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Can I add “free” items to my Paypal shopping cart?

March 13, 2006 / Dave Taylor / Amazon, eBay, and Online Shopping Help,, PayPal Help / 3 Comments

I currently use paypal shopping carts on my website, 1 Madd Max.com. I am going to be releasing some new products but will offer them as an add on to existing items. What I need is a FREE paypal button to add these items to the shopping cart. Currently I cannot do this as the shopping cart needs a currency value to work.

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Thanks for your question, It’s an interesting one. In fact, I called and talked with the tech support people at Paypal to ensure that I wasn’t missing something when I gave you this answer.
The bad news: they do not support zero cost transactions in the shopping cart. Period.
I even tried creating a one-cent item with their “button builder” tool then in the HTML code changing the cost to zero, but when you try to add that item to your shopping cart the Paypal system generates a “please enter an amount greater than zero” and it won’t go through.
us-currencyAt this point I am afraid there’s no way to do this with the Paypal system. Given that, I’d suggest that you just offer “penny upgrades” or similar and have a picture of a penny right next to the item to emphasize that it’s only one cent more to add those to an order.
Wish I had a better answer. I imagine if you wanted to go through the hassle of switching to a different shopping cart system you could easily add zero-cost transactions, but Paypal doesn’t support that.
The only other thought I have is that perhaps you could have a pull-down option menu for the item that you know people have to purchase, and on that menu it would have all the free optional add-ons? Or even do that as check boxes associated with a specific item in your store?
Good luck however you proceed!

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Starbucks coffee cup I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you, Dave, for all your helpful information by buying you a cup of coffee!
online shopping, paypal, shopping carts

3 comments on “Can I add “free” items to my Paypal shopping cart?”

  1. Gordon says:
    May 17, 2011 at 10:20 pm

    Thanks. This answered my question entirely. I also tried altering the HTML to change to value to zero.
    Thanks for the help.
    Gordon

    Reply
  2. kenneth says:
    February 29, 2008 at 9:09 pm

    can i get items online for free. Like an action repaly.

    Reply
  3. Ray says:
    March 13, 2006 at 3:47 pm

    Create multiple items:
    1) Basic item
    2) Basic item w/ free addon #1
    3) Basic item w/ free addon #2
    4) Basic item w/ free addons #1 and #2
    They all cost the same.

    Reply

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