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Google vs. eBay/PayPal
That's Unpossible! writes "Google has today made a small announcement on their blog which could shake up the landscape of buying things online : they are going to start allowing certain parties to sell items through Google Base, which people can buy using credit cards linked to their Google Account. According to another blog post, Google already accepts payments in this fashion for Google Video, Google Earth, Google Store, etc. How long until Google Base is directly competing with eBay? The framework is now in place."
Don't forget that eBay already has a HUGE customer-base established, in addition to having some odd categories which I never thought would get any attention but looking at the listings there's quite a few items already :P Not to mention that thanks to goldenpalace's advertisement stunts (ie: buying odd objects off eBay for exorbitent prices) eBay already got a pretty good spotlight on TV. Two things to keep in mind here:
- When buying the shop that has lots of selection will hold lower prices
- As a seller, I'm looking to get maximum exposure when I sell something.
Those two factors, I believe, will give google a pretty good run.
Erik
That the service is going to be a Beta?
the internet? the google name? id love a big competitor to ebay...but its not THAT easy...
Failing to see how ebay is specifically singled out here.
It does give folks another avenue that the ebay 'buy-it-now' provides, but there isn't anything within the google framework that does the auction thing.
I mean, amazon provides the flea market thing as well...
eBay combined with Paypal currently is a fraudsters dream, its the worlds number 1 place to buy stolen (from burglary,robberys) merchandise and fake/counterfit goods, eBay try to keep a handle on it but with the shere size of the userbase and cashflow the incentive to crack down isnt really there and is probably impossible to stop,
iam suprised that the Police/FBI havent shut them down a long time ago for aiding and abetting, i guess that lobby money talks again
I, for one, welcome our new google overlords. Really. I was perfectly happy with paypal (aside from obsurd fees) until I had to dispute anything or required their customer service for anything. Paypal/Ebay is a nightmare to deal with, and will screw you over if anything anywhere in their pages and pages of small legal print says they can (it probably does in almost every situation). I'm right onboard with http://www.paypalsucks.com/ now.
My name is coaxeus, and I approve this message. In fact, I think it is awesome.
The Google overlords....
Not really, competition for Paypal is okay, but why do it have to be Google again. I even prefer Microsoft handling my financial transactions over Google. They are less scary, you know exactly what there plans are.
when they can make more money from it, than they currently make from Ebay's ads.
It's competition! Time to announce layoffs!
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
It seems that Google is doing a Microsoft in trying to get a foot into all lines of businesses. How about focusing on just a limited set of product lines and do them good?
I'm sure some Google fan will defend Google and say that they're not the same as Microsoft... Well, sorry for saying... the similiarities are there, not only in focus, but in ethics.
It makes a lot of sense that google move more into online payment payment services, theres a huge amount of money to be made in trustworthy and simple e-cash transactions. It will also be interesting to see how this plays out in regards to people sellling software and services... I would expect this to do tremendously well and competition will make this much better for consumers!
Music, Games, Media Art and Programming
But too big = evil! first rockefeller then at&t, ibm, microsoft, etc.
So is google too big, yes but what does that mean?
Apparently they are so big, that when they do something in a certain market, all the other players are instantly obliterated. No this does not always happen, although this is what people think and expect I guess, basicly everyone is waiting for google to become evil, which is wierd.
In the end competition is good as long as there will remain competition.
otherwise "All your base are belong to us!"
* Drive to innovate
* Prices closer to the actual cost of the service
* External Innovators can become suppliers as the companies get creative to win market share.
[% slash_sig_val.text %]
Considering how unresponsive Paypal is and how much of a maze Ebay tries to be, when you try to contact their customer support, this can only be a good thing.
Maybe this move will force them to stop acting so arrogantly towards us, their customers. And try to provide some actual customer support.
I don't quite get what google base is. From reading the FAQ this is part of google's plan to organize all the worlds information -- but sometime we need a bit more structure than that. I sell my photos on ebay and would love to be able to use a different service as payments to ebay are death by 1,000 cuts. But, are people really going to look for photos of London in the same place they'd try and find recipes and free web hosting?
