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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."
I no longer use my paypal account. After getting burned bad by paypal i was done. My paypal account was linked to my ebay account. My paypal account was emptied and left with a negative balance. Had i used ebay again paypal would have just took all the money. Remember people they are not a bank. They are just some people holding onto your money. How would you trust someone you dont know to hold your money?
Maybe you think my story is isolated but read online. Paypal routinely freezes peoples accounts only to never let them have their money.
Check out paypalsucks.com
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Not exactly. When a credit card holder disputes a debit, the bank contacts the merchant first and asks him to verify the debit he made. It also gives the merchant details about who disputed what, etc, plus a specific time.
Within the time, if the merchant cannot produce proof, the cardholder's complaint is sustained.
At NO time has the bank the legal authority to debit or even block access to the funds in merchant's account.
This is different from paypal, which is under no obligation to contact you, can and will block your account, and withdraw funds from it without due process.
And that is why paypal is different from a bank.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
In the UK (3x as many people as Australia) I got an email to say that Paypal *must* be offered as a payment option, not that it must be the only payment option. So I imagine they are testing different policies in different smaller markets. It makes sense to try to streamline it and get a few more % of each sale - eBay is still complicated compared to Amazon's sales process and Amazon seem to get away with taking almost 10%.
Matthew @ Bytemark Hosting
Ebay is pretty much THE auction site on the net, and they own paypal. this sounds like leveraging a monopoly in one market to effect an advantage in an unrelated market and anti-competitive behaviour to me.
the EU has given microsoft plenty of shit over the years for anti-competitive behaviour, it will be interesting to see if/what kind of flack ebay attracts over this.
How is this NOT a violation of the trade practices act?
Anyone know the right way to get the ACCC to investigate this?
The similarities between Paypal (not a bank) and eBay (not an auction house) are quite marked. They both seem to want to desperately defend there "not a ..." position because it means they can have the benefits without the responsibilities. Like so many others I have long refused to use Paypal because of their shifty behaviour. Until Paypal is a proper bank (with all the safeguards that that requires) and eBay admits to being an auction house (ditto) I won't be using either.
PayPal sucks for seller's too. They have the bad habit of doing things like deciding to lock your account and refund all your recent transactions without adequate explanation or any means of recourse. Who knows if they actually give this money back to the buyers or if they just keep it.
I for one refuse to use PayPal ever again. I think we need something better than credit cards for buying and selling online but PayPal isn't the solution. It's became very evil since eBay bought it. I've considered creating my own alternative but I think to compete with PayPal and credit cards any alternative needs several major backers such as Amazon and iTunes if it is to have any hope. I'm surprised none of them have formed together to form an alternative as it'd seem they could easily boost their profits by cutting the expense of PayPal and credit card processing fees. If they saved a dime per transaction with the volume they do it'd be a fair savings.
A free, easy to use, well advertised, auction/store + online cash alternative to eBay + PayPal is a killer app waiting to happen. Lots of people hate eBay and PayPal. Lots of alternatives exist but none I've seen are both easy to use and well advertised.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
I tell you what's up with me.
I honestly sell my used stuff on ebay, and I am constantly discussing matters with buyers. If a problem arises ebay does either nothing or its best to screw me, This happens when I am the buyer and when I am the seller. And when selling even if a problem does not arise I am supposed to pay twice at least for the same item: Listing Fees, Final Value commission, Paypal submission fee.
By reklessly complying with those rules I managed to make 150 positive feedback and a couple of negs... guess where the negs come from? Paypal costumers. Ebay/Paypal on the other hand managed to make 200+â out of me wich is extraordinary unfair since their costs are just website hosting/band and staff. Also they are dropping the feedback system wich will lead the marginal utility of selling through them 0 (Call it costumer un-fidelization)
See any reason to be "not satisfied"?
Google products would be far better if the results weren't clogged full of ebay spam...
Right now, in the U.S., paypal is not required. You may accept check, money order, credit card, or some other internet pay service.
If Ebay Did make paypal mandatory, that would be a violation of Antitrust/monopoly laws, because it stifles competition & limits customer choice to zero. I'd start calling my various contacts within the U.S. and Pennsylvania government to see if I can talk them into Prosecuting Ebay in a court of law. Ebay's done a lot of dumb decisions lately, and pardon my French, but they are _______ me off. This would be the final straw to make me stand-up and demand justice & punishment.
I use Ebay like a garage sale, selling-off used but still "like-new" items.
But they have steadily made me feel unwelcome, as if they don't want my business, and I'm sick of it. Time to tear-down that arrogance the same way AT&T, Microsoft, and the CD Cartel were brought to task. Remind them of their true position in society (servant to the customer).
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.