EBay Abandons Plans For PayPal Monopoly 277
An anonymous reader writes "eBay's has lost its fight to ban all payment methods except PayPal.
When Paypal originally announced the scheme it was to be global,
but they began with a dry run in Australia to test the reaction of government and consumer authorities.
In the public slanging match that followed between eBay and the regulatory ACCC, eBay spammed users claiming it was fighting for 'safety benefits for consumers.' Fortunately the consumers won.
Conceded eBay vice president Simon Smith, 'While we disagree with the ACCC's draft notice, we have decided to withdraw the notification to stop any further confusion and disruption among the eBay community.'
Nevertheless eBay insists PayPal is now always offered as a payment option.
Have big corporations finally learned that they can go too far? More chillingly, if eBay had launched the scheme in America would they have gotten away with it?"
Just cancel your eBay account (Score:5, Informative)
I quit eBay (Canada) the day that they forced Canadian sellers to accept Paypal. Also, the fact that they'll withhold payments to me for 21 days without paying interest didn't go over so well either.
Shame to let all that good feedback go but I won't bend over for corporate raping.
Re:A few questions (Score:5, Informative)
A specific method of payment is not the issue here. The issue is that eBay owns PayPal, making the whole "we're doing this to protect YOU" argument rather spurious at best.
eBay takes a commission on each item sold through their site. Paypal takes a chunk of every transaction that goes through. So it works like this. Person A puts up an item for sale. Person B is the winning bidder. Person A now owes eBay X amount of money based on the final price of the item. This comes out of what they receive in payment from Person B. Person B sends the money through PayPal, which takes a percentage of the transaction, Y. If the item sold for Z dollars, person A will only ever see Z-(X+Y). Essentially, eBay gets paid twice for the same auction. THAT is where people are getting (rightfully) peeved.
Re:Australia is a good common ground. (Score:4, Informative)
Technically, not correct. It is true that only three networks are offering the iPhone. However, as per ACCC policy, they have to offer a way to buy the iPhone by itself, unlocked and able to be used on any network. For example, Optus is selling the iPhone on the prepaid plans and offers an unlocking service (at a cost - just factor that into the price if you don't want to use Optus).
The ACCC could not force Apple to offer the iPhone to multiple networks; they could have just approached, say, Telstra. However, the ACCC could force Telstra to offer it unlocked, even if they were the only reseller.
My guess is that the terms & conditions offered by Apple to sell the iPhone weren't attractive enough for the 2nd tier providers (the ones who don't actually have their own networks fully in place; 3 [three.com.au] is sort of in-between; they have their own network covering major urban areas, but fallback to the Telstra network elsewhere). Of course, these terms & conditions are secret, so unless you're a major telco executive, there's no way to know.
Re:A few questions (Score:5, Informative)
I only use PayPal (Score:2, Informative)
I only use PayPal and will not deal with any seller/buyer that does not accept PayPal. I don't trust 'the check is in the mail', or 'I will wire the money to you tomorrow'. I am especially wary of sellers that offer me a discount if I pay them direct to avoid additional fees. By using PayPal, every step of the transaction is recorded and logged for reference.
The one time I was warned that a seller had been removed from eBay due to suspicious sales -- and I had already completed the sale -- I filed with eBay and PayPal. I got nearly all of my money back. The seller had gotten to his bank account and removed some of the money first.
Don't like the fees? Then charge more for your auction or go to another auction site.
Re:Paypal only (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Paypal only (Score:5, Informative)
Then I would leave e-bay, after being there since 1996
Amen. I personally have experienced the famous Paypal shaft. Froze my account for no reason and blackholed all my communications, just like so many other people. When I finally did get access to my money again after many months of frustration and runaround, I closed the account I was stupid enough to give them access to and left Paypal for good.
Paypal is an unregulated scam.
Re:Umm.. it's not a freaking charity people ... (Score:3, Informative)
Australia doesn't have free speech anyway, except that hinted at in the Magna Carta and common law. Still, there is a freedom at work, it's free as free market, in consumers expectation that a competitive, free and open market exists. We have a Trade Practices act that defines most of the behaviour required, play by the rules or face stiff penalties.
The ACCC acts in the interest of this competitive free market by protecting the consumer from abusive monopolies and similar extortion. Restricting ebays ability to force a monopoly on payments enables freedom of competition in that sector. Nothing charitable about it, severe abuses of monopoly and anticompetitive behaviour are unacceptable in our version of a free market.
Ebay giving up? NOT (Score:2, Informative)
For instance it is reported from the article that "Sellers are reporting that eBay is systematically deleting auction listings from sellers who state in their item descriptions that they "prefer" to be paid with non-PayPal methods, such as bank deposit."
This sordid story is not over and us Aussies can be 'Real Right Bastards' when we are not given a fair go.
Re:Umm.. it's not a freaking charity people ... (Score:2, Informative)
If I run an actual, physical auction house, I'm allowed to say "all payments run through the house." In fact that's what all physical auction houses DO say.
There's nothing "free as in speech" about a service like eBay. It's a commercial enterprise. They could demand payment in chickens and the ONLY right anyone has is to simply say no and not use them.