If Google treats sellers well, they'll be jumping ship from eBay in packs. I'm guessing eBay will lighten up on their sellers and the new equilibrium will be sellers using both services.
Competition is a good thing. More outlets for sellers is more business, also a good thing. I'd use Google before Amazon.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
PayPal has lost so much goodwill, and annoying so many people that frankly I think people would move to a replacement if it was half-decent. Google need to look at what PayPal did right (simplicity, flexible, secure) and what PayPal did wrong (bad policy, account locking, 'random' charge-backs, poor complaints system, in escrow service).
I must admit, however, that having my personal information (name, CC, address) linked to my search queries seems like a profoundly bad idea... Even if that is still technically possible with my ISP I don't think they care enough, or it is in their best interests to do so. Google on the other hand...
.. someone like Google came along and invented buying and selling online. With their new Pages service they even let people create their own pages and display them on the web!! How would the web move forward without such innovators when all the others are just copying?
its not just the user base that ebay has, its also the reputation, and the name "ebay" which everyone knows, even if you dont have a computer, you know ebay. in general, only people who know computers know google.
portfolio
If Google Base is tied with Froogle then here is your buyers' attraction. Looking for a great deal on Froogle? Here you go - check out our low prices at Gooble Base!
ebay's success did not really come because it is well designed, but rather because so many people are using it. Whether Google manages to attract a sufficiently large number of buyers and sellers remains to be seen. It might be a good tactical thing that Google allows people to post their ebay offers in Google base.
where's all that Karma?
Google is expanding into too many markets too fast. At this rate they will put themselves out of business. It's like walking into a pack a wolves with a steak tied around your neck. Just plain not smart.
If Google ever does a storefront like Yahoo has with their Yahoo shopping, I'm there in a heartbeat. My company has had some major issues with Yahoo store over the years, and while it mostly is fine, there's some irritating things it does that they have no intention on fixing (which is obvious after a few years of complaining).
Google seems to be headed towards this path, they just can't get there fast enough for me.
Joe Siegler
Webmaster - 3D Realms & Black Sabbath Online
in my personal opinion, Ebay has ruined the excitement from real live auctions.. but Google on the other hand.. I have a feeling that one day, Google will be one of the first things all people do in the morning.. like checking your email or the news.. a daily process.. And what if they started doing auctions?? Well just imagine having Google Alerts for auctions.. You could have a message in your Inbox saying, "Hey, some guy just put up a Marlon Brando signed photograph.. Click here to BID now".. and my problem would be solved...
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
Does anyone have any idea why Paypal wouldn't let me reset my account by e-mailing them scans of certain documents, requiring me to fax it to them instead? This is one reason why I may be switching to GooglePay - I'm not opening a new e-mail account so I can have a new PayPal account. I didn't forget my PayPal password, I just couldn't remember which of my many passwords it was, and I got locked out before I could guess the right one. Another e-mail account, another PayPal account - this will just get worse. So I'm kissing PayPal goodbye. Hey, I was a good customer for a long time, why wouldn't they just let me open a second account with the same e-mail? Only two accounts, clean history on the first - what's the problem? Also, their call center... Having to say out loud "yes/no" to a machine that somehow fails to get it, instead of the good tried-and-true method of pressing a button - what's the big idea? Couldn't you at least provide both options? Man, that thing hung up on me about five times, and they were all international calls. Also, I don't mind them outsourcing their call center to India, not being an American myself, but only when they can find people with clear enough accents, as far as their average customer is concerned. International call to the USA, then through not-broad-enough-band VoIP to India, then an unfamiliar accent... uncomfortable. (I actually love the Indian accent, but it's hard for me to understand what's being said.)
News for merdes. Shit that matters.
Ask me about my sig.
but will they do micropayments?
