PayPal's New Refund Policy Sticks It to Sellers with Fees

Starting on May 7, 2019, when a seller issues a partial or full refund to a buyer or refunds a donation to a donor the fees originally paid as the seller are no longer returned.

Imagine you're a seller on eBay. You offer 30 day returns. Your buyer purchases a camera for $1000. They pay with PayPal. An hour later, they write and say "I changed my mind, please cancel this order. If you don't, I'll just return unopened when I get it, so save yourself the shipping." So you have to refund. And you just lost $29.

This is extremely disappointing. I make a growing proportion of my income via online Python and Git courses. The platform I use (Podia) supports PayPal and Stripe. I'd love to use Stripe, but they don't work with businesses outside of the US and a handful of other countries. So I'm stuck using PayPal, which many of my customers dislike, but I don't have much choice.

Truth be told, I haven't personally had any issues with PayPal to date. It all works pretty smoothly, and their fees are part of the cost of doing business. But sticking me with the fees, even when people cancel, is very upsetting. Not that many people cancel -- but when they do, I'm happy to do it, as part of giving good customer service.

I guess that I'll eat the fees, even then, so as not to seem like a jerk. But it does make me, at least a little bit, want to rethink my "100% money-back guarantee" policy.

Ah Paypal getting even worse than it was for sellers. They already were horrible if you are not a buyer anyway.