UNBELIEVABLE ! Not only does PayPal extort large "user fees" on every transaction, they are currently adding a 8% surcharge on Canadian users ! By this, I mean the fact that PayPal currently values the Canadian dollar at 94 US cents. EXCUSE ME ???? The bloody Canadian dollar has been at 1.02 (or above that) for over a month ! At what point are you going to "get with the program" and actually adjust your currency values ? Maybe a year from now ? I will simply refuse to use your fraudulent company from now on !
In disgust,
Andrew
P.S. With policies like these, no wonder why the rest of the world hates Americans !
I would wonder if , as the earlier guest posted, "the banking system is responsible for flip-flopping the US/CDN exchange rate in favor of the US", when in fact, at present the Canadian $ has a bit more value. I would hope that Pay-Pal, acknowledges this error, and honors this rate as the current market bears?
The reason you see a difference is that PayPal makes money on FX conversions. When you pay in a foreign currency it's hard to pinpoint how much the margin is as the rates fluctuate all day long, but at this bery moment the difference between PayPal and XE real time rates shows 2.5% when you pay in a pay CAD for a USD transaction and 1.6% when you withdraw a USD to a CAD account.
Look at the posting of my receipt from the Bank of Nova Scotia plus another receipt from another user and you will see very quickly that PayPal is overcharging / gouging on currency exchange.
PayPal is not even in the ballpark with respect to competitive exchange rates.
The Bank Of Nova Scotia quoted me the following just a hour ago Approx 2.30pm Thursday Apr.14 2011 : I sell THEM $100 US and I get only $93 CDN. If I want to buy $100.US It would cost me more than $100
You make a good point on that. I noticed checking today that their price was just slightly better than scotiabanks
If you go on bank of canada you wont get accurate amounts as its dealing in NOMINAL rates, when you go to a bank like scotia or td you are not getting nominal rates you are getting nominal plus a conversion fee just like paypal hence the reason why paypals exchange rate is neck and neck with canadian banks. That is what you need to go on. It would be nice though if paypal could just display the amount when they do the conversion underneath the exchange rate i.e keep rate and conversion fee seperate that way for accounting purposes we can tally up the fee and write it off if it can be written off. ( obviously we cant write off exchange rates, but fees we can )
I just got home from my bank. I paid $511.21CDN for $500.00 US funds. How does that compare? The last time I posted evidence I was told it was because the bank made a mistake. What about this time?
Stealing 7%-8%? We just finished showing you that Papal is about as competitive as Canadian chartered banks. All are charging roughly 250 basis points, or about 2.5%.
Again, current USD/CAD is 0.9638, and Paypal is converting USD into CAD at 0.9362 - that's a 276 basis point spread.
TD Bank is currently converting USD into CAD at 0.9390 - that's a 248 basis point spread.
Show me where you are seeing a 700-800 basis point spread.