Google Dollars: trade one-to-one with US currency a la Disney Dollars
Google History: send actual wireless webcams back in time and space to search history
Google Genes: pick your baby's DNA from Google's wide base of genetic data. Google Cyber-Implants: when you're *really* assimilated! Have the power of Google searches on tap in your own brain. Win every trivia game show. Ace every test. View porn just by thinking about it.
eBay is of the main advertisers on Google, they bought over 600,000 keywords last year alone. eBay doesnt have enough static pages for Google to index it properly so this is a nesscessary evil. Without eBay's support of Google, you're taking a loss of about 10M+. That's a pretty big hand to bite.
eBay has traditionally always had competition, and if anything this only helped it grow even larger. Look at Yahoo and Amazon, they couldn't even take it. The fact is that eBay is a differenet company now, than before. It's shifted it's focus from being an "auction" site, to being a marketplace.
Google is a great speculator, and it really has to be with the way it's stock is. A tighter integration of eBay and Google would be an intelligent move, eBay is a proven company, with rising stock for the last 10 years, and continuing to post profits well above expectations. PayPal, like it or not, is still the most reliable and easiest way to pay for things, and I'm sorry, but I've used it for well over 100 transactions and unlike my credit card and bank account, I dont pay an annual fees as a customer, and as a seller, it's a lot cheaper than the cost of getting a merchant account.
The point is this, eBay stands to lose ground in the market it's saturated. Google will have to figure out how to deal with fraud, customer/seller debate and at the same time promote it's product in a non-competitive manner such that it doesn't lose it's main advertiser.
Short of that, if Google decides to lock horns with eBay, I'm pretty sure you'll see eBay take a cut in it's stock to retain and regrow it's own markets. Competition is healthy, but I really doubt that this is anything more than posturing.
On an aside, pick a popular product, Froogle it, most of the vendors I've dealt with have had huge problems, lie or deliberately mislead me on price. Now add 10 million amateurs, wannabes, and fraudsters, and tell me that I can reasonably expect a better experience than eBay.
PayPal and eBay are both very successful venues and means. They've become (at least, in the US) universally known and serve as the Kleenex tissue of online payments and the Styrofoam foam of online buy/sell/auction, respectively.
.99 with $19.99 shipping {nudge, nudge}) and accept payment through PayPal at this point. It would be nice to see an alternative.
I do believe that it would be nice to get some real competition going for these companies - and perhaps Google has the chutzpah to pull it off (not to mention the cash). I, for one, would love to see some new ideas in the auction/sell/pay space. It could also keep the costs of these services relatively in check, as well.
It costs a very large percentage of a sale to sell something on eBay (that is, unless you are a super-seller who can get away with selling an item for
A Passionate Independent Musician
Google becomes the new behemoth, bestriding the world like a colossus, and abusive monopolist.
Don't tell me about that "Do No Evil" thing - it's just a neat marketing slogan.
An interesting move would be if google just bought eBay, although the feds would probably block the deal. Google could make the site faster, cheaper and easier to use.
Hopefully the move will result in a better eBay and another place to sell/buy our useless crap.
-- www.punkmusic.com
Just announce it and I am gone from eBay. I am sure at least a few others have this same mindset.
Is that called "GBuy"?
w00t
Google may try and go head-to-head with Ebay/Paypal however the smart buyer and seller may think twice. Ebay/paypal has some nice policies in place to protect both parties from nonpayment and other unpleasantries; does Google offer such services?
Matt Prescott OuterBlogs
I'd like to see a non "screw the customer" PayPal type service. Before I think that Google can do it, I'd like to see what percentage of PayPal comes from eBay.
Obviously, without a court order, eBay won't let GPay (or whatever it's called) be used on the auction site. I use PayPal once every two or three months, and mostly for eBay.
Ebay has a huge userbase, but they have a lot of unhappy customers. When combined with the number of people who have been screwed over due to paypal issues, rising ebay fees, I don't think it's too far off base to discount google.
Consider that only a few years ago no one thought much of google and altavista was king.
Many dislike ebay, but have no alternative that has nearly as many users. google not only has the name brand, but the search engine - one that even ebay uses to draw in users.
SearchIRC - Now with live chat directory!
Has anyone else noticed how much Google's long term business plan seems to mirror that of Neal Stephenson's 'snowcrash' novel?
