How should this work?

I'm buying a female spotnose het. pied from a breeder on KS. He told me he was fine with me doing a payment plan for her. The only issue is, he doesn't want to pay the PayPal seller fees. He gave me the option to mail him a check, but I don't have or use checks. He also said that I could "gift" him the payment. I don't feel comfortable gifting a payment to someone I don't know and have never worked with before. I wouldn't be protected if something went wrong during the sale. Also, I was under the assumption that PayPal fees weren't all that high?... I could be wrong, though.

I haven't been able to find any bad information on him as a seller, and I found only one thread on here where he is mentioned. Someone had said "he was a cool guy". The seller has been very up front in answering my questions and has sent me a couple of pictures of the girl. He asked me to call him this evening to discuss the payments and the options.

Is there any other way I could set up payment with him and still be protected?

No the fees aren't that much that it would hurt his pocket, but its enough that it does count. ( If that makes sense)

Best thing to do in this situation is every time you make a payment to him add 30 cents plus 2.9% on top of what your paying him. (These are the current PayPal fees) This way you stay protected in case he turns out to be shady and also he isn't loosing any money.

Paypal does not protect animal purchases that point a lot of people think to forget, which mean you are really not protected.

What it comes down to regardless of who you are dealing with is sending your money to someone reputable.

One of my pet peeves are sellers asking their customer to cover Paypal fees, first of all it is AGAINST their TOS, secondable as a business owner this is just the cost of doing business which is way cheaper still then processing credit card and having a merchant account. Would he ask you to pay for gas so he can go to the bank and deposit your check? (Like I said big turn off for me)

I actually do not do business with people who chose to be cheap and don’t understand the cost of business.

As for fees it’s 2.9% plus $0.30 per transation

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Originally Posted by Diamond Serpents

No the fees aren't that much that it would hurt his pocket, but its enough that it does count. ( If that makes sense)

Best thing to do in this situation is every time you make a payment to him add 30 cents plus 2.9% on top of what your paying him. (These are the current PayPal fees) This way you stay protected in case he turns out to be shady and also he isn't loosing any money.

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Ok, thanks so much for clearing it up. I will ask him if that works for him when I talk to him. It should. That way I'm just paying the fees for him. If he doesn't like that plan, I'm just going to have to pass on the girl as much as I really want her. She's gorgeous!

Pay pal fee's are 3% and paid by the seller so on a 1000.00 animal its $30.00 now this is a small portion of the animals value. But just for devils advocate lets say the seller is also throwing in shipping that can be anywhere from 50.00-90.00 now figure 10.00-15.00 for the box and shipping materials so now you're talking $135.00 that's 13.5% that the seller is paying out of pocket and that's if they haven't already marked the animal down. So a 1000.00 animal is now is an $865.00 not including the cost to house and feed the animal and any taxes they might have to pay on the income that can be another 20%. So worst case the seller is clearing 692.00 of a 1000.00 sale.

To me that's the cost of doing business. It's also why I try charge a flat rate for shipping $50.00 cause I can eat 15-20.00 on shipping it's tax deductable :D.

My two cent's don't gift unless you know the person. Casue remember if you pay for shipping through Paypal they aren't getting the full amount to ship the animal if it takes 50.00 to ship and you pay through PayPal the seller is agian having to cover 3% off the cost of the animal to ship it.. Here it is in numbers assuming they operate as a business and report income.

2012 Mojo spider $650.00 shipped
buyer pay with PayPal = 630.50 tot money to seller

630.50 - 75.00 (shipping, box, materials) = $555.50 total money to seller
555.50 - 20% selfemployment / capitol gains tax = $444.40
444.40 - 150.00 for 1 year of food and houseing = 294.40

S0 the breeder gets $294.40 for that 650.00 snake..

Breaking it down like that, I could understand why he doesn't want to pay the fees.

I don't think he's a big time, huge breeder, so every small bit counts.

This happens a lot in another hobby I'm in: many sellers asking for their fees to be paid. It's against PP's TOS (as Debra stated) and I refuse to work with these people. If they're using the service then use in properly IMO.

I ran across this with one of my snake purchases and after I stated I would not pay the fees (and risk loosing the snake I really wanted but the seller did not put to add fees in his ad so I didn't think he was going to ask) but the seller decided to wave adding fees onto the sale for me. Asking for money as a gift/fees paid by the buyer is bad business practice IMO.

I don't do PayPal either as they won't work with my industry. In your shoes I would start an Inquiry thread at the BOI on Fauna to see if anyone has dealt with him. If he check out ok send payment via USPS MO's.

It's gonna be really hard to walk away from this girl because it's the one gene I've wanted to work with for a very long time. Her being het. Pied is the icing on the top!

I'm torn. :-/

I agree with everyone else.

If he's not willing to pay the fees, then he's too shady to do business with. I'd start looking for another one of the same animal. Surely there is another out there from a breeder who is not quite so shady.

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Originally Posted by BHReptiles

I agree with everyone else.

If he's not willing to pay the fees, then he's too shady to do business with. I'd start looking for another one of the same animal. Surely there is another out there from a breeder who is not quite so shady.

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The only thing is I've been looking pretty hard for one of these girls because I want to work with the spotnose gene, and I couldn't find another one het for pied anywhere.
:-/

I agree it is not in PP TOS and he should not ask for the fees. I laugh when I see ads that state to add 3% Paypal fees to price and move on to the next ad. Whats next? Paying .55 cents per mile for the seller to drop the package off at the Fedex hub.

Now if you really want it and he really wants to sell it I am sure he could wave the Paypal fees. How much can a Spotnose het pied go for? It's not like its a 10k snake.

It all comes down to how bad you really want the snake.

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Originally Posted by joebad976

I agree it is not in PP TOS and he should not ask for the fees. I laugh when I see ads that state to add 3% Paypal fees to price and move on to the next ad. Whats next? Paying .55 cents per mile for the seller to drop the package off at the Fedex hub.

Now if you really want it and he really wants to sell it I am sure he could wave the Paypal fees. How much can a Spotnose het pied go for? It's not like its a 10k snake.

It all comes down to how bad you really want the snake.

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That's true, she's not a high dollar snake, but the combination of the two genes was something I really wanted... The ad didn't say anything about me paying the fees. It's kinda annoying, but I'm willing to pay them if it means I get her. It sucks...maybe I'll run across another?

I did speak with him on the phone, and he does seem to be legit. I'll keep y'all updated on how it goes.

Also, I did a search on BOI and found nothing, good or bad.