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eBay's Plan to Force PayPal Rejected Down Under

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday June 12, @10:13AM
from the monopoly-schmonopoly dept.
Businesses Google The Almighty Buck News
Jm_aus writes "eBay's plan to force all users to use PayPal only has been rejected by Australia's competition regulator, the ACCC. This followed 650 submissions from eBay users as well as from Australian banks, other payment services, the Australian Reserve Bank, and (anonymously) Google, which aired a lot of dirty laundry about PayPal's unresponsiveness and failure to sign up to the local banking code of conduct. Apparently the public benefits from eBay's 'Bad Buyer Experience' elimination program are likely to be 'minimal.' There is a period for appeals."

Related Stories

[+] Technology: Aussie Reserve Bank Eyeing eBay's PayPal Policy 63 comments
Bulldust writes "Regular readers will recollect the recent story that eBay is forcing Australian users over to PayPal or COD as the only forms of payment in June 2008: eBay Australia Makes PayPal Mandatory. It now appears that the Australian Reserve Bank will consider throwing its weight behind users, should the eBay policy be deemed to breach trade practice and competition laws."
Firehose:eBay's PayPal-forcing plan rejected by Jm_aus (869662)
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

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  • As a buyer, I really want to use my credit card directly. PayPal, last time I used it, only covered a $200 return or so. I went straight through to my credit card company (which is linked to my PayPal account) and did a chargeback through them. PayPal sent me a nastigram saying if you keep that up, we'll cut you off.

    Yeah, thanks but no thanks EBay.

    • You're in luck mate! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 12, @10:25AM (#23763669)
      As a buyer, I really want to use my credit card directly.

      Just fill out the form at gday.ebay.mate/safecredit.asp and we'll get you started faster than a kangaroo can steal your vegemite sandwich.
    • Unfortunately in the UK banks are no longer required to help you out or issue chargebacks in cases involving PayPal. The reason is that the banking code only requires them to do anything when you have a dispute with the person you had a transaction with, which in this case is PayPal. You send the money to PayPal, and then in a separate transaction they send it to the seller. So, if you problem is with the seller, they don't have to help.

      I started a petition to get the law changed: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/3partyccs/ [pm.gov.uk]

      • I did my homework, and that's why they have my credit card on the back end (which, thankfully, can tell them to get stuffed). You're right about linking to any account that keeps cash on hand in it. PayPal also has a long history of locking cash in its customer accounts. Really, they're just terrible to everybody involved. I don't believe I've bought anything with my account since that time.

        From a seller's point of view: The EBay style of charging the seller commission, then charging the seller a percentage of PayPal too kinda gets me. Sure, they're treating them like the separate company they used to be, but come on. I suppose you get what you get for having something less than a true credit card merchant account (which costs).

        As an aside rant, I'm sad that nobody does a cash discount anymore. I'd happily pay you on a 2% reduction to save you the 3% or whatever my CC company charges. Well, really to save myself 2%, but you'd profit as a vendor!

        • Re:Right, because PayPal's better... (Score:5, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 12, @10:37AM (#23763863)
          The reason why you don't get cash discounts anymore is that it's against Visa/MC/AmEx merchant terms and conditions.

          It's even disallowed to require the transaction to be over a certain value to accept payment via credit cards.
        • Nobody does a cash discount anymore because it's against eBay policy. eBay is all about making the seller unable to get around eBay's exorbitant fees in any way possible. That is their entire basis for forcing PayPal.

          To give an example of their total fee structure: after selling a small item for $30, you're only going to see around $24.50 for it after fees, and then you still have to pay to ship it.

            • Re:Right, because PayPal's better... (Score:4, Interesting)

              by MoonBuggy (611105) on Thursday June 12, @11:59AM (#23765177) Homepage
              The post mentioned total fee structure, not just the PayPal fees. On your $38 auction you would be paying at least another $2.74 in eBay fees, and that's just going on the bare minimum amounts.

              There's also the fact that there are services equivalent to PayPal that charge 1.5%+$0.30, so its service simply can't compete on value. That's precisely why eBay are now choosing to force sellers to offer it - in order to prevent them from using more economical options.

        • Re:Right, because PayPal's better... (Score:4, Informative)

          by MoonBuggy (611105) on Thursday June 12, @11:45AM (#23764933) Homepage
          PayPal does indeed suck for sellers as well as buyers.