Not that this is a bad thing mind you, I thought the concept quite cool, but rather its interesting to see a straight sci-fi concept taken and built in reality (okay, with a few minor differences since google's primary engine still searches other sites instead of holding all data, but the main concept is still the same).
Google has "Do no evil"
pfft, PayPal has nothing, except your money.
Task Mangler
We really need more alternatives to ebay. Every few months I get another e-mail informing me of fee increases on eBay. The eBay management has done a good job of not appearing as a dominating monopoly, but the fees and acquisitions just keep coming.
Well, that really doesn't matter, seeing as how Ebay owns Paypal. Seriously, they are a subsidiary...
No Ebay=No Paypal
You can do one thing very well, or many things mediocre. Google has chosen to be mediocre. eBay has nothing to worry about because Google is a many headed serpent that gets its heads tangled as often as it bites.
I don't see that this as being in competition with paypal. Google is limited to those who have credit cards. Paypal is limited to those who have bank accounts. I could be wrong, but it appears to me that there are more people who have bank accounts than people who have credit cards.
I seem to be missing a feature I expect -- I want to tell eBay that I should be notified via email whenever a new auction starts that matches some search criteria I specify. How can they not offer this capability, or do I have to use a third party scraper to do it?
Paul Gillingwater
MBA, CISSP, CISM
Is due to one and only one fact, that is that buyers can get good deals, if a new auction site had the money to subsidize auction sellers for a few months while buyers got really good deals ebay would have a real problem, remember buyers are only one click away.
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
This does not make for a healthy marketplace.
There is of course competition between sellers, but if ebay raises prices, makes it impossible to find items by completely eliminating categories, or decides that it'd rather heavily weight the market towards those who pay for featured ads, the users have no comeback, other than to not use ebay.
They can't just go to the 2nd highest auction site in many cases, as there effectively isn't one.
Competition would greatly help users.
The real ripoff action is the double whammy. You get charged seller fees on ebay (which is a double whammy in itself, listing fee plus percentage of complete auction) and then paypal takes a cut also.
music lover since 1969
there's no more legal basis for shutting eBay down because of that than there is shutting down a public school because some of the kids sell drugs in the hallways, or shutting down a Walgreens because the guy in the Santa Claus suit out front isn't really from the Salvation Army.
You may not have noticed, but it's not up to eBay how buyers pay the sellers. You could demand payment in nickels, or mcdonalds coupons. Clearly they push PayPal, and offer the incentive of tight integration to get people to use it, but they can neither force you to use paypal, nor be forced to tightly integrate a thrid-party payment scheme.
Conclusion: the Empire squashes the Federation like a bug. Accept it.
Yes, they do. Is it for buy/selling at this point? Not really. However, people love it when their lives are dumbed down and made simpler. They want ONE thing to be able to do everything. Suddenly, Google adds yet another service to their line, making it even handier! That's a large userbase that might just find Google easier than e-bay.
Maybe this will lead paypal to get FDIC insured and stop fucking people over.
It costs a very large percentage of a sale to sell something on eBay
You know...I keep hearing this nonsense all over the place. Compared to what in particular are e-bay's selling fees high? Have you ever run a brick and mortar retail business? I have and I will take e-bay's charges any day. Have you ever sold anything through a real world local auction? Have you ever tried to sell something through a consignment shop? Ebay is virtually free in comparison. Have you checked the prices on classified ads in the local paper? You can't even run a garage sale for free and if you do you end up with pennies on the dollar of what you get for the same stuff on ebay. Why do you think so many real world businesses are flocking to ebay. Even major national retailers are selling overstock and return items through ebay and they don't bother to cheat on the price/shipping. They know this is a bargain.
I hear the same criticism of paypal's fees. Have you ever tried to set up any kind of credit processing for a retail outlet? I have and paypal is a pretty good deal for small time operators. The problem here is that everyone seems to think that, if it isn't free it costs too much. As Heinlein was fond of saying TANSTAAFL. Get over it. Sure, I welcome competition, but don't expect too much from it unless Microsoft sticks its big nose in and starts offering the service for "free". And we all know that story. We will all end up paying for it with higher prices for Windows.
this is loaner...my sig is in the shop
This is somewhat unrelated (I think), but has anyone else noticed that going to http://video.google.com/ redirects you to http://www.google.com? I seem to also periodically get a security alert saying there is a domain name mismatch. Something going on with Google Video, or is it just me?
