add paypal cost to the order

Dear All,
I am using paypal express checkout and i want to add the paypal cost percentage to the client orders, can someone help me where in code i can do so that become automatic and with a line on the total for that?
many thanks in advance
best regards
Jom

That would violate the agreement you signed with Paypal, so i doubt if anyone will point out how (or if) it could be done.

Steve is right. If you want to factor in the cost of PayPal, the only legitimate way to do this is to add some "padding" to your pricing and profit margins.

Thanks Guys,
i was not awared of those terms...
guess i need to read the all thing then :P
thank you very much

Edit: can someone point me out to the right direction on the terms where this specific rule is written, i dont seem to find it ther are so many 'complicated legal words'...thanks

jomadastico:

Thanks Guys,
i was not awared of those terms...
guess i need to read the all thing then :P
thank you very much

Edit: can someone point me out to the right direction on the terms where this specific rule is written, i dont seem to find it ther are so many 'complicated legal words'...thanks

https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?&cmd=_render-content&content_ID=ua/UserAgreement_full&locale.x=en_US#4.%20Receiving%20Money.

Section 4.1e
"Sellers may not charge a surcharge for accepting PayPal as a payment method".

Cheers
Rod

Thank you very much Rod :)
Best Regards
Jom

further on this topic i actually looked at the all thing, but as i am not a english native speaker i got a bit confused with the following pharagraph

"4.5 Non discouragement. In representations to your customers or in public communications, you agree not to mischaracterise or disparage PayPal as a payment method. You agree that you will only surcharge for the use of PayPal in compliance with any law applicable to you. You further agree that if you do charge a buyer any form of surcharge that you, and not PayPal, will inform the buyer of the requested charge. PayPal has no liability to any buyer where you have failed to inform the buyer of any surcharge. You acknowledge that if you are permitted to surcharge and your further fail to disclose any form of surcharge to a buyer this may constitute a criminal offence by you."

Does this mean that we actually can surcharge teh amount of the paypal fees as long as the client is awared of that? like include visible on in our shop terms and conditions that this charge applies?

Sorry to insist in such matter, as a important issue i just wanted to double check.

MAny thanks for your valuable opinions in advance.

BEst regards
Jom

If you want an answer that is beyond all doubt, just ask the people who will really know...

... PayPal .

This is determined by your local laws,

It really makes sense to just accept that you will pay payment fees as a cost of doing business. You may think you're capturing another 3% by sticking the customer with a fee, but what will really happen is that you'll lose the other 97% when people see the fee and decide not to buy. Adding fees that only show up at checkout (and in this case, only on the checkout confirmation page) is a guaranteed way to increase cart abandonment. People hate surprise fees like this.

swguy:

You may think you're capturing another 3% by sticking the customer with a fee, but what will really happen is that you'll lose the other 97% when people see the fee and decide not to buy.Not if you offer free/cheaper alternatives. Then some will pay the fee, others will use one of the the free/cheaper alternatives. But of course good alternatives may not be available locally.

Fair enough. But remember that in the Netherlands, it is customary to charge fees like this, where in the US it is not. (People in the Netherlands like to pay cash, whereas people in the US like to use their credit cards.)

Why not just give people the option to add the fee on or not, its up to each individual store if they want to do this or not. I operate an affiliate site where im only getting 20% so it actually turns out to be about 16% and on those products i sell which i dont even get a percentage on, its actually costing me money to even offer them on my site!

How come osCommerce' PayPal IPN module has a "PayPal Fee" percentage increase option and a "PayPal Fixed Fee" option? People are assuming that we all use our stores in the same way when we DONT!

Now i've to increase all the prices on my whole catalogue one by one just to accomodate this extra charge, what an ineffecient system...

I say, if people want the option, then give it to them! :)

Is there a bulk way to increase all prices on a store by 4% without using Easy Populate?

fran:

I operate an affiliate site where im only getting 20% so it actually turns out to be about 16% and on those products i sell which i dont even get a percentage on, its actually costing me money to even offer them on my site!Then ... just maybe you shouldn't be offering those products. :blush:

fran:

How come osCommerce' PayPal IPN module has ...It's a good thing Zen Cart is not osCommerce then.

fran:

I say, if people want the option, then give it to them! :)
I say ... if people want to customize their code to run their site without regard for wise business practices, let them hire someone to do it for them, and deal with the consequences yourself. It's not Zen Cart's responsibility to do that.

You got Zen Cart for free. Why is it you think it's your right to demand that the developers write the code in a way that puts you in violation of your contract with your payment company?

fran:

I say, if people want the option, then give it to them! :)
Actually, why do you think it's your right to demand anything?

EDIT: A way around this is to use the taxable goods tax option and add 4% onto that or else if you're not using the tax system already, setup a new tax rate for PayPal Fee and make it around 4%. Then just add this tax option onto all your products. Not ideal but atleast if you need to change the percentage again in the future, you just have to edit the PayPal Fee tax percentage. At least this way the price is added to the original price and isn't added on at the end of the checkout process! :)

DrByte:

Actually, why do you think it's your right to demand anything?