          Really I don't object to them charging a percentage on transactions - it's still cheaper than a full merchant account. What I very much do object to is them charging twice what Google Checkout does for an equivalent transaction. What I object to even more is being forced as a seller to use PayPal - incidentally does anyone know who in the UK I should make a complaint about this to? It reeks of anticompetitive behaviour, as the Australians have realised.

          eBay actually has Google Checkout listed as 'Not permitted' on their Accepted Payments [ebay.co.uk] page, and anyone who has ever tried to email eBay's support team to question this will know how hard it is to get an answer (they normally just spout irrelevant canned responses until you give up) but I did finally get an email from eBay explaining that I am allowed to use it but that I must offer it alongside PayPal and outside of the eBay checkout process.

          I won't even go into PayPal's dubious dispute processes and lack of safeguards - they are well documented elsewhere, but again the argument of "don't use them" is rendered moot by eBay's policies.

  • Can somebody explain? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by muellerr1 (868578) on Thursday June 12, @10:19AM (#23763597) Homepage
    In most countries, why is PayPal allowed to act like a bank without being regulated like a bank? I've never understood how they get away with that.

  • And furthermore... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Barny (103770) <bakadamage-slashdot@yahoo.com> on Thursday June 12, @10:23AM (#23763649)
    ... we would like to add, on behalf of the Australians who you are trying to blatantly extort:

    *ahem*

    "Like fuck you will"

    That was an extract from the actual brief, word for word, honest :P

  • Paypal sucks blah blah (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Slimee (1246598) on Thursday June 12, @10:26AM (#23763697) Journal
    I can't stand paypal. I've had an account since the earlier days before there really were options, though I so rarely use it because without PAYING for an account, I can only transfer money through a direct bank transfer. On EVERY ONE of my ebay listings I have to add a footnote alerting people that they can't pay with a credit card through paypal because paypal won't allow me to do that...

    And the only way to be able to do that is to sign up for an account where they take a percentage of all of my transactions.

    How does that commercial go? "It's my money and I want it now!"
    But seriously, I'm tired of paypal, I just wish it would go the way of the dinosaurs because it's such a frustrating site to use to transfer funds.
  • I was part of the massive lawsuit against Paypal back when there were plenty of scammers. One such tried to screw me and even though I provide more than enough evidence to PROVE without a shadow of a doubt this guy was scamming the system, committing mail fraud, AND on top of that was using stolen credit cards, AND i gave him his confirmed address...

    They still sided with him. However, I knew this was a possibility and I moved the money out of paypal, and blocked them from charging me back through my bank who happily sided with me.

    About 6 months later I joined the lawsuit, and provided all of the evidence to them for exhibits. If you didn't know we won... and won big. Not happy with the default settlement offering I filed for the full settlement and received my check a few months later. I framed it... and I will NEVER do business with Paypal again.

    I don't care if Ebay bought them. They do not follow banking guidelines, they consistently have proven themselves untrustworthy and generally don't abide by the law OR their own policies.

    If Ebay goes to Paypal only, I think they'll soon realize the size of the mistake they will make when other auction sites blow past them at 90mph!

  • Ebay is Dead to Me, Paypal is Evil (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Colonel Korn (1258968) on Thursday June 12, @11:03AM (#23764219)
    I sort of enjoyed bidding for things on eBay back when it was new and there were deals to be had, but now nearly everything is at a fixed price and the only purpose it has for someone like me is to buy/sell used computer parts, which I can do elsewhere without the risk or hassle. I feel like the new eBay is mostly for soccer moms who don't know of alternatives, or for people who have very specialized interests with no other options (usually there are other, cheaper, safer options).

    On the other hand, I never liked Paypal. As far as I could tell its sole purpose was to make it easier for sellers to scam buyers, since the only protection given to buyers is something on the order of $100. I know some people who bought Apple laptops on eBay, never received them, but were unable to get all of their ~$2000 back. If it happened to me, I'd do what another poster said today and stop the payment to Paypal from my credit card, but if it were me I wouldn't have made the purchase in the first place.

  • Verfied Accounts (Score:5, Interesting)

    by drxenos (573895) on Thursday June 12, @11:11AM (#23764359)
    I found out the hard way that when you "verify" your account, the bank account used to verify your PayPal account becomes the primary account. All payments you make through PayPal come out of it by default. I called them because all my purchases were coming out of my bank account and not my credit card. They said the bank account has to be the primary, and the only way to change it was to revert to "unverified," which I did. I like the protection I get from using a credit card. Payments extracted from a checking account has no where near the same protection.
    • Yep, mod this up! It's an absoloute fucking scam (again) on paypals behalf.