States require that pawnshops maintain records of all transactions, that they search national police databases for stolen goods with any markings or serial numbers, keep security videos of customers, etc.
With the TIA program still intact under NSA, I expect the Feds to step in and take control of companies that promote the exchange of goods as eBay does.
since ebay has a patent on holding auctions online. You can't compete with someone who has a gov't supplied monopoly, since you're paying them to 'compete'.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I notice many of you guys say eBay has no competitors... what about craigslist? I've been screwed on eBay before, and found it's much nicer to sell on craigslist. For example, let's say I sell my DS on ebay to get money for a DS lite. Buyer sends $$$ via paypal, I send the DS, buyer claims it was broken on arrival, I get cheated out of my money. A real possibilty. With craigslist, the actual sale occurs face to face, (if you're smart) in a public location. If the buyer from craigslist wants to rip me off, it'll be a lot harder. (Especially when a friend with a concealed carry permit is watching the transaction)
2) Control how people find information... check
3) Control how people get mail... check
4)
5) PROFIT!
And our protection from them is a marketing slogan which used ot hold water until they starting applying the "*-conditions may apply" to it. How long until they make the next leap forward by using Google desktop indexing to track what types of things you want, then offer to let it take that information and combine it with your google searches to get to things you want with less mishits on the search.. Automatically put together a google auctions listing page of things it figures you want to buy on your google sidebar, and all for ONLY a small monthly fee.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
A payment service that still depends on the credit card infrastructure is only a mild advancement.
As bad as you think the PayPal and EBay fees are, they a dwarfed by the blood credit cards suck out of our economy.
I'm not talking about the interest on unpaid accounts, I'm talking about the merchant fees. Those are the 2 to 6 percent fees that every merchant pays on credit card transactions.
These fees are hidden from the consumer, because the credit card mafia forces retailers to charge the same price for cash as well as credit card transactions. As a result, the retailers raise all prices to cover the cost, and even the person who doesn't have a credit card subsidises the system.
I believe the Fair Trade ministry in Australia rules this illegal there, and forced the listing of the credit card fee on the reciept, along with sales tax. If we adopted that system, the fees charged by credit card companies would be visible, and some people would choose to pay with cash instead -- thus allowing market pressure to do it's work.
If google's system is just a credit card processing web application, I won't be using it.
What is really needed is for someone to re-start PayPal's original business model. There were no fees, the company lived off the interest on money in the accounts. There was no need to provide your real name, it was all keyed to an email address and password.
Starting such a business would require getting over the "chicken and egg" hurdle -- there is no incentive to sign up for it unless there are other people in it to pay and bill. However, given the financial costs of the current system, it has to be done.
One way to do it would be for the small ebay sellers, who have the most to gain from this, to band together and do it themselves. We could form a company or association and each account holder could pay a small fee (such as $20) to get a voting membership or voting share -- if the charter specified that profits were divided equally among all accounts in a yearly dividend, the big sellers would have an incentive to keep costs down so they didn't simply subsidize the small guys.
I think the offering of credit should be done through a system similar to prosper.com. I think the offering of credit should be separated from the transaction system.
I wanted to order something online,
First I found I had to sign up to a Paypal account.
Then I found out I had to pay an initial fee, but the fee would be refunded.
Then later on, I'm told it will be credit to my paypal account.
Then later in the screens I find it will only be credited after I spend $X using Paypal.
Then I find out I have to confirm my account by waiting 1 month for my credit card statement, and enter the magic digits.
Then I find that if I cancel the order, I don't get that money back anyway.
YOU [censored censored censored] PAYPAL.
I feel so royally screwed by Paypal, that company should have been wiped out as a scammer a long time ago.
If Google wanted to make some money off the auction business, they would license their search engine to eBay. eBay's search "feature" is terrible.