Im not demanding anything, im suggesting that options should be included in a module to suit everyone and not just some people and im asking is there an alternative solution? Isn't that what open-source is about? You sound like a dictator trying to force people to do something your way when it only suits you and not the people asking about this... Like the terms state, as another poster pointed out, if you say on your site that the PayPal fee will be added at the end then you're NOT violating any PayPal rules.

You could at least offer an alternative solution to add these costs onto the products like i suggested in my post above using the tax system with a percentage of around 4% for PayPal. Beats changing all your product prices one by one anyway!

Lets try to be positive about this and tell us what we can do instead of being negative and telling us what we can't do...?

Wow. I wonder how many customers would be thrilled to know that buying from your website requires them to pay a "tax" if they're going to choose to pay by PayPal.
Not to mention how PayPal will respond if they find out you're doing that. And, if one of your customers does complain to PayPal about it, especially in a chargeback case, you'll find yourself losing the dispute, and maybe even other penalties. I'd recommend treading very carefully in that arena if you go there ...

Fran...

Under a free market system, you are free to sell any (legal) product you like, and offer it at any price you like.

So, if you want to sell paper clips and charge $500 trillion each for them - and there's someone out there who is willing to pay you that price - that's good.

By the same token if you have 40 trillion tons of gold, and offer to sell it for 1 cent, then that's also good.

That's the free market. If you are struggling to make a profit out of what you are selling, then zencart and its developers are not accountable for your lack of business acumen.

As I mentioned in my first post in this thread, you agreed to Paypal's TOS when you created your account. That TOS specifically prohibits you from charging a fee for using Paypal.

I'm wondering how you justify (to yourself) breaking that agreement, however cleverly you do it.

What's the difference between charging extra for the PayPal fee or increasing the original price? There's no differece whatsoever, the final price is still the same, it only matters what the customer sees on the order total screen, they obviously don't want to be seeing PayPal Fee = 10.00 and they won't and i understand why this would be a no no...
If you use the tax system and display prices with tax on the catalog then it will display the total price as the original price which includes the PayPal fee (which is a new tax rate of 3.9%). You can then remove the tax module from the order totals and it won't display the tax value but it still gets added into the total. This works well and shows the product price (with PayPal fee included) + shipping = total price.

I don't see what the problem is here and im not trying to violate any laws or screw my customers, im just trying to prevent myself from being screwed and doing it in a way which has the same ultimate outcome as increasing each and every product price only that using the tax system calculates the fee more accurately and efficiently than it would take me to go through all the products and manually change the prices myself. Also, if PayPal increase their rates or lower their rates in the future, i can just change the PayPal Fee tax rate which will change all my products in one go. It makes sense coz it saves time, and it's purely used only to calculate the total price more accurately and efficiently. Even if it meant lowering my prices in order to include the PayPal % Fee and charged the same price as before to customers, i'd happily do that, and i just did! :) Doing it this way will still make it easier for me to calculate what my affiliate 20% is going to be than if i changed all my product prices manually, my prices are the exact same as the other site im an affiate for so it would get messy having to calculate each price all the time. The way i had it setup before, i was screwing myself and ending up with 16% while PayPal took around 4%. Mind you i only care when it happens on products i make 0% on, coz then i make -4% and have to pay the difference myself... This probably only affects affiliate type setups so maybe others should just stick to the more accepted way.

My site is more of an informational portal than an e-commerce site, i only have about 15 products so im not even in this for the money and i've only made pennies off the site since i set it up last year. My site concerns matters of importance to health with information about Colloidal Silver and Blood Electrification (suppressed health alternatives that work!) and all i want to do is spread this very important information and hopefully inform some people and maybe even help some other people. I only offer a few products on my site which are very important to colloidal silver and i don't get a percetage on those particular products coz the guy who im an affiliate for ships them for me and only gets 20% himself, he only gives me 20% on stuff he makes 40% on. But the problem i was having was that i was charging the exact price it costs on his site and the exact shipping rate but minus the PayPal fee on a €200 product which im getting 0% which meant only 190 goes into my account to pay him and i've to pay a tenner out of my own pocket for something i was making 0% on in the first place. I could change all the prices up X euro or i could use an automated approach which will be more accurate and efficient for future use. I chose the latter coz it makes the most sense from an automated point of view. Sorry if this offends anyone, it's not to violate rules or ethics, its just to be able to calculate easier and more efficienty and at the end of the day the original price is still displayed the same as the final price so there's no hidden extras anywhere along the checkout process.
Im a big supporter of Zencart, im very grateful for open source and the Zencart system and i try to contribute as much as i can to help others in the open source community. I just want to solve an issue which it seems will only affect affiliate type sites so please try to look at it from my perspective.

Also, maybe some will think im a whacko for mentioning this (when they see the categories on the site) but i recently setup a completely free documentaries site with no ads or anything with a great documentary on it called Us Now which is all about open-source related initiatives, i think most of us here would really appreciate this docu, check it out:

theopensource.tv/banyak-films/us-now-video_ef6ee89d1.html