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eBay's Plan to Force PayPal Rejected Down Under
Jm_aus writes "eBay's plan to force all users to use PayPal only has been rejected by Australia's competition regulator, the ACCC. This followed 650 submissions from eBay users as well as from Australian banks, other payment services, the Australian Reserve Bank, and (anonymously) Google, which aired a lot of dirty laundry about PayPal's unresponsiveness and failure to sign up to the local banking code of conduct. Apparently the public benefits from eBay's 'Bad Buyer Experience' elimination program are likely to be 'minimal.' There is a period for appeals."
What's that ""Bad Buyer Experience" elimination program" ?
If you leave negative feedback, they send ninjas to kill you, thus imporving the "good experience" rate?
As a buyer, I really want to use my credit card directly. PayPal, last time I used it, only covered a $200 return or so. I went straight through to my credit card company (which is linked to my PayPal account) and did a chargeback through them. PayPal sent me a nastigram saying if you keep that up, we'll cut you off.
Yeah, thanks but no thanks EBay.
SIG: HUP
In most countries, why is PayPal allowed to act like a bank without being regulated like a bank? I've never understood how they get away with that.
steampunk web design
... we would like to add, on behalf of the Australians who you are trying to blatantly extort:
:P
*ahem*
"Like fuck you will"
That was an extract from the actual brief, word for word, honest
...
As a buyer, I really want to use my credit card directly.
Just fill out the form at gday.ebay.mate/safecredit.asp and we'll get you started faster than a kangaroo can steal your vegemite sandwich.
I can't stand paypal. I've had an account since the earlier days before there really were options, though I so rarely use it because without PAYING for an account, I can only transfer money through a direct bank transfer. On EVERY ONE of my ebay listings I have to add a footnote alerting people that they can't pay with a credit card through paypal because paypal won't allow me to do that...
And the only way to be able to do that is to sign up for an account where they take a percentage of all of my transactions.
How does that commercial go? "It's my money and I want it now!"
But seriously, I'm tired of paypal, I just wish it would go the way of the dinosaurs because it's such a frustrating site to use to transfer funds.
OTOH, the down side is that they extract fees that would make a bank or credit union blush for every transaction. Also, someone governmental needs to take a serious look at forcing them to be regulated and to follow the same rules as a real bank.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
In PayPals opinion I still live with polar bears, barbarians and blood feud. In post Soviet Russia, paypal uses one way money transfers only. Once you transferred money to paypal account, you can only spend it, no transferring back :D
I for once welcome our money grabbing overlords :-D
I have had a PayPal account since they had that send money with no fees promotion that my now ex-wife and her friend used to rack up a couple of thousand frequent flyer miles on each others WorldPerks cards. I generally trust PayPal and I like the money market feature on my account, but it is not the only way to pay and it should not be set up that way. The world needs competition and it is going to hurt a lot of people who may just want to buy or sell one thing and don't want to set up an account for that one hassle to go through. For some things PayPal is perfect, but not for everything. On websites where you have an actually established revenue stream and are not just selling one or two things a day I think it looks bad if you are running PayPal only. I recently backed out of a deal to buy a stack of sub woofers from a company because I didn't want to deal with the creation of a PayPal account on the business card for one transaction. They lost out on a big sale, just because they were stuck with PayPal and PayPal only and I know that I am not the only one who responds to things this way.
Like arts? Like cheesy little Indie mags? Check out www.artwerkmag.com, and don't laugh at the bad coding please.
Amazon has been great for buying and selling college books on. I have basically just been paying for shipping. When I need to add money Amazon can charge my Debit card, otherwise the money from selling books goes to buying the next set.
Other items can also be added. There is currently two Commodore 64 systems for sale for $235. Need a PalmOne m100 Handheld 9 Used & new from $11.89.
Science is the Real TRUTH!
I was part of the massive lawsuit against Paypal back when there were plenty of scammers. One such tried to screw me and even though I provide more than enough evidence to PROVE without a shadow of a doubt this guy was scamming the system, committing mail fraud, AND on top of that was using stolen credit cards, AND i gave him his confirmed address...
They still sided with him. However, I knew this was a possibility and I moved the money out of paypal, and blocked them from charging me back through my bank who happily sided with me.