Oh no! Is Google Base THE Base? That's "Al Qaeda" in Arabic, ya know. :-)
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
First off, there are people who spam the system with thousands of items (often directly, or redirecting to Amazon) where they say they're cheaper than everyone else. When you click on it, instead of being "$40", it is actually "$50". Often the first three or four links are spam like this - you can buy the item, but you're told it's one price and then it's another. When you e-mail Froogle help to report this fraud, they are very slow to respond, if they ever respond.
Another thing is Froogle has started this stupid thing where they group items together, so if yous search for say "onetouch ultra strips", you'll get a first response where it says "Compare 47 prices" currently. But when I click on that I see not only OneTouch Ultra strips but Basic Profile strips, and Surestep strips. I click on the 2nd link, "OneTouch SureStep Test Strips, 50 ea" from Drugstore.com, and nowhere in that page does it say Ultra. Now if I put Ultra in my search, and there are dozens of pages which have those 3 words in my search, why am I being redirected to a page that does not have Ultra? This is not a case of spam, this is a case of Google screwing up.
I actually have a store that has Froogle entries, people get redirected to my store on a false thing like this (the ultra to drugstore.com surestep thing), buy it and then want to cancel their credit card sale or want to send it back, because they think I screwed up somehow, when actually it was Froogle and they who screwed up. Froogle should get rid of this stupid, broken new system and put back the old system where when you looked for the word ultra you'd actually wind up with a product or blurb that had the word ultra in it. I'm using "onetouch ultra strips" as an example, but this goes across many products.
These are both major problems, so I won't even go into minor ones like how they're rating system for merchants has problems. The thing about Froogle is both of the problems I mentioned are new - their search system was working fine until they added this new grouping thing which doesn't work and which I'm sure no one likes. Don't put it out there until it works. And spammers were not around, but now they are, and Froogle doesn't deal with them. If they wait a week to deal with them each time, then they will never go away - if they can get a few hundred sales for each week on the fake prices, I'm sure the spammers will just set up a new storefront each week and make a ton of money. They should fix what's broken instead of coming out with whiz-bang new features every few months. Respond to e-mails about people spamming with fake low prices.
Google moved away from their core a couple years ago and in doing so they have just created a much larger core for themselves. At this point, they're all over the map. Nobody knows what to expect from Google these days, but whatever it is I expect it to be great!
This just in! 3 out of 4 people make up 75% of the population.
well, I for one welcome our new overlords competition is a healthy thing, it'll stop ebay taking in excess of 10% of the auction total if someone pays you with paypal, AND, it'll finally stop someone getting your item for free when they decide to chargeback with paypal having suffered a £200 loss a few years ago when I was new to things (and also a few minor losses more recently, but i'm more wised up now), and also seeing the DAILY sob stories of people being scammed out of £100's due to paypal's "ignore them, they'll go away" policies, i'm glad don't get me wrong, I've made a lot of money with ebay, i'm also loosing money as I totally refuse to take paypal if A - the person hasn't got a verified address (believe it or not, 60%+ DONT have) B - the person is new to ebay (ALL of the scams have been low feedback users) and finally, i've set a cap on my paypal transactions of around £30, that way if I get screwed it's not for much unfortunatley, even seasoned ebayers don't seem to understand that Paypal can and WILL screw them at any time, a good friend has just had his account and nearly £1000 frozen because some noobie idiot claimed non delivery of several cheap items. paypal didn't take the word of someone with nearly 1000 feedback (just 2 negs), they listened to 'noobie registered yesterday with no history' please everyone, read up on www.aboutpaypal.org www.paypalsucks.com www.paypalwarning.com Wise up!
Migrating the content of one DB to another one (same data, but different table layout, and different integrity constraints, etc) is a very complex process. Unless you really know what you're doing, tuples might be lost, anomalies could be introduced, and so on. However, I am sure that PayPal folks have the money to pay for this; so it's probably [A].
The saddest poem
But PayPalSucks... Sucks. Once upon a time, that site was an interesting microforum for the disenfranchised to compare notes on where to go next after PayPal fucked them over. But as you'll notice now, PayPalSuck is no longer community oriented. It's just a link whore for ONE single merchant account provider.
