Slashdot Mirror
EBay Abandons Plans For PayPal Monopoly
An anonymous reader writes "eBay's has lost its fight to ban all payment methods except PayPal.
When Paypal originally announced the scheme it was to be global,
but they began with a dry run in Australia to test the reaction of government and consumer authorities.
In the public slanging match that followed between eBay and the regulatory ACCC, eBay spammed users claiming it was fighting for 'safety benefits for consumers.' Fortunately the consumers won.
Conceded eBay vice president Simon Smith, 'While we disagree with the ACCC's draft notice, we have decided to withdraw the notification to stop any further confusion and disruption among the eBay community.'
Nevertheless eBay insists PayPal is now always offered as a payment option.
Have big corporations finally learned that they can go too far? More chillingly, if eBay had launched the scheme in America would they have gotten away with it?"
Then I would leave e-bay, after being there since 1996
EBay is a medium to connect buyers and sellers, nothing more. They can't regulate the actual terms of a transaction. All the parties have to do is accept "cash/check" as the method of payment and then go to Google/Western Union/whathaveyou and send the payment that way. Seller gets money via "unapproved" method. What's eBay going to do? Stop him from shipping the item?
This was a non-issue from the start.
fp?
More chillingly, if eBay had launched the scheme in America would they have got away with it?
Yes:P There aren't any wildly accepted payment processors you can go with with ebay. While I don't like the arbitrary way Paypal handles accounts, its hard for me to go back to mailing a check or money order with its convenience. I doubt enough Americans would care one way or the other sadly.
I quit eBay (Canada) the day that they forced Canadian sellers to accept Paypal. Also, the fact that they'll withhold payments to me for 21 days without paying interest didn't go over so well either.
Shame to let all that good feedback go but I won't bend over for corporate raping.
I applaude the ACCC on this move but I wish somebody would have told me this was going to happen sooner. I requested them to shut down my eBay account in protest a month ago. eBay rationalized this by saying they were acting in the interests of consumers despite consumers said very clear they were against this.
This was about monopoly and eBay getting paid twice per transaction (more money for them). They spammed me MANY times trying to say "this is for your own good". I had customer representatives hassling me all the time when I requested my account be closed and they were going "you can sign up to paypal" and I said "I dont want a paypal account" and after 5 repeated attempts, they still havent shut it down but say "its in the process of being shut down"
Make SELinux enforcing again!
I understand that the real aversion to this plan comes from the "mandatory" part, but why is PayPal a bad thing? Personally, I like having a middleman shield my credit card information from the seller, and I like some of the other protections that using PayPal can afford.
And, frankly, what's so wrong about having a specific method of payment used throughout a website? If eBay had their own internal payment system identical in every way to PayPal, would there be as much fervor?
I wish they did do it, so that Google could finally put up Google Auctions and we finally got rid of eBay.
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
> More chillingly, if eBay had launched the scheme in America would they have got away
> with it?
Probably, because while people like you would have whined and moaned about the evil of it all you would have kept right on doing business with them. You recite high-sounding phrases about your rights, but you value convenience more.
Try to get a grip. There are lots of other ways to buy and sell things. If Ebay management wants to act like a pack of fools it's between them and their shareholders. They need customers more than the customers need them.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Why is there no competing online fleamarket to eBay? We all know eBay sucks ass! I want my competition!
Yes, yes, I know, build it and they will come...
The outright banning was perhaps a red-herring, i.e. an "It can be worse" program to distract people from other anti-competitive measures they were taking at the same time.
People will remember only that they were considering to ban the competitors outright, they have withdrawn that. Hence, they have succeeded. The public (the news media) will now ignore the more important changes -- the new requirement that paypal be offered on all listings.
Think of the auction bidding strategy that involves conspiracy: the highest bidder will confer with a third party to "accidentally" make an obvious bidding error, like bidding 100000 on a $100 item. The high-bidding conspirator will withdraw their bid (based on it being an obvious error), with the second-highest bidder getting the item for a ridiculously low price.
Banning non-paypal services outright is the distracting (erroneous bid). Making it mandatory to offer a Paypal option on all listings is the lower bid that still gets the item (eBay merchants' payment processing business).
They've also basically gotten away with it by banning their potential biggest competitor (Google) early.
Justifications are only to save face. The real reason they want to ban new non-Paypal services should be obvious.
