Don't have any suggestions, but here is the thread where the policy change was recently discussed.

I got a payment from a German agency and found out that PayPal charged me 4% just for receiving it!!! (I am located in Canada). I have a personal, not business account, and the agency sent me money directly from their PayPal account, no credit cards or anything like that. Looks like they changed their policy on June 3'2009 - I never was charged a fee for receiving money to personal account before, unless I was paid my credit card. I consider it highway robbery. No direct notification about policy changes, too - just a little link in the corner where they silently post their "policy updates".
What are the other options I can use? I have heard about MoneyBookers - are they better? Any other internet banking options? I would very much appreciate your recommendations.
Thanks,
Elena.

I am sorry to hear that Elena but paypal DOES NOT rip you off. The German agency does. I just got 2 payments from FT and DT and got the money in full. No charge at all. It has nothing to do with paypal. And yes, I have a personal account as well. That's all you need.

Quote from: Elenathewise on August 07, 2009, 17:05

I got a payment from a German agency and found out that PayPal charged me 4% just for receiving it!!! (I am located in Canada). I have a personal, not business account, and the agency sent me money directly from their PayPal account, no credit cards or anything like that. Looks like they changed their policy on June 3'2009 - I never was charged a fee for receiving money to personal account before, unless I was paid my credit card. I consider it highway robbery. No direct notification about policy changes, too - just a little link in the corner where they silently post their "policy updates".
What are the other options I can use? I have heard about MoneyBookers - are they better? Any other internet banking options? I would very much appreciate your recommendations.
Thanks,
Elena.

I am sorry to hear that Elena but paypal DOES NOT rip you off. The German agency does. I just got 2 payments from FT and DT and got the money in full. No charge at all. It has nothing to do with paypal. And yes, I have a personal account as well. That's all you need.

yes paypal charge 3-5% for payments from countries that are foreign to you (I believe this to be similar to most banks). In most cases, but not all the agency pays the fee.

It seems there are 2 things we can call payments in this discussion, and we should be careful to discuss them separately: agency to PP account and PP account to bank/CC. 

I believe that in the first case it is the agency, not PP, that is the culprit by having the recipient pay the fees.

Elena I am sorry to hear about your situation - I can empathize as paypal stole $500 from me 5 years ago - they have tended to work very well in those countries where clients have jurisdiction over them (Europe, North America etc) but, here in China for example, they rip people off constantly secure in the knowledge that we really have no recourse legally as the cost to take action over them requires that we can get jusrisdiction over them - to do that we would need to spend thousands and thousands ... not realistic for a few hundred dollars. They make my blood boil because I can only imagine the amount they have stolen over the years ...

I recently decided to try out the Payoneer option and I can tell you that I am very pleased with it - there are some up-front costs (I think it cost $10 for the card) but after that the fees are very low (if any), especially if you are in North America. I especially like the idea that I can access cash or the charge card all around the world as it is a Mastercard ... perhaps you can take a look at the Dreamstime and istock deals. Dreamstime payed immediately into the account - istock unfortunatley took over 2 weeks ... I believe if you are in north america they will also do a direct deposit for you into your bank account.
Hopefully the other web sites will start to allow payments into Payoneer very soon.  Hope that helps.

Phil you are correct there are some fees but it depends how you use the card ... for example, if you want the card to be loaded immediately then you pay a couple dollars for that - or if you wait 3 business days there is no charge to load - in other words it really depends how you use the card - if you use it as a way just to get your cash at one time then the fees are limited/minimal ... if you are making a lot of transactions on it then yes, the fees might start to add up ... but I really like the versatility of it - I just got from 4 days in Bangkok and I could use it anywhere there ...

And yes only d-time and istock are using it at the moment but i assume the other sides will jump on board soon enough --- you don't need a separate card for each though - mine happens to be a dreamstime card but my istock payouts go on it as well (though that might be why they took their sweet time sending the pament

I had been receiving cheques before for payouts cause I didn't have any other option and this year all the banks here raised their banking fees by 400% - that meant for every little overseas check the processing fee alone per cheque was US$12 and they held the cheque for a month before it cleared ... so I was pleased just to have another option.

PayPal are launching a new business service next year around micropayments with lower rates, when it is online have a look and see if you will save money by switching services.

Slightly off topic: The positive about the new PayPal service is we may see a merchant service that pays as the transaction takes place, as with the new service within a transaction it can split the money and pay mutiple accounts, if a buyer chooses 5 images then the 5 artists could be paid to their PayPal accounts and the commission paid to the Merchant account all at the time of transaction, Amazon FPS can do this now but is restricted to US only.

David   

By the way, here is an article about this... Looks like I am not the only one pissed...
http://www.gadgetell.com/tech/comment/paypal-adds-new-fees-with-no-notice/

PayPal are providing a service, a pretty good one too and considerably cheaper and faster than most other providers.

If I want send money by bank transfer to another country my bank charges me a flat fee of �25 (about $40 US) irrespective of the amount. If I want to deposit a cheque in another currency again the charges are huge and it takes ages before the money is cleared. If I ever use a credit card then I know that the retailer (and/or me directly) are being charged 1-2% for doing so __ especially for on-line flights. If I buy tickets for a concert of other event I am usually charged a 'handling charge' supplement too.

I think the charges in this case may be optional for the agency themselves to pay. I always used to have a similar charge deducted whenever I received a payment from CanStockPhoto (I dropped them some time ago) and I also have charges deducted from Rodeo.fi too.

In comparison to the traditional options of transferring funds, like banks and Western Union for example, IMHO PayPal are much cheaper and better.

I just received my Shutterstock earnings via Paypal. No fees deducted, so whatever the change is, it did not affect me - yet.

I couldn't find out how much a "premium" account costs?

I don't think a premium account  costs anything. I got a 'merchant'/premium account when I was doing some trading on eBay. I didn't bother to change the account but that has always charged me 3-4% on incoming payments and 3-4% on exchange of currency. It is a lot and it is probably the reason that Eurozone people use bank transfer because that is free between Euro countries. It's not much help but id on't know if there are any much cheaper alternatives between non-common currency areas.