About 6 months later I joined the lawsuit, and provided all of the evidence to them for exhibits. If you didn't know we won... and won big. Not happy with the default settlement offering I filed for the full settlement and received my check a few months later. I framed it... and I will NEVER do business with Paypal again.
I don't care if Ebay bought them. They do not follow banking guidelines, they consistently have proven themselves untrustworthy and generally don't abide by the law OR their own policies.
If Ebay goes to Paypal only, I think they'll soon realize the size of the mistake they will make when other auction sites blow past them at 90mph!
I sort of enjoyed bidding for things on eBay back when it was new and there were deals to be had, but now nearly everything is at a fixed price and the only purpose it has for someone like me is to buy/sell used computer parts, which I can do elsewhere without the risk or hassle. I feel like the new eBay is mostly for soccer moms who don't know of alternatives, or for people who have very specialized interests with no other options (usually there are other, cheaper, safer options).
On the other hand, I never liked Paypal. As far as I could tell its sole purpose was to make it easier for sellers to scam buyers, since the only protection given to buyers is something on the order of $100. I know some people who bought Apple laptops on eBay, never received them, but were unable to get all of their ~$2000 back. If it happened to me, I'd do what another poster said today and stop the payment to Paypal from my credit card, but if it were me I wouldn't have made the purchase in the first place.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
Sorry, but EBay is just as shady as PayPal is.
I refuse to EVER give any more money to PayPal or EBay again.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I found out the hard way that when you "verify" your account, the bank account used to verify your PayPal account becomes the primary account. All payments you make through PayPal come out of it by default. I called them because all my purchases were coming out of my bank account and not my credit card. They said the bank account has to be the primary, and the only way to change it was to revert to "unverified," which I did. I like the protection I get from using a credit card. Payments extracted from a checking account has no where near the same protection.
Anonymous Cowards suck.
I got conned by a seller on ebay, I paid $90 something and the seller vanished. Paypal (owned by ebay) refused to even investigate this. They asked me to wait for 21 days, and then they wanted me to email them a complaint. They did nothing. Way to go Aussie mates, you struck them in their balls.
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Please tag responsibly.
Paypal claimed the seller had the money, and told the seller we (the buyer) had the money, and lied and stonewalled for months. Finally they just gave the money back without explanation after a state Attourney General inquired on our behalf.
/., I was modded down as a liar. But unbelievable as the stody is, it is the truth.
The previous time I posted this on
In fairness to Paypal, our experience was shortly after it was purchased by EBay, so probably EBay cleaned it up some since then.
From what I'm reading above, there is a major issue with dodgy sellers on Ebay. Paypal are just handling the payment and offer better safeguards than a transfer to a bank account. TFA is focusing on the fact it would cause a monopoly situation and the ACCC wants competition in the market.
What actually needs to happen is the ability to have a "one click" report item as dodgy. Ebay gains too much from providing a lax vetting process to ever get serious about it.
When governments actually get serious about this and start arresting Ebay executives and putting them in prison rather than fining them pathetically small amounts is when we will see them doing something about it.(http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080604/bs_afp/franceluxurypiracytrialusebay))
I moved back in 2003. That prompted me to move to a new bank as well. I was fortunate enough to have put my old bank account into Paypal when I verified my account. When I moved I sure as hell didn't update the info. It remained that way until this Spring when I accidentally forgot to change the payment method from PayPal's default of a bank account to a CC. They realized that my account was closed at that time and unverified my PP account. I had to give them my new bank account info. I hated to do it but I had to complete the purchase. I'm seriously considering signing up for a new account somewhere, using it for 6 months and then closing it just so I can get back to the way it was.
It's amazing that I've never actually gotten burnt considering how much I've used PP. The vast majority of the equipment I buy is networking gear. I'm pretty careful who I buy from. If I have any feeling that it's not a good seller I move on. I won't buy from anyone on the West coast (too much counterfeit Cisco hardware comes from China into the West coast). I'll even read all the seller's reviews and go back through their past auctions and the buyers to see if it looks legit. I guess being careful pays off. I'm definitely not a PP or eBay shill. I lost a fair bit of money in eBay stock and I think the wannabe bank PayPal should rot in litigation hell, but I never have been burnt.
How this has affected me...
