add paypal cost to the order

the thing is that even though its the SAME price, paypal expressly forbids charging a fee to use their services ( dependent on the country )

fran:

... 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.
If you take a couple steps back, you'll realize that HE would have to pay PayPal fees if HE were taking the payment directly. So, HE should be willing to give you a discount on the items you're collecting payment for on his behalf.

He must absolutely love having YOU collect the money and pay the service charges, since that means HE doesn't have to! And that means HE is pocketing your "tenner" ... all for letting you do all the work.
HE is making the real money on the item ... and you're getting screwed.

And, if your customers were to discover that YOU are charging more for the same thing they can get elsewhere (ie: on HIS site) without having to pay your new 4% tax, they're likely going to go there instead.

I applaud your philanthropic mindset and your desire to help people. But sometimes it makes sense to re-evaluate things so your kindness isn't taken unfair advantage of.

Maybe you need to consider reviewing your business relationship with him and discuss what's not working.

... and, if in your discussions with him you discover that he's paying PayPal service charges on the money you send to him to pay for the items, you can pay him with PayPal MassPay instead, and only pay $1.00 for the transaction ... That's a lot better than your $10 you had mentioned, and you could even just deduct the $1 from the amount you send, letting him treat the difference as the service fee ... which is a whole lot less than the 4% you were dealing with. You might want to check PayPal's TOS on using MassPay ... but it should be acceptable if there is no risk of chargebacks or need for any fraud/seller protection on the transactions since it's just moving money between trusted parties, similar to paying an employee.

fran:

What's the difference between charging extra for the PayPal fee or increasing the original price?

The difference is that you said you wouldn't add a separate fee for Paypal oders when you agreed to the TOS. Your word either means something to you, or it doesn't.

I happen to think that colloidal silver and blood electrification are worthless snake oil scams, but your products or intentions aren't important. What matters is if your vendors (including Paypal) and customers can trust you to do what you say you'll do.

As Merlinpa said: it depends on local laws and regulations.

Forbidding to calculate these fees is illegal in several countries, which makes the agreement illegal.

DrByte:

If you take a couple steps back, you'll realize that HE would have to pay PayPal fees if HE were taking the payment directly. So, HE should be willing to give you a discount on the items you're collecting payment for on his behalf.

He must absolutely love having YOU collect the money and pay the service charges, since that means HE doesn't have to! And that means HE is pocketing your "tenner" ... all for letting you do all the work.
HE is making the real money on the item ... and you're getting screwed.

And, if your customers were to discover that YOU are charging more for the same thing they can get elsewhere (ie: on HIS site) without having to pay your new 4% tax, they're likely going to go there instead.

I applaud your philanthropic mindset and your desire to help people. But sometimes it makes sense to re-evaluate things so your kindness isn't taken unfair advantage of.

Maybe you need to consider reviewing your business relationship with him and discuss what's not working.

You're absolutely right in a normal business situation and i hadn't actually thought of it that way but even if he had only offered me 15% back when i set this up a year ago i still would have taken it because it was my first affiliate site at the time and i was happy with anything being my first venture of this type, plus i approached him and he could have told me to get lost, this was his first time joining up with another website. I had agreed with him at the time to take payments with PayPal, send him 80% of the sale price plus postage as all i was doing was forwarding an email order for him to pack and post so he was doing more work anyway, its not as if i was 'doing all the work' in the whole sourcing of products/selling/packaging/posting process (once the site is setup), he's doing more physical work in the long run but yes, it did take some time and effort to set this up so the site has yet to even pay for the time it took i suppose, i still have to put some real time into the design though, its pants at the moment and im only just about ready to begin doing Google AdWords to market it properly, this is just a side job which is more of an experiment to see how it goes...
But the good thing about doing this was that we're working together instead of being in competition really and im not bothered going straight to the supplier myself and getting the full 40% coz i'd have to do more physical work sending things out...!