By having pay-by-PayPal-through-eBay's-site required to be an option for all actions, the other payment methods will begin to be marginalized.
Because they will be less convenient.
By "not banning them" eBay will pretend to be placating them and allowing competition, where in fact, it will be harder for competitors to compete than before.
Now by withdrawing their "ban on alternate payment services", many people have by now forgotten or won't notice other changes...
They'll think eBay learned their lesson and will play nice, when it couldn't be farther from the truth.
Australian law lays between the consumer-driven EU laws and the company driven-US laws.
The ACCC is an independent government body specifically designed to prevent US-style corporate bastardisation. It's significantly resistant to US-style lobbying and has the power to stop company mergers, monitor and investigate pricing, regulate telecommunications companies, make unfair company policies illegal to enforce and works via a complaint system. (Meaning that individuals have the power to enact a government body to look into unreasonable practices.)
The ACCC is the reason why the iPhone is available on all competent Australian telecoms, why banks had to pass on savings to consumers and why ebay couldn't impose their paypal policy.
The smaller nature of the Australian population allows for this kind of organisation to exist, so I'm not confident this would scale without corruption to larger countries.(There is also an organisation which deals specifically with corruption.)
As with any system, there is an appeals process, many companies don't take this route (such as ebay) as the ACCC are usually just enforcing the existing fair trading & trade practices laws.
It feels great to be an Australian.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
Here in the good 'ole capitalist USA (not to say that's a bad thing) we don't punish Corps. for actions like this anymore. If that is what you have to do to make a buck then go for it. I think the best example to date is AT&T's immunity from any and all lawsuits during the wireprobing debacle. Free Market was a bad idea...it should have been Fair Market (in the sense that you should be fair to your consumers).
"More chillingly, if eBay had launched the scheme in America would they have got away with it?"
Depends on whether they bribed enough of the right people or not. Simple and obvious to anyone with knowledge of our system.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
If I run a grocery store, I'm allowed to say what kinds of checks I'll take.
If I run a coffee shop, I get to decide who'se posters stay on the bulletin board.
If I run an actual, physical auction house, I'm allowed to say "all payments run through the house." In fact that's what all physical auction houses DO say.
There's nothing "free as in speech" about a service like eBay. It's a commercial enterprise. They could demand payment in chickens and the ONLY right anyone has is to simply say no and not use them.
I have earned my entire (significant) income selling IT infrastructure and biopharma research equipment on ebay for years. All the changes they have made in the past 6 months have utterly killed my business. I went from supporting my family and many people that worked for me to ruin. They have completely killed ability of small people to compete (in my arena, at least.) I'm a lucky one because I just landed a kick-ass job doing what I actually like to do (consulting and IT) - but I know several others who are not so lucky. People that are about to lose everything, and who didn't have a high-paying skill to fall back on. This might be a bit off-topic so far, so I'll add in something that is on topic: this paypal only thing really probably wouldn't have made much more for paypal. Speaking from my focus (IT and Scientific equipment) virtually all transactions are paid by paypal anyway. We accept credit cards, wire, checks, Hell- on many items I;d take *anything* as payment (I'd even take an old HP-3000 or Vax!) The thing is, everyone has any payment choice they desire with us, and out of every $100 well over $99 comes through paypal. In fact, if we were rounding properly to integer values, $100 our of $100 comes through Paypal. So, if my focus holds true for other types of sales on ebay, the security thing might actually have been true in this case. Now, all that said, "Ebay, I hope you die a quick but painful death...the same you inflicted on me and so many others who worked our guts out to build a business on your platform. Die, you bastards."
I only use PayPal and will not deal with any seller/buyer that does not accept PayPal. I don't trust 'the check is in the mail', or 'I will wire the money to you tomorrow'. I am especially wary of sellers that offer me a discount if I pay them direct to avoid additional fees. By using PayPal, every step of the transaction is recorded and logged for reference.
The one time I was warned that a seller had been removed from eBay due to suspicious sales -- and I had already completed the sale -- I filed with eBay and PayPal. I got nearly all of my money back. The seller had gotten to his bank account and removed some of the money first.
Don't like the fees? Then charge more for your auction or go to another auction site.
Bearded Dragon
Why the hell has the Government got to anything do with this? If eBay customers don't want to use eBay because they're mandating PayPal, they have the right to go elsewhere.
It's a sad day for liberty when the customers of a company get to use force to determine the policies of that company.
