Originally Posted by
Some person
Pay attention to the wording. Ebay specifies the spread, but most others specify the fee. You get the fee by dividing the spread by two.
If you specify a fee, then you can charge an additional fee by using a reference rate which already contains an unspecified fee, so the real fee can be a lot higher than the disclosed fee.
If you specify a spread, then you can't use this trick as you are referencing your own buying and selling rates rather than a reference rate.
In this case, the total fee was 3.3%, and the spread was 6.6%. If Ebay claimed to be using a spread of 3%, but used a spread of 6.6%, this sounds like false marketing.
To update, the charge posted as $47.51 (€0.88402 to $1), so eBay/PayPal's rate was 3.1% higher than what Chase used. Though wouldn't their fee be more like 1.55% (3.1/2) given what you said before? Or did you mean multiply by two instead of divide by two?