The point is to set up multiple different sites getting 20% off each or whatever people agree to and letting them all automate themselves and never having to pack or ship the products myself or do any of the tedious physical work. I've been making website solutions for people for years but this was the first site i've made for myself that im actually selling stuff on through my own name so im still learning the business side of things, being a merchant, the legalities etc. so I do appreciate your advice DrByte, thank you very much for that, especially the MassPay function in PayPal, didn't know that one although i dont think we were being charged anything for paypal to paypal transfers. I've emailed him to see if he will make the changes to our agreement that you suggest but even if not, then i'll just have to stick with my 16% which im still happy with anyway, so all good... I'll be asking for 20% after CC processing fees in future though!

If you ask me we should begin displaying the PayPal/CC company fee on the order total screen so people can compare the difference in total cost of using different payment methods or gateways on your site, or is that legal? Certainly sounds fairer.

stevesh, to be honest, i didnt read the full terms and conditions, does anyone? Thanks for the tip though. And i wont get into it too much here but if you think colloidal silver is a snake oil scam, then you havent tried the stuff i've tried! Or are you just going on what you've been told/read about it from big pharma? There are lots of wrong ways to make colloidal silver yourself so its difficult to know if what your drinking is the real stuff. All you have to do is look at any health forum on the net and people that drink it are testifying all over the world as to its effectiveness against many diseases and disorders, many of which conventional medicine fails miserably at. Nuff said, read the history of colloidal silver pre-1940's back to ancient times... :)
What colloidal silver won't do is restore your immune system back to 100% because of all the crap we eat and drink on a daily basis so you might rid your body of parasites, viruses and bacteria but it'll all come back pretty quick if your immune system is low (most peoples are), you'll need Vitamin D3 for that, and lots of it. Vitamin D3 is resposible for so many functions in the human body that 5000iu per day is highly recommended, then your body can take over looking after itself.

Sounds like you've got a number of things to work out as you continue to refine your plans. And, as you say, 16% is better than 0%
You might want to work with your supplier on the 0% items ... at least work with him to stop you from losing money on those items.

fran:

If you ask me we should begin displaying the PayPal/CC company fee on the order total screen so people can compare the difference in total cost of using different payment methods or gateways on your site, or is that legal? Certainly sounds fairer.Frankly, it's really of no importance to the end customer. All they want or need to know is how much they must pay you.
Too much other information only creates confusion.
And confusion results in lost sales.

Consider this:
A major supermarket went to a lot of trouble to create a huge display of 20 varieties of jams and jellies and preserves in one section of their store. They monitored the sales.
And then they reworked the display to only showcase 6 choices.
The sales volume after reducing the choices to only 6 ... was vastly greater than when there were 20 choices.
Choice Paralysis occurs when there are too many choices ... often because people are afraid to make the wrong choice ... and end up making NO choice at all. They'd rather miss out on the product altogether than to buy the wrong one.
Same thing happens with telling too much information that's not relevant to them. If they don't know exactly why that information is being shown to them, confusion sets in. And confusion causes people to get scared that maybe they might be about to be swindled, and causes them to close browsers or go look for other websites that aren't confusing or showing so much scary information.

Remember too that ALL Card Clearing organisations charge fees for their services, so to single out PayPal as some sort of rogue who's policy to charge fees is being considered "unreasonable" - is itself unreasonable.

There are operational costs to running a business, and credit card clearing fees are a part of that cost.

All businesses face the challenge of minimising costs and maximising profits and the key to success is in striking the right balance.

Small retailers like using PayPal because it is quick and easy to set up and its fees for small-turnover companies is actually quite competitive.

But it's a free market and no-one is holding a gun to your head forcing you to use PayPal. If you don't like their policies then don't use them... it really is that simple and straight-forward.

Raise all prices by 3%.

Offer a 3% discount for non-paypal customers.

I'm brand new to both this forum and to Zen cart, but it seems to me that if you don't like the few pennies that PayPal charges, then maybe you should get your very own merchant account and then you'll see what real charges are.

After paying discount fees, processing fees, per item charges, service charges, and more for your merchant account, you'll find out what a deal a PayPal account really is.