When you deal with a physical auction house your transaction is controlled by them, they are responsible if something dodgy happens during it.
When you deal with Ebay they have consistently maintained that they are only helping buyers find sellers (and vice-versa) and that thus they are not responsible for what may go wrong.
You cannot have your cake and eat it too.
Even ignoring the monopoly effects here, ebay would need to choose either:
So no, I don't think your comparison was accurate.
Re:Paypal only (Score:2, Informative)
Close, wrong country though. Trademe is great but it's a New Zealand site.
Re:A dumb end to a dumb arguement. (Score:3, Informative)
I have to sympathize at least a little with those users. I recently bought something on ebay, and I have no less than 7 emails about it in my in-box, from 5 different addresses.
That doesn't even make sense, and assuming you aren't exaggerating (no one on Slashdot ever does that), clearly this is a seller who is at the very least disorganized. There are thousands of sellers on eBay who conduct themselves in a very organized, professional manner. When eBay was still relatively new (and less obtrusive), it was merely a means for such sellers, small and large, to have a well-publicized venue in which to conduct business, without having to go through the expense and bother of maintaining one's own website.
When one of my auctions ends, the bidder almost immediately gets an e-mail from me with clear, detailed instructions on what they owe, shipping options, payment options, etc. And yet, so conditioned are bidders now to think of eBay as the entity they are dealing with, and not the seller, even though this professional-looking and intelligent e-mail arrives within minutes of the end of the auction, goes to the e-mail address that the bidder has registered with eBay, references the item number and title, reflects the final bid amount, and is clearly indicated as coming from the eBay seller (moi) by name, I still have people who either do not respond to the message or don't even read it at all, because since it doesn't come through eBay, it must be a scam.
Part of the problem is that there are tons of eBay phishing scams out there, and the average user cannot or will not learn how to discriminate between those and a legitimate e-mail from a seller, so they ignore or delete ANY e-mail with eBay as a subject. Of course, if you cannot distinguish between my End of Auction message, and the for the most part blatantly obvious phishing scams (come out of the blue, often to an address you don't even use on eBay, reference auction numbers and items that are either totally fictitious or some item you never bid on, written in broken English, and containing embedded links that go to some website in Russia, Romania, or some "Whatever-istan"), then you shouldn't be on eBay to begin with (or, indeed, on the Internet at all).
Re:A dumb end to a dumb arguement. (Score:3, Informative)
Actually it is very easy to rip someone off using loopholes in paypal's system.
I can place an auction for an item which i claim to be in the US, and when you win it i can ship it from the US and make you submit payment to an email address via paypal, where the account is actually registered in australia (tho you obviously cant see this based purely on the email address).
Then i send you a brick or some other heavy junk from somewhere in the US...
You receive it, get real angry and file a paypal claim...
I can then try all the tricks in the book, i can say there's been an error and we shipped the wrong item, and if you cancel the claim we can proceed to send you the right one (if you cancel the claim you can never open it again)...
Before you file a claim i can delay you with talk of slow shipping and false promises that the item will be with you soon etc, you only have 45 days to file a claim, if i delay you that long there's nothing you can do.
If you do file a claim, and paypal finds in your favor they will ask you to send the item back to me using a shipping service with online tracking... This is where the "heavy junk" comes in, it will cost you a lot to send the heavy junk to Australia with tracking, especially since you need to use a fairly fast shipping method to avoid the paypal claim expiring... You are expected to pay for this yourself, and paypal wont refund what it cost you to send the item back.
And yes, despite the fact the item originally came from the US you will be forced to send it to australia because that's where the paypal account is registered.
Also if you already sent the item back (ie during the negotiation phase i promised to deal with it if you returned it) you wont be able to send it with tracking and will thus have the claim rejected by paypal.
And throughout this process, paypal will help the unscrupulous seller.
See http://www.ev4.org/wordpress/category/fastmemorymanscam/ [ev4.org] for details of how someone scammed me and many others using this method, and google for fastmemoryman - my site is the first hit nowadays, a LOT of people have been screwed by him.
Honest buyers? Are you kidding? (Score:4, Informative)
It discouraged honesty from buyers.
Honesty from buyers? My guess is you haven't sold a significant amount of stuff on eBay. I have over 10,000 feedbacks with a 99.7% positive rating and have seen just about every buyer scam in the book first hand. I'm an optimistic person by nature but when you've had people try to burn you as much as I have you cease being so optimistic about the "honesty from buyers". Most buyers are fine but a very significant percentage are not and making it impossible for sellers to respond to the bad ones does not help anyone.
The vast majority of feedbacks are either content free ("A+++++ BEST SELLER EVER!!!!") or simply rude responses from people who couldn't be bothered to resolve a problem civilly. I particularly love getting negative feedback from buyers who can't be bothered to actually read the auction terms. Happens ALL the time.
While I'll be the first to admit there are a lot of scummy sellers out there there are at least as many scummy buyers. eBay's change in policy is an attempt to assure buyers that eBay is safe (it isn't) so that they don't take their business elsewhere.