Lee.org

I sell stuff on eBay. Many of my buyers pay via Paypal. Paypal has a very convenient integration with eBay and UPS so that I just have to click a “Ship Now” button on their website to pay for the shipment and print out a label. Slick.

I also have a UPS Internet Shipping account. Today I tried shipping the same package with both the Paypal system and UPS internet shipping directly. It turns out that Paypal charges a 15% overhead fee. Paypal charged $9.60 for the package, UPS $8.20. Of course they don’t call it that… Paypal says, “This Shipping Cost is the same as available directly from UPS On Demand”. That’s well and good but no one ever gets a UPS On Demand Account because they are needlessly more expensive than regular Internet Shipping accounts.

I won’t be using that service any more…. paying $1.50 for a series of 6 or so copy and paste operations from Paypal to UPS. Hurumph.