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eBay Bans Google Payments
whoever57 writes "eBay has added Google Checkout to the list of payment options banned on eBay. A recent update to the Accepted Payments Policy includes Google Checkout (click on 'Show' next to 'Some Examples' to reveal the list).
More comments on this action can be found at the eBay Strategies Blog."
Allowed:
Payment Services permitted on eBay: Allpay.net, Bidpay, Canadian Tire Money, cash2india, CertaPay, Checkfree.com, hyperwallet,com, Moneybookers.com, Ozpay.biz, Payko.com, Paymate.com.au, Propay.com, XOOM
Verboten:
Payment Services not permitted on eBay: AlertPay.com, anypay.com, AuctionChex.com, AuctionPix.com, BillPay.ie, ecount.com, cardserviceinternational.com, CCAvenue, ecount, e-gold, eHotPay.com, ePassporte.com, EuroGiro, FastCash.com, Google Checkout, gcash, GearPay, Goldmoney.com, graphcard.com, greenzap.com, ikobo.com, Liberty Dollars, Moneygram.com, neteller.com, Netpay.com, Nochex.com, paychest.com, payingfast.com, paypay, Postepay, Qchex.com, rupay.com, scripophily.com, sendmoneyorder.com, stamps, Stormpay, wmtransfer.com, xcoin.com
Strange, considering they won't accept Canadian cash.
Canadians without a credit card cannot make online payments with paypal.
They will claim that a credit card is not required to use paypal, but once you have provided them with all of your personal info and banking information, they will tell you, oh - Canadians are required to have a credit card to use paypal. I was suprised by this underhanded information collection and false advertising by a supposedly trustworthy business.
Then I read some of the horror stories here: http://www.paypalsucks.com/ Scary stuff!
P.S. Does anybody know when/if slashdot intends to fix the pagination of threads? Its a pretty horrific bug for a techie site and makes browsing long threads (as this one will be) very frustrating...
eBay specifically states that any "new" service without a track record of privacy protection and customer service will be scrutinized and most likely prohibited until it has some history.
Paypal has some history
You can legally coin your own currency and use it within the united states to facuiltate any sort of transaction! Re: Ithaca(or Ithica?) Hours AND "Liberty Dollars" on wikipedia!
They're also getting more restrictive about who works there.
see wsj.com:
PayPal President Jeff Jordan plans to leave eBay later this year, in the latest high-profile departure to plague the Internet auctioneer. 6:37 p.m.
Also, read items here, here.
And yet nothing is said of Yahoo, who assists the Chinese authorities with hunting down and incarcerating political dissidents who use their email service. Read that again for emphasis. Google is evil for simply filtering search results?
Google isn't the only service which has catered to China to get access to the market. What, were you sitting around waiting for them to make a move counter to their motto so you could shout to all of Slashdot "I TOLD YOU SO!?"
SRSLY.
This may be true, but I would consider it a natural monoploly.
But that's not the point: it's never been illegal to have a monopoly in the first place. When you leverage your monopoly in one market to compete unfairly in another, you've crossed the line. Google has already directly threatened to bring anti-trust cases, so I'd guess that's where this is all headed.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Sure you can.
It's not a debt until service is rendered. See right to refuse service.
Waiting for ad.doubleclick.net...
Let me start by saying I agree with you... pick a direction.
Fact is however google checkout is backed by Citi Bank so I am pretty sure it is going to be considered safe and secure. e-bay just does not want to admit it. Citi is not known for taking risks, although since they cornered the 7-11 ATM market I have begun to wonder.
What's next, Tim Horton's stored value cards?
Considering that Tim Hortons is killing Krispy Kreme lard-butt ... and that its currently owned by Wendy's (they're spinning it off back into its own corporation later this year and taking a nice profit) ...
Some facts and figures: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Horton's
The expansion into the US is going very well, btw.
They've got a list of qualifications on their site, and the important one is that:
* Whether the payment service has a substantial historical track record of providing safe and reliable financial and/or banking related services (new services without such a track record generally cannot be promoted on eBay)
That's been eBay's policy since way before Google came up with this brand new system of theirs. And the fact remains that Google has absolutely no past track record in financial transactions. While google is a big name in other services, eBay has absolutely no way of verifying the security measures that Google Payments offer. It's probably a great service, but eBay doesn't want to stick their necks out to potential lawsuits if this brand new service turns out to have some major security hole and a bunch of eBay site users get robbed.
That's not to say you can't use such payment, you can use whatever the hell you want. You can mail the guy beads if you really want to. What eBay is saying is that you can't use their site to advertise that you accept these payments and thus imply that eBay is in some way endorsing those payments.
This was a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation for eBay. If they refuse to accept Google, which is in keeping with their stated policy, everyone sees it as some sort of monopolistic wrangling. If they accept Google, then all those other sites on the forbidden list which were excluded for the same damned reason can cry foul by saying that eBay is playing favorites and arbitrarily excluding some.