      Once you add bank to an existing account, it opts to directly withdraw from the bank rather than credit card, you CAN'T make the credit card default.
      In Australia, this means I get charged bank fees for using my regular bank account, (maximum 5 transactions a month free, than small but annoying fees)

      The credit card obviously has no fees - they are happy with the interest you pay as a dipshit consumer in debt (which I'm not)

      Paypal have done this so that people can't do ccard chargebacks as easily.

  • Paypal tried to steal $1200 from my wife (Score:5, Informative)

    by shadowofwind (1209890) on Thursday June 12, @11:26AM (#23764641)
    Paypal claimed the seller had the money, and told the seller we (the buyer) had the money, and lied and stonewalled for months. Finally they just gave the money back without explanation after a state Attourney General inquired on our behalf.

    The previous time I posted this on /., I was modded down as a liar. But unbelievable as the stody is, it is the truth.

    In fairness to Paypal, our experience was shortly after it was purchased by EBay, so probably EBay cleaned it up some since then.
  • I've been using Paypal since the very beginning. I've been using eBay and Yahoo Auctions since they were first established. I was thinking about how much $$$ I've spent on auction items over the years back when I last did my taxes. My purchases peaked in 2002 with just over $16k in purchase. In total I have bought nearly $100k of crap off of them both over the last decade. Amazingly enough I have never been burnt. All of my eBay purchases used PayPal I'm sorry to say. The only time I ever had a problem I simply did a chargeback with my CC. PP got pissed and threatened me; when I said I was going to do a chargeback they transferred me internally to a guy who did the threatening. He was obviously reading prepared material from a script. They never locked my account though. That was before you had to verify yourself to send $$$.

    I moved back in 2003. That prompted me to move to a new bank as well. I was fortunate enough to have put my old bank account into Paypal when I verified my account. When I moved I sure as hell didn't update the info. It remained that way until this Spring when I accidentally forgot to change the payment method from PayPal's default of a bank account to a CC. They realized that my account was closed at that time and unverified my PP account. I had to give them my new bank account info. I hated to do it but I had to complete the purchase. I'm seriously considering signing up for a new account somewhere, using it for 6 months and then closing it just so I can get back to the way it was.

    It's amazing that I've never actually gotten burnt considering how much I've used PP. The vast majority of the equipment I buy is networking gear. I'm pretty careful who I buy from. If I have any feeling that it's not a good seller I move on. I won't buy from anyone on the West coast (too much counterfeit Cisco hardware comes from China into the West coast). I'll even read all the seller's reviews and go back through their past auctions and the buyers to see if it looks legit. I guess being careful pays off. I'm definitely not a PP or eBay shill. I lost a fair bit of money in eBay stock and I think the wannabe bank PayPal should rot in litigation hell, but I never have been burnt.

  • So, what is the alternative? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by AmiMoJo (196126) <mojo@@@world3...net> on Thursday June 12, @12:53PM (#23766223) Homepage
    Can someone suggest a good alternative to PayPal? eBay seems to have banned everything else that accepts credit cards and many buyers only want to pay by cc, even when you explicitly state that you don't take them. Basically it's impossible to sell anything on fleaBay without a PayPal account I think.

    Maybe an alternative to eBay is needed. Amazon is okay for books and music, but what about other stuff? eBay actually seems like quite a good way to sell some stuff, if it just wasn't for PayPal.

    • Re:elimination program? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by clang_jangle (975789) on Thursday June 12, @10:25AM (#23763677)

      What's that ""Bad Buyer Experience" elimination program" ?


      If my personal experience is any indication, it's the process whereby upon reporting being victimised by an eBay "power seller" eBay threatens to find you guilty of being a "bad buyer" and threatens to place sanctions on your eBay and Paypal accounts unless you pay up. The workaround I found was to change all my eBay user info to the crooked seller's email address and a fictitious physical address and I canceled my paypal account. :P

      It probably helped that I did this within an hour of eBay finding in favor of the dishonest seller (item was a Chinese counterfeit and did not function properly, also they attempted to charge for two items when I only bought one item). This was about three months ago, I've not heard anything about the matter since. Obviously, eBay lost me as a customer.

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