Actually, for USD/EUR transactions they charge 2.5% over the bank rate. If you use your credit card directly, the exchange rate also includes a transaction fee, that might be lower ( around 1%) or higher (3%) depending on how competitive the local bank sector is. In some countries, banks add a "foreign transaction fee" and/ or a "currency conversion fee". It's not the case for most retail banks in the Netherlands, nor in Belgium, but we are an exception rather than the norm... but if you have a look at the exchange rates offered by your bank and compare them to the rate published by the ecb, you may find that the retail rate they apply includes a fee ...

In my bank if I use VISA debit card I am charged extra 2,8% if currency is different from EUR/PLN. For Mastercard there is no such fee.

My bank doesn't do it. I pay the same price GOG has listed. I did get charged a $.02 convenience fee by GOG when I added Stargunner to my games. Or at least I think that's when I got that charge.

What, you just found a random 3+-year-old thread and decided to reply to it?

Btw. transaction fee doesn't have to be always worse than no transaction fee.

I once bought the same $10 GOG game twice on the same day within 10 minutes, once with VISA and 1.5% foreign transaction fee and once with PayPal and no transaction fee but a much worse conversion rate $:€.

In the end VISA was 0.01€ cheaper than PayPal. The lesson is that PayPal just hides it's transaction fee by tampering with the conversion rate by about the same amount. This is even less nice practice.

Plus it's basically impossible to know what exchange rate Paypal is charging until you start processing the transaction :\

When I posted that it was 5% and was based at approximately a dozen transactions.

I get charged the FTF with every purchase from GOG. Three different cards and it doesn't matter if I do it through Paypal or directly through GOG.
Amazon has a credit card that waves all FTFs which I have been thinking about getting just for that feature. Well, that and the 3% on all Amazon purchases. Which besides groceries, fuel, and games is where I mostly spend my money.

and that is exactly what your doing here.

Well, you're going places.

Just a question :

When you open your paypal account, does the transaction appear in USD or as a conversion from a EUR saldo ?

In the first case, it means that Paypal charged your credit card company in USD and that it is the credit card company / your bank that applied a 5% charge.

In the second case, it is paypal that applies its own conversion rate

Paypal charges my creditcard in euros.

To me Paypal is a necessary evil I have to use from time to time.
When I can avoid it, I will.

those dollars and cents add up. Whoever's fault it is banks or GOG I won't be buying much here until this problem goes away It costs as much for small orders as it does for large orders, The Lobbyists(at least in the US) are totally at fault for empowering banks to do this, even so, I won't be ordering here, even if it is not GOG's fault, will go back to amazon or ebay and order from private USA sellers.

if you don't like what I say, why is it your even responding to this. You're not going places.:)

Well, english is going places.

I can't stop wondering why I see more and more occurences of this particular grammatical aberration.

If there is an 'english academy', despite being very lenient I fear they can't overcome human laziness.