Payment Page Paypal Fee Caution

As a commercial photographer, it is convenient to have clients go to a payment page where they enter the amount to pay.

A client did that today and her card was declined. She called the bank and returned to the payment page on my website and entered the information again. It had cleared from the browser window but not in the browser cache. Somehow she didn't notice the total was $4150.00 rather than the $2075.00 she needed to pay.

After she submitted it, she called advising what had happened.

I logged into PayPal and created a refund for the $2075.00 overpayment.

All is good right? Well, the PayPal fee on $4150 is $120.

PayPal still charged the $120 rather than the $60 that should have been the fee on $2075.

Seems wrong I am forced to pay the PayPal fee for a client error.

As such I am no longer planning to use the payment page created in the Systist software where the client enters the payment amount.

The better way is to create a PayPal invoice and let the client pay from that invoice.

Thought I'd post this here so any of you that have your site set up this way from incurring the PayPal greed should it happen to you.

Edited Wed Sep 16, 20 10:50 PM by M Davis

Paypal announced the fee schedule in Dec. of 2019 and went into effect Jan 2020, i would call paypal and explain it was not a actual transaction. Sorry to be a little rough, but it was kinda your fault to have a customer key in an amount they wanted to pay.

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Steve,

For the client to key in the amount is an option in Stylist, therefore the post is intended to educate others.

Over the years, many clients have keyed in more than the invoiced amount as a tip, so from a business standpoint, it has been quite profitable.
In more than 20 years using this feature, or one similar, I have never had the need to issue a refund to any client for any reason.

When either the government or a big law firm gains knowledge of the PayPal updated fee structure it will cease to exist. In the meantime, beware of this can happen.

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I understand you are upset, but there is nothing illegal about that. It's a service fee. You may want to post to your Q&A or page if you have one Explaining to them there is a non refundable transaction fee possed by Paypal. There is also a terms of service agreement at checkout that they would have to agree to, you could put the non refundable transaction fee notice on. You may also want to consider using Authorize.net since they do batch processing it would give you time to either refund or cancel the transaction.

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I have had clients ask about this, how do I set up the option for customers that wish to leave a tip to pay more than the amount invoiced?

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