I used to use eBay and Paypal quite a bit and for the most part I've had good experiences. For quite a while I kept a significant amount of money (nearly $10,000) in my Paypal money market account, earning a fairly decent interest rate (one of the higher rates I could find at the time). I was aware that Paypal was not FDIC insured but I was fairly confident that Paypal wouldn't collapse. I had one eBay purchase where Paypal backed me up and I got a refund (except for shipping). I really didn't have any serious complaints.
After hearing the news about eBay trying to force the use of Paypal, I had to rethink my position. I was concerned that such a decision would negatively impact their business and made me less secure in keeping my money there. More importantly, I felt I could no longer "invest" in the Paypal business model. Their interest rates had also been dropping so I started looking around at bank accounts. Surprisingly (or maybe not so, in hindsight) I found one that had a better interest rate and transferred my money. Paypal was more convenient and I'm sorry to miss out on that, but Paypal has lost my business (over $10,000 worth) and I'm not going back now.
Offering a Cash discount (Discount for Cash) is not against ANY CC company or processor agreement. What is NOT allowed is charging a fee for a CC transaction, and / or a minimum / maximum limit of the transaction. Any retailer has the right to offer a discount for cash. What they can't do is list their prices in any advertisement, publication, etc without stipulating that the price shown is for cash. If it's not on the advert, then they can't charge more for a CC transaction. Furthermore, a lot of retailers DO offer a discount for cash. Usually a pittance, 1-3%, but nonetheless a discount. Also, people need to know how to use their check-card at retailers as well, so that they don't get hit with transaction fees from their bank or the retailers processing agent. If anyone has a check-card / cash-card, etc. that is labeled as MC or VISA, and is tied to a checking account, etc., make sure you choose CREDIT, and not debit as the payment method. If you choose debit, and type in your PIN, you get charges, not the retailer. YMMV. I've done POS work and have dealt with several of these terms and conditions. You'd be surprised how quickly a merchant gets rid of those minimums or fees when you complain to the CC company about their deceptive practices. When they do this sort of backhanded crap, and get reported enough times, the merchant and/or CC company will pull their merchant account, and/or fine them for violating the terms of the agreement they have in place. Works for MC, VISA, DISC. Not sure about AMEX, et al. Just an FYI.
Hey, This isn't a done deal yet.
eBay can still sit on the current situation where everyone is required to offer PayPal.
It's the banning of all other payment methods that the ACCC has PROPOSED eBay put on hold for further review.
Like aways, slashdotters don't RTFA.
Can someone suggest a good alternative to PayPal? eBay seems to have banned everything else that accepts credit cards and many buyers only want to pay by cc, even when you explicitly state that you don't take them. Basically it's impossible to sell anything on fleaBay without a PayPal account I think.
Maybe an alternative to eBay is needed. Amazon is okay for books and music, but what about other stuff? eBay actually seems like quite a good way to sell some stuff, if it just wasn't for PayPal.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I used to sell perfume testers on eBay, but because I was under 18 and had no credit card (my parents wouldn't let me use theirs) I just bought a prepaid visa with $50 on it, and hooked it up to my paypal account.This way, if paypal ever really wanted my money, then they would be unable to take it from my CC like they normally do (my paypal balance is always a few dollars, and bank account is used solely for paypal). The credit card had nobodys name on it, but an expiry date and the right amount of numbers. They also deposited like $0.77 in my account and asked how much they deposited later to validate my account or w/e.
Just an offtopic interesting note. Either or.
Orbis terrarum est non altus satis
Whilst I've been using PayPal for about 8 years now and find it's very useful for paying seller, one fact irks me somewhat, with a premier account they skim money off ALL transactions you receive even if the sender is using funds held in their PayPal account.
So basically they can charge a lot of money just to make one person's account balance go down and another go up - that's never happened when I've done a bank transfer within the UK.
Daylight fucking robbery.
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
When I buy something from eBay, I use PayPal to pay for it and never encountered any problems. If the item does not arrive after ~40 days I file a dispute and get my money back. PayPal is way cheaper than international bank transfer which would take 10-20EUR depending on the destination country. Even if the seller wants 5% addition to cover PayPal charges it is cheaper than international bank transfer (usually). Also, no a lot of sellers accept credit card directly and paying with PayPal is safer than giving the seller my credit card number
Seriously, why hasnt the EU started an anti-trust investigation as well?
