On sales platforms not requiring specific payment methods, I've noticed an incredibly strong trend "backward" to paying by check. Am I the only one seeing this? If, as a seller, you are seeing it as well, why do you think this is occurring? If you are a buyer preferring to use checks, would you mind sharing why this is your preference? Mike
I had to read that a few times. I apologize for being unable to answer your questions, but that trend is downright weird! I quit using checks some time ago.
I think many folks have maxed out their cards but find something they really want. Probably not really smart. I sometimes offer to send a check if it will save the dealer on fees. For what I do, people that were using checks are now bringing me cash. I don't understand that. It's all the same to me but just seems strange.
I prefer to use a check when buying coins to avoid fees. However, if the seller prefers PayPal, no problem.
I just looked into my own checkbook register and realized that a fair number of my D2D purchases this past year have been via check. I haven't yet reflected on whether that was my choice or theirs, but that may help inform me.
Interesting . . . in all but two of the cases where I wrote checks for inventory from other dealers, they either required an extra fee for the use of payment services, or they offered a discount for using a check or MO. Perhaps it's become normal for buyers to assume as much when they make purchases on-line?
For many years, credit-card companies (and laws their lobbyists promoted) prohibited merchants from charging a different price for credit vs. cash or check. That's no longer the case, so more and more merchants are passing along transaction fees to their customers. Where they can't get away with that (hi, PayPal), they instead offer "cash discounts" to people paying with cash or check. It seems to me that it's up to the merchant and customer to agree on a price, and payment-method costs are fair input into that negotiation. It really grinds my gears to see restrictions like PayPal's, or like the ones big credit-card companies once managed to disguise as "consumer-protection legislation".
I prefer writing checks over using plastic. Cash is always my first choice but if I don't have enough on me, then checks are the next choice. It seems like I'm being forced into paying on line more and more but I don't have a paypal acct so I'm limited in how to pay for some transactions.
Are these new customers or people who have paid you before using something like Paypal? If they are new customers, one possibility is that these are people who used to avoid online marketplaces and only buy in person at shows. Now with few to no shows, they have been forced to migrate online but have continued to pay the same way they did at shows.
It's been mixed for established customers who sometimes have used PayPal, but have written me more checks than seems normal this year. In the case of new customers who might always have preferred checks, that's certainly a possibility but short of asking them, which seems a bit intrusive, I probably can't get at that information.
