eBay Australia Makes PayPal Mandatory

An anonymous reader writes "Australian press are reporting that eBay is using Australia as a guinea pig to trial a new policy where all other modes of payment are barred except for PayPal. If successful, eBay will roll it out to other markets."

Comments

Is Ebay out for suicide?

[mcrbids]

Ebay's success comes because it's a moderator - a broker in a sale. It connects two parties together, and nothing more. When it does that, Ebay is golden. It's UI is nice, it's search feature generally works, and that's why it's a multi-billion dollar corp.

But if they cram paypal down my throat, I'll swallow something else. I'm already at the point where Ebay is my LAST resort, since their ratings have been so thoroughly gamed I have no idea who I'm really dealing with, anymore.

Forcing paypal? No way. I refuse. What's the next halfway decent auction house? Truthfully, I've already moved much of my online purchasing to froogle.com....

Competition laws

[mikechant]

If successful, eBay will roll it out to other markets.

If they roll it out in the EU, this could fall foul of competition laws; the credit card companies/banks could presumably complain of being shut out, given Ebay's near total dominance.

(Obvious the same could apply in other countries, but the EU currently seems keenest on actually enforcing competition laws.)

Of course..

[nitelord]

"If successful, eBay will roll it out to other markets." Of course they'll be successful, all other modes of payment are barred!

Re:From the horse's mouth

[eiapoce]

Read as:
"You have been giving already a lot of money to us. Nevertheless starting 17 june we want to get more money from you, just because we can.

We are so confident that we don't even feel the need to justify it by adding the usual bullshit about security issues with other payments methods.

Take note that the purpouse of these innovations is ultimately to fuck you, our loyal user, in the ass. So you are welcome to join us to discuss your "position" on our Q&A Forums where our dedicated masters will educate you (in bdsm techniques)

For those of willing to submit without futile resistance we will grant some recreational activities including the online brainwashing course on how we did successfully turn a user supported community into a pyramidal scheme lookalike wich will benefit your ebay masters for a loong time" I guess it's not far away the time when google gets the slight hint of business opportunity.

Re:I refuse to buy from sellers who dont take PayP

[eiapoce]

What do you think would have happened if it had been purchased with a stolen credit card, check book, etc? Same thing. Bullshit. CC companies have insurances against fraud. Once you get the money it is yours. Only exception is that you participate in the scam, in this case you get a prison term, wich is something that paypal is NOT providing to the scammers.

.coms forgetting what made them successful

[jrumney]

It seems that with this, and the Amazon news from a few days ago, some of the companies that experienced rapid growth during the first .com bubble by offering what the customer wants vs the old model of trying to control the market are now switching to the old model. They control enough of the market now that it probably seems safe to their board to do this, but they are forgetting how rapidly they themselves were able to grab market share, and seem to be missing the fact that if someone new moves into the space they are vacating, the market share that the new company takes will come almost entirely from their customer base. They should also keep in mind that it won't necessarily be a startup that moves into their space; Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are all contenders that could jump in and cause a massive shift in the market almost immediately.