I only use PayPal and will not deal with any seller/buyer that does not accept PayPal. I don't trust 'the check is in the mail', or 'I will wire the money to you tomorrow'. I am especially wary of sellers that offer me a discount if I pay them direct to avoid additional fees. By using PayPal, every step of the transaction is recorded and logged for reference.
The one time I was warned that a seller had been removed from eBay due to suspicious sales -- and I had already completed the sale -- I filed with eBay and PayPal. I got nearly all of my money back. The seller had gotten to his bank account and removed some of the money first.
Don't like the fees? Then charge more for your auction or go to another auction site.
I'm sorry to say paypal doesn't protect you from scammers. Read the fine print. Trust me, i was defrauded for 500 bucks by a seller who had 1000 positive feedback ratio (all VERY well astroturfed).
The truth is any service which allows you to use a major credit card will allow you to recover defrauded funds by disputing the charge. Don't make the mistake of thinking PayPal or some other service of its sort actually gives a damn, use your credit card's dispute service like I have since that time (recovering a further 1500).
This said, Ebay is on its last legs, at least when it comes to electronics. At least 30% of its listings are hong kong or nigerian scammers running hijacked accounts saying "e-mail me for 'buy it now' price!".
I really do feel for the legit sellers who are left. I honestly think Ebay drove off enough of their peers to make the online auction scene incredibly seedy.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
And I had all the money I paid for a second hand laptop stolen from me because paypal's dispute service took so damn long, and the perp was allowed to close the account.
I had no recourse. Looks like paypal protects nobody then.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
I am a European eBay buyer. From the posts in this thread, this seems to put me in a firm minority on Slahsdot. Anyway; I much prefer PayPal to bank transfer because in case of fraudolent, forged or non working product (or simply if the item was never sent), I have an avenue for recourse. With wire transfers I have no way to recover my money.
Also, in case of overseas payments, PayPal is _way_ cheaper than wire transfer.
Just my 2 cents (or a Euro). Resume your cheering.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
For instance it is reported from the article that "Sellers are reporting that eBay is systematically deleting auction listings from sellers who state in their item descriptions that they "prefer" to be paid with non-PayPal methods, such as bank deposit."
This sordid story is not over and us Aussies can be 'Real Right Bastards' when we are not given a fair go.
The more I know, the less I know
But the consumers decided they wanted to keep them.
...were his last words before the box jellyfish, funnel spiders, Tasmanian devils, great whites, and inland taipans overtook him.
I posted an MP3 player for sale. I was told I must offer PayPal and ONLY PayPal.
See here for screen grab:
http://www.itwriting.com/blog/708-ebay-insisting-on-paypal-only-in-the-uk.html
Tim
Can you explain the use of negative feedback against buyers?
The long and short of it is that sometimes sellers deserve negative feedback and sometimes buyers deserve negative feedback. There are plenty of good reasons in each case.
It seems that if they didn't pay that would be an issue you would take to Ebay, not something you'd complain about on their feedback page.
You can run through the non-paying bidder process but it has no teeth unless the buyer is a multiple time offender. eBay does not and (apparently) cannot make buyers pay - they only can kick them off eBay. Being able to tell other sellers about a problem buyer is one of the few defenses sellers have to recognize when a buyer is likely to be a problem. If a buyer has a history of negative feedback sellers sometimes can protect themselves. After all, if you are dealing with a known problem customer it should be my right as a seller not to deal with them.
It discouraged honesty from buyers.
Honesty from buyers? My guess is you haven't sold a significant amount of stuff on eBay. I have over 10,000 feedbacks with a 99.7% positive rating and have seen just about every buyer scam in the book first hand. I'm an optimistic person by nature but when you've had people try to burn you as much as I have you cease being so optimistic about the "honesty from buyers". Most buyers are fine but a very significant percentage are not and making it impossible for sellers to respond to the bad ones does not help anyone.
The vast majority of feedbacks are either content free ("A+++++ BEST SELLER EVER!!!!") or simply rude responses from people who couldn't be bothered to resolve a problem civilly. I particularly love getting negative feedback from buyers who can't be bothered to actually read the auction terms. Happens ALL the time.
While I'll be the first to admit there are a lot of scummy sellers out there there are at least as many scummy buyers. eBay's change in policy is an attempt to assure buyers that eBay is safe (it isn't) so that they don't take their business elsewhere.