Of course, eBay are in no hurry to update their site: http://i27.tinypic.com/8x3m6v.png [tinypic.com] (Screenshot taken 13 June 2008).
Sellers shouldn't be forced to offer PayPal as a payment option either.
On a side note, OZtion looks like a good alternative [oztion.com.au].
It depends if they have changed their definition of bank in Luxembourg.
The Bank of Credit and Commerce International was a registered bank in Luxembourg but was only a licensed money lender in the UK but they were still allowed to use the bank in their name becuse it was registered as a bank in Luxembourg.
Now whatever happened to BCCI?
Well done, ACCC!
And to be honest I'm surprised there weren't more submissions. It's now up to eBay to listen to the market here, or face increasing competition as loyal eBayers jump ship to the likes of Oztion and newer startups. The PayPal move is a clear sign of "double dipping". Imagine if your department store insisted you pay ONLY using their store charge card? People would leave en masse!!
It's called the Godfather, anyone heard of it? ; )
ebay just sent me this email with the subject "Important update: Delay to 17 June changes". Look what they're saying!
AN IMPORTANT UPDATE
As you may be aware, a number of changes were scheduled to come into effect on eBay.com.au on 17 June 2008.
Most of these changes have been delayed by almost one month and are now scheduled to commence on 15 July 2008.
PayPal Buyer Protection will still increase to $20,000 on 17 June 2008.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR YOU?
SELLING ON EBAY.COM.AU
Current policies regarding accepted payment methods still apply. This means PayPal is required on all listings on eBay.com.au. Other payment methods (i.e. bank deposit, cheque/money order) may also be offered until 15 July 2008.
As previously communicated any listings that do not comply with eBay's Accepted Payments Policy will be removed. We strongly recommend that in order to ensure your listings comply with the Accepted Payments Policy you remove any details of payment methods other than PayPal or pay on pick up within the item description. Listings that have other payment methods offered within the payment options field will be allowed to expire as these options will not be displayed to buyers from 15 July 2008.
There are a small number of categories where PayPal is not mandatory. There are also some categories that do not qualify for PayPal Buyer and Seller Protection. Learn more about these excluded categories.
? http://mail.ebay.com.au/op/c/85246396a2II2bde88a16II18bd769II88015ff01f
BUYING ON EBAY.COM.AU
As mentioned PayPal Buyer Protection will still increase to $20,000 on 17 June 2008.
To ensure you benefit from PayPal's Buyer Protection Policy, eBay strongly recommends you use PayPal when paying for your purchases on eBay.com.au.
>From 15 July 2008 the available payment methods will be limited to PayPal, Visa/MasterCard, or pay on pick up.
Please note that some of our onsite communications will still refer to changes taking place on 17 June 2008. These communications are being updated and should reflect the new date of 15 July 2008 within the coming days.
WHY ARE THESE CHANGES HAPPENING?
The decision to delay these changes was made by eBay following the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's (ACCC) draft notice issued on Thursday 12 June 2008.
eBay released a media statement on Friday 13 June regarding the ACCC's draft notice.
The statement reads as follows:
ACCC draft notice undermines online consumer protection
eBay will continue to fight for safety benefits for consumers
13 June 2008: eBay challenges yesterday's Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's (ACCC) draft notice and is disappointed that the ACCC's current view delays the opportunity to provide consumers a more secure way to shop on eBay.com.au with confidence.
eBay intends to work with the ACCC and hopes to achieve a final outcome which has the safety and security of eBay's members as its paramount objective. eBay will delay the removal of other payment methods from the site until Tuesday 15 July.
PayPal offers consumers a range of payment choices, including bank transfer and credit cards. It's a safer and easier online payment system that significantly enhances protection for eBay buyers and sellers.
eBay is pleased to confirm that PayPal buyer protection will jump to $20,000 on eBay.com.au for purchases paid for using PayPal from Tuesday 17 June.
eBay believes the consumer benefits of this initiative are worth fighting for on behalf of its buyers which will ultimately benefit sellers.
Regards
The eBay team
This email was sent from eBay International AG in accordance with the eBay user agreement.
If you have a question, contact eBay here http://mail.ebay.com.au/op/c/145d5b1e25II2bde88a16II18bd769II88015ff0