our little joke.

Looking forward to fleecing you, chump.

Sincerely,

PayPal

10% sounds a little excessive. Are you sure you don't have something mis-configured in your profile somewhere?

According to the paypal faq (here), for received payments less than AUD$5K, the fees are 2.4% + $0.30 AUD per transaction, and that matches the fees I've been paying on $AUD payments received.

So do you have a tip for confirming the currency settings are correct? Or is this a permanent "screw you" from PayPal?

Mr Rohan: No, this is just a one-off "screw you". To fix it, you go to "Manage Currencies" or similar in your profile. I'm pretty sure that screen didn't exist back in Feb 2006 when my account was converted over, but I can't be sure.

Martin, again you've been relegated to the spam bin! I have no idea why Akismet is treating your comments so badly, but I'll look into it.

As for the 10% figure, well this is basically the standard 3.4% rate plus a ~6.5% rate on currency conversion - it's my observed figure rather than a stated PayPal charge.

OK, I've switched from Akismet to Defensio for spam filtering. Let's hope the false positive rate decreases.

I hate false positives :(

Dude, you opened your account while you are in US right? And you have been using it for your eBay transactions for a while in USD there right?

So you expect them to do what? Some how dig into the customs record on government systems. Realise now you live in Australia. And change your default currency bank to USD?

If you want your money in AUD now, of course they have to converted it back again. Is Paypal now suppose to operate some internal forex market and cross the spread for you?

It's your fault. You forgot. Shit happens.

You sucked.

Kevin, you sound a little wound up. Do they have free massages at your work? Maybe you should get one.

Stupidity makes me tense.