Paypal's currency converter a little fishy?

[playford]

I bought something in US dollars and ended up paying more in Canadian funds, despite the fact that Can. currency is higher than the US dollar - where does Paypal find this conversion chart, and what year is it from? If my purchase had been large enough, that could have been a lot of money and I find this more than fishy and maybe bordering on illegal.

[mcmichaels]

September 22 2011,

This a great day for selling to Americans in US currency, finally the Canadian dollar is worth less than the American so begins the good times of exchanging American into Canadian and not loosing any money. Yehaw.

[ian_parenteau]

I need to pay my overseas suppliers in US currency.  As PayPal will not allow a US dollar withdrawal into my US dollar account at my Canadian bank, I am always forced to pay double exchange fees 1) Withdraw PayPal US Funds to my Canadian addressed bank account forced to be Canadian dollars by PayPal, then 2) Exchange CAD to USD to pay my overseas suppliers.

[mcmichaels]

The Royal Bank has US Banking out of the US. You can open a US Bank account which is in the US with out travelling to the US to do so. Check it out. You can then transfer US dollars to that account. 

[ian_parenteau]

I tried to open a US Dollar Account with my local RBC branch here in Canada, explaining to them I required an RBC bank account from a branch with a USA based street address.  In the application form a required field is "customer mailing address - United States addresses only".  I did not have any USA street address, therefore the customer service agent could not continue or provide with an account from an RBC branch with a USA street address.  Apparently this simple address requirement is part of the new USA/Canada Anti-Money Laundering (AML) banking requirements.  Thank you for the suggestion.

[Sunnbuzz]

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@ian_parenteau wrote:

I tried to open a US Dollar Account with my local RBC branch here in Canada, explaining to them I required an RBC bank account from a branch with a USA based street address.  In the application form a required field is "customer mailing address - United States addresses only".  I did not have any USA street address, therefore the customer service agent could not continue or provide with an account from an RBC branch with a USA street address.  Apparently this simple address requirement is part of the new USA/Canada Anti-Money Laundering (AML) banking requirements.  Thank you for the suggestion.

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It would not have helped you opening a US bank account in Canada because if you have a Canadian Paypal account Paypal will NOT let you transfer US funds directly out of Paypal without first converting them to Canadian funds. Telll me that is not to their benfit !!
At one point 4 years ago Ebay and Paypal had different exchange rates and I lost $50 getting paid on a 1600 item with the different exchange rate between Ebay & Paypal , and it was the same day, so the rate had not changed. I was so so mad, that I listed it in CDN funds but I had the 2 other items that were the same all on Ebay.com, so even though it said the amount in CDN, I still got paid in US and then the money was converted, on 3 iMacs I lost $150 with their **bleep**ed up exchange system, and it does not look like things have changed to much now !!

Now I'm assuming they have at least sync'd Ebay and Paypal with the same conversion rate daily. The sad thruth is its a lose - lose that's why a Paypal admin had not responded to this topic !!

[Giap]

Today, I bought a Shoulder Rig for my DSLR for $494.15 USD. Now guess how much Paypal convert to CAD? It's $516.18CAD. I just shake my head and accept the payment.

[muskamike]

When the Canadain dollar when higher than that of the US, I thought good time to buy stuff.  I was surpised how long it took for there system to ajust to the dollar exchange rate.   There for a while the system was paying with the same CDN:US dollar exchange.  Then all the suden they are exchaging the CDN dollar for less than the US.  I thought  I had missed the flip but checked with the exchange rate online on a seperate site found that the CDN was still the higher.  What a pain and seeing that others have found this to be the same I will be using my Credit card instead of paypal when I can. 

Loss for pay pal.  

Just looked at the current exchang rate and yes the CDN is lower with pay pal being $.02 lower asumming the diferance is their fee.  Still does not account for the bad exchange rate when the CDN dollar was higher. 

[Giap]

I believe there is one way to solve this problem is that eBay+Paypal needs competitor. Right now they seem to be the only one providing this business. With that, paypal and eBay will work differently for sure.