'Discrepancy' between amount on 'PayPal Order Receipt' and amount debited from PayPal account

[DarkAvenger]

Today I purchased an item from a seller for €12.90. Moments later I received the 'PayPal Order Receipt' through which stated the following:

PayPal Balance:                $19.73
                                              AUD

$1.00 AUD = €0.654136956 EUR

Now I did the calculation myself to make sure the invoice amount is correct and if you do the calculation yourself you'll find it comes to NOT AU$19.73, BUT AU$19.72 !!! ((1 ÷ 0.654136956) x 12.70 = 19.720640887 = 19.72) which means PayPal have overcharged me 1¢ !!! Now why is this an issue? Well apart from the obvious, It could conceiveably cause me to be 1¢ short on my next order through no fault of my own. However the more serious issue is it appears the 1¢ overcharge is 'DELIBERATE' !!! And I'm sure anybody else reading this will struggle to come up with an alternative plausable explaination for the 1¢ discrepancy given there is simply 'NO POSSIBLE WAY' one can get 19.73 from the exchange rate used no matter how much rounding one does, even if one uses 4 decimal places in the calculation !!! So the ONLY conclusion I can reach is PayPal have 'intentionally' added an extra 1¢ on 'in the hope' 'no one will notice' or care !!!

I had to have a 40 minute heated argument over the phone with the 'so called' customer service operator trying to convince them I had been overcharged - even 'PROVING' to them I had !!! Their end maintaining that PayPal's 'system' 'automatically' calculates the payment and therefore it 'MUST BE CORRECT' !!! In the end the supervisor, after putting me on hold for a further 10 minutes, decided to credit my account with AU$1.00, which you can make of what you will.

In conclusion it 'appears' PayPal are 'scamming' money from their users. It may be a cent here or a cent there - nothing that most users would notice or care about if they did, but if PayPal are processing, say, a million orders a day and sneaking in a cent extra charge on each order - well that's AU$10,000.00 a day that's effectively being 'stolen' from customer's accounts !!!.

I would urge anyone reading this to double check their PayPal order receipts to ensure they have been charged the correct amount. You may find there are discrepancies !!!

[sharpiemarker]

Dunno.  Please read PayPal terms on fees if they round off to the next cent or not.

[DarkAvenger]

Well yes they do round off - to the 'nearest cent'. They have to since one cannot pay in 'fractions of cents'! So in my case rounding off 19.720640887 to the 'nearest cent' will give 19.72 - as I've already stated!

PayPal make no mention in their 'Combined Financial Services Guide' in the relevent sections, which are 18 & 19, about rounding off 'at any stage' in their calculations, but if they did round off their calculations at any stage other than at the end their calculations or method would be 'incorrect' and thus likely give an incorrect answer!

I re-did the 'full' calculations down to the minimum 3 decimal places of precision, rather than the correct 9, and the result is 19.724 which when rounded to the nearest cent is STILL 19.72!

Either PayPal are not correctly calculating the amount payable, which could sometimes give the correct total, but more than likely won't or PayPal are adding an extra cent on, but there is no way to know unless one can get PayPal to layout their full calculations for this particular purchase so one can check whether their method is correct or not. In the end this does not change the 'fact' the 'correct' total is 19.72!

If you wish to do the full calculations yourself the 'actual' exchange rate is 0.680302434, PayPal's fee is 4% i.e. 1.040 and the purchase cost is €12.90.

[AmryJ]

I just noticed that PayPal was changing my Euros into USDollors and then into Euro's to pay for items I was purchasing this has lead me to wonder why. I have called PayPal and I am getting nowhere with them they are saying its my Card people and my card people are saying its PayPal. I have called PayPal 4 times nowand I am at a loss as to where to go from here. Their own T&C states 

For users with registered addresses in Cyprus, Estonia, Greece, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Slovakia and Slovenia: The Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) is an initiative of the European Commission and European banking sector, aimed at making transactions more efficient within the European Union. After the implementation of the use of SEPA Direct Debit mandates by PayPal, whenever you register a bank account with PayPal or pay with a new bank account for the first time, you will be granting PayPal a SEPA Direct Debit mandate. You will be able to access such mandate and the mandate reference number (MRN) in your PayPal Account profile at any time and cancel the mandate for future transactions.

Whenever you make an electronic transfer from your bank account to PayPal via SEPA Direct Debit after that, you authorise PayPal to use such mandate and draw the amount from your bank account as explained above in this section 3.7 and you authorise your bank to arrange for payment to PayPal. You may claim a refund from your bank at any time up to 8 weeks after the date on which the SEPA Direct Debit payment took place in accordance with your bank’s terms and conditions.

PayPal will inform you of the amount of the SEPA Direct Debit payment and the time frame in which PayPal will collect the amount from the bank account together with the purchase confirmation. In the event that PayPal resubmits any SEPA Direct Debit payment request due to Reversal of the original payment, there will be no (additional) information given on the amount and the time frame ahead of the resubmission.

Now please please someone explain to me if I am billed in Euro's and my Credit Card is an Euro Card why has an item I expected to pay €299.00 cost me €318.09. Who decided that my account is a US Dollar account? Also all my other transactions are also being changed from Euros into USD and then into the currency of the Country I am purchasing from. PayPal are saying it has nothing to do with them so I contacted the Supplier who happens to be in Ireland same as me and I asked them how much they were paid and low and behold they got €299.00. My card company said that they paid PayPal €318.09 so that means PayPal should refund me €19.09 is this not correct?

Of course I can't get to talk to a person who will explain to me why they can't refund me and they keep fobing me off. This is stealing in my opinion and it may only be a samll amount but if this is happening to other people it could turnout to be a HUGE amount. I do wish there was someone who works in PayPal who could call me back and explain why this happened in the first place.

Rant over

AmryJ