Either PayPalSucks gets commissions or they set up shop as a run-of-the-mill merchant account provider. They don't give a rats ass about exploring other options any more. It's deceptive and if I were PayPal I'd take a look into that relationship a little closer and see if I could close down PayPalSucks as a competitor abusing a servicemark.
Bah, I doubt eBay is going to sweat it. eBay has been around for a long time and will continue to grow even if google decides to open their own form of online bidding.
Please provide a link to something I can purchase using Google Base.
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
Yep! I've always refused to use those automatically printed shipping labels for that very reason. Just last week, I was in a local UPS Store and a frustrated customer came in wanting to know how to receive a credit for a UPS label they tried to print, but were unsuccessful due to printer problems. The UPS Store employees not only claimed to have absolutely no clue, but denied responsibility completely, claiming they were technically "not even UPS employees, but rather, independent agents".
This isn't even just a PayPal issue, really. If you ship straight from the FedEx or UPS web site, they want you to enter the weight of the package (among other items), and they immediately bill you for the delivery, even though you haven't even given them the box yet. If you're incorrect in the weight estimate and the box is actually lighter than you entered, they won't refund you the difference. They just pocket it and rip you off. And if you decide not to ship the package after all, they still leave the credit authorization on your card for at least several days after you cancel the shipment - tying up some of your available credit. All around, I just don't think this Internet shipping stuff is as convenient for the customer as they try to promise.
Keep your cooties off me!
Am I the only one who gets grossed out by "used" items?
For example:
- Children's toys. Gross -- all those kids' slobber and snot. Who knows if the kids were sick or what their hands were in? Remember why the water is green in the kiddie pool? Remember the saying, "Don't eat the yellow snow?"
- Books. Lots of people read books while sitting on the toilet. How clean are their hands when they pick up the book after wiping with toilet paper? Now you buy said book from on-line broker, and get said book...with a little bonus. Ewww.
- Cars. Every time I take my car to the mechanics, the workers there end up getting oil in the interior of my car. No matter what I try -- putting plastic bag on the seats, or protectors over the steering wheel -- they manage to get that black goop somewhere. The worst part: Oil is a solvent. It ruins paper products and is carcinogenic (causes tumors if you leave it on human skin). One time I changed the oil filter on my car, and was driving around looking for a place to discard the oil, which was sitting in a plastic container in my trunk. When I opened my trunk, oil had spilled out and got blended in with the cloth interior of the trunk. So if I sell my car, should I (a) leave it alone, (b) tell the prospective buyers about it, or (c) spend the money to replace the interior? I would hate to sell the car, and then some kids in the future decide to crawl around in the trunk, never realizing that they are gettin toxic petroleum on their skin.
- Kitchen utensils. Given all of the problems with "hillbilly heroin" and methamphetamine labs cooking up illegal substances in clandestine kitchens, I would never buy kitchen utensils except fresh from the factory. I don't want traces of creepy chemicals lodged in the microscopic crevices of the utensils, making their way into my food.
- DVD's. I used to rent DVD's, until I happened to look at the reflective bottom of a rented DVD that stopped playing, where I saw lots of smudgy finger-prints, as well as a nasty scratch. Those were mighty greasy hands that had touched that DVD. Then I got to thinking: Lots of folks buy naughty DVD's. They do "their stuff". Then they probably remove the DVD's and put it back in the casing without washing their hands. Great. So now, "their stuff" is on that DVD and is returned back to the store. Everybody who rents that DVD is just gonna continue accumulating traces of "their stuff" on that DVD. Yuck. I hate to think of how nasty those NetFlix DVD's are.
All your google base are belong to us!
Paul Ford wrote a nice story (August 2009: How Google beat Amazon and Ebay to the Semantic Web) about this in 2002, read it and be amazed :P
When I've used paypal for USPS shipments there was always an option to reprint if you didnt wait for HOURS. The reason it does not stay active forever is to prevent them from losing massive amounts of money through fraud. Why are you printing out anything without regular paper anyways? How is any programmer supposed to account for shear stupidity and lack of common sense? They cant becasue they have to spend enough time debugging software for REASONABLE users, like ones that have PAPER on HAND when PRINTING
They haven't said anything, nor mentioned anything in the past, about the ability to bid on items. I very much doubt they will make an online auction place, albeit they could very well eventually rival half.com -- just not ebay.
