PayPal fee calculation when seller makes a refund to my account

[rodbrown1949]

I am trying to find an accurate way to determine the fee that PayPal will charge a seller (or me), when the seller makes a refund back to my account. Each link I access, assumes that I am the seller and the one who is making the refund, not the correct way round for my enquiry. In my scenario, I get requests to review items for the company, I pay for the goods and provide the order details to the seller, who then refunds the cost of the item back to me, essentially making it a free product. However sometimes the refund is less than the original price I paid for the item, due to the fluctuation in the fee charged, leaving a shortfall for me! 

From my experience, it seems that the calculation can vary between 5-8%, but I cannot discover why the percentage changes!

I have discovered the calculator at https://www.ppcalculator.com, which will gives the calculation end result, given the input of amount received, the percentage input and 'xx' fee, so I use that in retrospect, but I need to clearly define the calculation to my seller so that they will increase, where appropriate the total amount refunded.

Can anyone either provide a clear calculation for this scenario, or provide a link to explain it?

Any help would be appreciated! 

[kernowlass]

@rodbrown1949

When you pay a seller they are charged 3.4% + 20p per transaction (UK > UK).

When they issue a 'refund' using the refund option then you the buyer always should get a FULL refund.

The seller enters the FULL amount you are due to get back and paypal contributes to that by refunding the 3.4% back to the seller as part of that refund.

The SELLER only loses the fixed fee charge of 20p as a processing fee for processing your initial payment to him and the refund.

If you are getting charged then its either an 'international refund' with currency conversion fees OR they are not using the refund option OR they are not issueing a FULL refund to you.

[rodbrown1949]

Thanks for the clear and concise info, much appreciated. My sellers are in China, so there is, no doubt a currency calculation involved. It may also be that some are refunding for services while others are using the 'refund' process! I'll inform them of the correct way to avoid me losing money!

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@kernowlass wrote:

@rodbrown1949

When you pay a seller they are charged 3.4% + 20p per transaction (UK > UK).

When they issue a 'refund' using the refund option then you the buyer always should get a FULL refund.

The seller enters the FULL amount you are due to get back and paypal contributes to that by refunding the 3.4% back to the seller as part of that refund.

The SELLER only loses the fixed fee charge of 20p as a processing fee for processing your initial payment to him and the refund.

If you are getting charged then its either an 'international refund' with currency conversion fees OR they are not using the refund option OR they are not issueing a FULL refund to you.

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