I think the prudent thing to do is leave the system in place, wait a few months (IANAL, the better legal period might be shorter or longer) to make sure google's system actually works as advertised, then start accepting it. For the sake of public relations it might be wise to make it public that this is what's going on, and say "assuming there are no major security holes, Google Payments will be added on 9/7" or whatever date they think is ample time to cover their own necks.
I have moderator points but I have to reply to this.
No hotel ever says no to cash. What they say is "if we let youe stay in our $$$$$ room we would need a valid ID and enough money as a garantee that we will not have to run after you." If you don't believe me try checking in with a card that does not have enough credit to cover your stay.
If you do not intend to pay with your card, provide it to them on check in and upon check out settle with cash. Just remind them to cancel the pre-auth on your card on C/O. They never say no to cash. Never.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Oh, its changed all right ... and its killed off the competition.
Kremeko (Krispy Kreme Canada) came to Canada with a big splash, lots of expansion plans, and went bankrupt ... (the donuts have the highest fat concentration, and it didn't help that a news show had the ingredients of both players analysed, and Krispy Kreme was found to be using the lower grade of chocolate, etc. KK is really crap in comparison).
Dunkin Donut is pretty much invisible here in Quebec, after a revolt and lawsuit by franchisees over bad advertising, etc. It was REALLY AWFUL advertising that featured two "employees" - an old pencil-neck guy who would look more at home sleeping on a park bench, and an ugly woman ... I mean ugly. It ran for years, and just killed their brand. You'd look at the commercial and go "no way do I want them touching my stuff!"
Watered-down coffee, tired locations, and bad advertising ... they went the same way Mister Donut did before them (yes, they bought up the dead Mr. Donut locations, but a lot of them couldn't make a go of it as Dunkin Donut locales - the "death stench" was too strong near the end).
What really sucks they set the shipping rates charged to the customer, keep part of what they charge the customer, and on top of that, take a commission out of the shipping reimbursement as well!
For example, a customer selects expidited shipping, amazon charges them $7.83 for it. They then reimburse the seller $4.99 - AND charge a commission on that, so you ACTUALLY only get $4.24. Then they charge an additional 15% + $1. So when I sell a $20 item, the customer pays $27.83 to get it, and I get $19.82, BUT still have to pay for expidited shipping, so I pocket $15.77.
If I sold the same item on eBay w/Paypal for $20 and charged the same $7.83 for S&H (eBay lets you set it for whatever you want, within reason, and doesn't charge you a commission on it), by the time I paid eBay, PayPal, AND the USPS, I'd have $21.27 left.
Even ignoring shipping, with Amazon I get $19.82 of the $27.83 charged to the customer (Amazon got 29%) and with eBay I get $25.32 (eBay got 9%).
That's three times as much of the customer's money going lost to Amazon as is lost to eBay. It's worse when you factor in that paypal gives you free delivery confirmation too.
paintball
Paypal may not be a bank, but in the UK it's regulated by the Financial Services Authority just the same.
Oh, and since eBay is not an auction, the UK Distance Selling Regulations apply, at least if the seller is a dealer (and it could be argued that anyone with a feedback over a 100 or so is).
When eBay first started off waaaaaay back in the 90s, they charged a nickel for listings under $10, and a dime for everything else. That was it. People used to MAIL in postcards with their fee taped on. It was mostly just the Bay Area (hence the name), and it was a very nice and active market, lots of kitschy stuff, lots of really good deals ("Hey, I love this Chagall painting, but I really gotta pay my alimony, so it's yours for $100"), and generally just lots of goodness.
Fast forward 10 years, and eBay is now a blight on Internet business. Beyond the fraud, the chicanery, the snake oil, and the exorbitant fees, eBay is simply no longer a viable place to do "garage sale"-style auction business. The community at large is no longer involved in the selling business - only buying. The selling has been taken over by Power Sellers, retail stores, and scam artists.
What we as the tech community in specific and the world community in general need to do is re-create eBay every 10 years (that appears to be the life cycle under which a grassroots auction site becomes a lumbering behemoth of corporate blase.) Someone just write some good open-source auction code - a RDMBS, a CMS, some RSS feeds and an open-source shopping cart/payment system (that is payment-platform independent) - and then we'll just create another eBay every decade. It doesn't even sound particularly hard to do, and as long as we're clear up front that there's probably not a lot of money in it (since eBay has the entrenchment factor), we can make something, you know, for kids! And for everyone else who just wants to sell their backlog of shi^H^^Htuff* sitting in their garage.
Make it easy, make it cheap, make it roll up, make a code snippet you can dump on mySpace or liveJournal or a Wordpress site, make sniping impossible (I like the idea of extending the bidding by 5 minutes every time there's a bid), make it easy to translate, make it secure, make it standards compliant, and guess what? You've probably got a Web 2.0 hit on your hands.
* Thanks, George Carlin.