I can't see Google successfully taking a chunk of eBay's market share. This is one place where a natural monopoly exists. I seel stuff on eBay because it's maximum exposure.
I might buy off another auction site if the prices are lower, that's about it. I'm more likely to find what I want on eBay than anywhere else.
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Seems simple enough to fix, and eliminate the bulk of the scams. Note, said most not all. Base your auction site only inside the US (buyers and sellers), and require all payments to be postal money orders. Charge sellers a flat fee (like a flea market table), or charge them to be listed as sellers with a subscription model of some sort. Outside the US, they can do similar, nation by nation, so their own laws and cops are involved. Inside the US there's a couple of realities then, you aren't having to deal with cross border laws, which is nuts anyway, and if you involve the US postal service the laws are quite strict and the postal cops are pretty good as cops go and they don't appreciate fraud *at all*.
Sorry if it appears jingoistic to some folks, but let's call a spade a spade here. The bulk of the planet considers US citizens to be fair game for conman scams and ripoffs. We are considered "rich targets". Well, screw that! Everything from 419 scams to counterfeit junk to ebay scams to viagra scams to porn dialer scams to whathave you. And travellers encounter the shakedown routine all the time, no telling how many US tourists have gotten nailed and had to pay bribes to get out of jail or a fix overseas. Looking at your mehico, in particular. Happens all the time and is a huge scandal. Enough! We got our own crooks, we don't need yours as well.
Anyway, I honestly have never used eBay, never considered it secure enough, but would consider using an all US styled large auction site, at least I would know there's half a chance everything is legit, on ebay now it's pure caveat emptor.
Actually, eBay do decide what payment methods you can use. Currently they don't allow Western Union and they only allow online payment services that have been approved.
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Google top the list in my opinion. If google took over the cyber world I wouldn't be concerned. If Microsoft took over the cyber world... Well let's face it, no one would let them. Their stuff is too buggy, even in their 'stable' releases.
I must admit, although I have much respect for the eBay operation, I would certainly go straight to Google to find an item for sale before going to eBay. Likewise, if Google released a 'Widget" counterpart I would scrap the Yahoo! one.
My point being that Google is in everybody's good books and I'm convinced that whatever they decide to release next will do well. I have never felt that Google was trying to 'take over', it's just that their tools are so good that everybody uses them.
Hogwash. I challenge you to quote (and link) the relevant eBay page that says they prohibit Western Union transfers. The most they do is warn against using it, something Western Union itself also warns you against, as a money transfer has no fraud protection.
Ebay even posts a message from Western Union where they advise buyers to use Bidpay.
Basically, if the seller checks "other payment type", he can demand payment any way he wants and ebay can't do anything about it because eBay isn't an escrow service.
Conclusion: the Empire squashes the Federation like a bug. Accept it.
Doesn't it concern anyone else that with your name, address, and all your credit card info combined with the info from it's other services a google account would tell you everyting about an avid internet user? Forget servailing people, just suponea google.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Allen there were two.....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
"Over the past four years, Google has billed advertisers in 65 countries more than $11.2 billion in 48 currencies, and made payments to advertising partners of more than $3.9 billion"
This could mean publishers get roughly 34% of the money made from AdSense and Google gets roughly 66%. This fits with the speculation that Google takes well over half as a cut.
All your base are belong to us.
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http://outcampaign.org/
Google Base looks more like craigslist than Ebay, want ads... not an auction site.
While Google *may* have neat algorithms to eliminate people like this from their service, there's no substitute for a large staff of people constantly checking and kicking the asses of scammers.
I was opening up a paypal dispute last year and following through the process. I couldn't even go through the process without my session timing out. I had to copy/paste my responses to all the questions into vi and copy/paste them back in in order to get through the process without timing out.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent