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eBay To Disallow Checks and Money Orders In US
Sir_Kurt writes "In eBay's latest FAQ, they explain that sellers (for the good of the buyers) will no longer be allowed to accept checks or money orders as payment. They can take electronic payments only. So, will Google Checkout, Checkout by Amazon or Amazon Flexible Payment be allowed? No, says eBay: 'Google's and Amazon's products and services compete with eBay on a number of levels, so we are not going to allow them on eBay.' Options are limited to PayPal, ProPay, direct credit payments to the seller, and 'payment upon pickup.' But remember, this is for our own good!"
eBay ran into trouble earlier this year for trying to restrict payment options.
Too many people fall for the "I will send you X+Y and you send me back Y with the item".
Besides if your dealing on the net the protection of a CC is a must
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The more restrictions they put on their service, the less interest I have in using it.
I liked the good old days of ebay where you could buy a few sparc stations and then drive over to a guys house and give him cash for them. (craigslist has filled that void)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Since the promlems in austrilla, paypal just beign a worthless system lately and with this new help from ebay, and fees rising ata higher percentage of gas, tell me how anyone makes any money off ebay anymore?
~~"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." ~~Dennis Miller
Basically paypal and e-bay are ridicuously bad about protecting people from scams.
However this is a move in the right direction. Recently they put a 30 day escrow on pay pal payments. Which they should have done years ago.
Now it's much safer to shop.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
You won't find me bidding nor buying on Ebay again.
I've never had a pay-pal account and this isn't going to drive me to one. I've never had a problem with sending money orders.
Hurricane Island Outward Bound
OB
2. Wait a year.
3. Knock direct credit payments to the seller and payment upon pickup on the head.
4. Profit!
Who says they haven't learnt from what happened in Australia.
Other than payment upon pickup, you have to accept a payment method with 5-10% transaction fees. Internet merchant accounts take time to setup, so most sellers will switch to PayPal. Might make them more money in the long term, but I think it's another move that will alienate sellers from eBay.
Many may not remember, but when Sears first came out with the Discover card, they stopped accepting Visa/Mastercard.
Sales dropped, and it was the beginning of the end for Sears.
Those who don't study history....
Ok, I give up, why you?
If Google wanted, they could launch an e-bay competitor.
God spoke to me.
If payment options are ever limited to Paypal, then I won't be using EBay.
Little known fact: Paypal "reserves the right" to reverse a transaction without permission from the seller. That's what backs their money-back guarantee.
I sold an item which went to a woman in CA, it arrived damaged in transit. I worked on processing the insurance claim, but she didn't want to wait, and made a claim to paypal. They reversed the transaction, she shipped the item back, and received money from them which they billed me for. I refused to pay, so they kept money from another transaction that I made during this time.
So now I have a broken item that's been to CA and back, I can't make an insurance claim since it's since been shipped again by a different carrier, and paypal is sending me to collections since I refuse to pay for a return they authorized, not me.
I don't mind using PayPal, but I really hate the fact that the site is swamped with commercial vendors rather than people selling stuff they don't need any more. eBay needs to be split into a marketplace where you can go to buy new things (like Amazon), and the good old auctioning of used personal stuff. Until they do that, they won't see me again.
EagerEyes.org: Visualization and Visual Communication
i agree, the more restrictions ebay applies, the more i look elsewhere
We are all comrades now in the U.S.S.A.
No checks or money orders in U.S.S.A. because there are NO banks.
P.S.: In case you've been reading Slashot too much,
General Motors will announce bankruptcy. They're drawing on U.S. $ 3.5 billion of their last U.S. $ 5.5 billion
line of credit.
Cordially,
Comrade Kilgore Trout
"just send us money". They decided it'd be easier to avoid auctions all together and require users to send a portion of their income to Ebay through Paypal.
I can't for the life of me understand why so many people continue to waste their time using eBay. What exactly is the appeal of going through a bidding process to end up paying over retail prices on stuff that may not ever even get shipped by whatever douche happens to be scamming at the moment?
Is there anywhere else? Ebay used to be 'the garage sale to the world'. With in overwhelming amount of corporate sellers, now it's more like 'outlet mall to the world'. And Craigslist is just want-ads with zero protection offered or even implied. Putting an ad is the local paper is sounding more and more like the best option (at least for selling).
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Just in time for the rumored layoffs at eBay. Not a good time to be cutting services. I can understand why but OTOH, PP has it's share of problems.
I'm not saying that many people do it (it would require a lot of trust), but it shouldn't be eliminated completely as an option. Is that what the "payment upon pickup" is supposed to cover?
The love affair with overpriced auction winnings is waning. More and more people are realizing that most of the stuff on ebay that you can get at your local store or at another retailer on the internet is usually ridiculously overpriced. The days of paying 105% of new price for used goods are over. This realization by the consumer is hurting ebay's bottom line. They are no longer growing at double digit percentages and I would argue trends show all growth will halt in less than a year. To continue to grow revenue they have to try to take a bigger cut of every sale. They have already raised prices so the next step is to take a cut of every payment transaction. That was the entire strategy with the paypal acquisition. It's simply been a matter of time before they ban every payment method other than paypal.
The question is will there be a drop is use of the site as a result, or whether there will be a lawsuit. Ebay has always run into this issue that someday a lawyer is going to get everyone together who's been scammed and file a class action suit that targets them for all the things they could do to prevent fraud and don't. It's going to be a BIG lawsuit someday so the executives have it in mind to bump the stock price as much as possible and make sure they get their bonuses before the shit hits the fan. That and making sure there is still growth in a company where there is no growth.
eBay has been going this route for a while. I don't see them backing down. I am in agreement that Craigslist is filling the void that eBay used to fill very well. Now it's just a bunch of 'PowerSellers' reselling product they don't even have. It was a nice flea market while it lasted, but they got big $$$ in their eyes and got greedy.
For example, I sold an item for $150, final value fee was $12.35 and paypal took another $4.82. That's a good chunk of the sale when you are the one designing the auction page and putting the items up for sale. All in hope that the buyer isn't going to rip you off by reversing the charges after pretending they never got the item and you can't leave them negative feedback anymore.
There is a need for a new auction site to open that is like eBay used to be.
and every day, companies send million-dollar checks through regular US mail to each other. and the system actually works pretty well. for 47 cents, plus envelope , paper, and special laser cartridges, you can transfer a million dollars. try doing that on paypal, or setting up eletronic systems to do that, and now try to keep those systems secure. now try to do it for 47 cents per transaction.
checks are dying, but they are not a horrible system. they work.
what's really going on is this: meg whitman left ebay, now some 'genius' MBA has come in and said 'omg we are not screwing the customers enough. take away their freedom of choice, and change it into profit for us'.
in other words: capitalists hate us for our freedom.
I'm with you, man. Every few months I decide to scour eBay for something I don't want to pay full price for with the hope that I'll find the one true, used, item from a normal person in the middle of all of the "new for the same price or more than it costs at a store, plus shipping, plus you have to wait for it to arrive" crap.
Every time I do that, I end up spending the next hour ranting to my wife (seriously, for real, I have one of those) about how eBay has gone to hell and it's just a bunch of overpriced, new products now instead of used stuff.
But there really aren't a lot of "somewhere elses", other than craigslist, at least, not in a realistic sense. And craigslist is only an okay option for people who are happy selling locally at a fixed price (or perhaps "best offer", if you want to be technical about it.)
Other than that... hmm. Certainly there are a whole myriad of tiny itty-bitty auction sites out there (I would guess), but aside for some very narrow specialty niches, ebay enjoys an incredible barrier-to-entry advantage in the auction-house market. Why? Because when selling, just about everybody wants the biggest possible market for their wares. Hence, just about everybody goes to the biggest market. Duh.
This will not change until/unless eBay shoots itself in the foot by getting so greedy on sales commissions that they manage to piss off a critical mass of people. And even then, they'll still enjoy enough of a natural advantage that they can just back off a percentage point, wipe out their fledgling upstart competitor, and carry on as before.
Listen to what I say, not what I mean...
As a once-in-a-while seller, all I can say is: NO FUCKING WAY.
I smell a boycott.
As Ebay increases restrictions they're increasingly excluding their own customer base. Where are these people going instead? Another comment mentioned Craigslist; and there are specialty auction sites (gunbroker.com is one I'm familiar with) that handle categories Ebay specifically excludes. But are there any general auction sites that are getting more popular as Ebay declines?
eBay needs to be split into a marketplace where you can go to buy new things (like Amazon), and the good old auctioning of used personal stuff. Until they do that, they won't see me again.
Ebay IS split into a "market place" (ebay stores) and an "auction". The trouble is the marketplace people want visibility in the auction side and so flood the auctions with their stuff.
And then on top of that there are the boatloads of garbage sellers, who just stuff the auctions with worthless crap that never sells... 'guides' and crap like that. And the people with scammy sounding auctions...
"I will randomly pack a few valueable items into one of 500 lots of near worthless items" buy a lot of lots and hope you get lucky!
Of course there is no accountability that any of the 500 lots ever had the valuable item in the first place...
...every major purchase I've made on eBay was with a postal money order. Why? Because they're convenient and federally protected - if the seller frauds me they're in trouble with the postmaster general.
Shame to see them cut this - I guess I won't ever buy anything big off eBay again.
I tried eBay for a few recent purchases but I found that Amazon was winning most of the time - either with its own stock or through third-party sellers. The marketplace is far more efficient for buyers - you don't have to wait for auctions that you might or might not win to complete. eBay might still be the best place for unusual or one-of-a-kind items - I've seen certain out-of-print titles go for far less than the offers on Amazon - but for most things it's just not worth my time.
Will suddenly be "pay when you pick up" customers. Payment can be pre-sent via USPS mail, and shipping will be concierge service automatically 24 hours after payment if they can't pick it up because they suddenly got too busy. :)
Now you can truly get scammed!
Previously, the best way to pay was with a US Post Office money order.
What you would do is write a description of the item that you had purchased, and if you didn't get it, the seller had committed mail fraud.
The reason this was the best, is that they (the post office)have a whole division dedicated to mail fraud, and would actually work at tracking down fraudsters and shutting down their operations, as the laws on mail fraud have teeth, as opposed to something that belongs in small claims court otherwise.
Other payment methods (Visa, MC, PayPal) isn't going to spend a whole lot of effort to recover minor amounts of money, they may refund your money, but the scammer gets to continue their operation, maybe with a minor name change, taking advantage of the next sucker to come along.
This goes back to the reason why you don't really want to hack government entities, is that they will spend a fortune on tracking down the perpetrator all out of disproportion to the actual damage caused. *
In fact, a good way to tell the legitimacy of the seller, especially if they were a "private" seller, is to see if they would accept a USPO money order.
If they didn't it was a red flag that you may not want to deal with them.
I can understand (from a purely greed standpoint) of EBay not wanting to allow this type of transaction, as they don't get even more of a cut of the PayPal action, and just have to make due with the listing fee.
Oh well, just another nail in the coffin for fiscal responsibility.
Well, of course the excuse they are using is factually correct. We have to look deeper, at what they're really intending to achieve by doing this. It doesn't take a tinfoil hat wearing loon to see that eBay are trying to shoe-horn everyone into paying by Paypal. They've already tried it once recently!
There's also one point the summary missed:
The thing is, they ran into trouble in Australia. Will the US DOJ take an interest? Am guessing, but I doubt it.
This is a case where the course of action for the DOJ is clear however. eBay and Paypal should be split into two separate companies, that would stop this -- and any future -- nefarious deals between the two. Returning competition to the market.
I'm going to transform myself into a mighty hawk. Either that or I'll just go and work at Dixons, haven't decided yet.
Being in electronic payments business, though overall check volume is declining nationwide, I can't understand why any merchant (in this case Ebay) would turn down business by not accepting checks as a form of payment.
As much as we would like to see them go away, they won't for a long time. Banks still continue to issued personal check, even for folks that can't qualify for credit cards.
I don't think this program will last too long... other services will guarantee checks (like a credit card).
I think other hungry competitors would gladly accept these forms of payment to attract new customers..
This is ridiculous. When I sell on eBay, the ONLY method I accept is U.S. postal money orders. Not even checks. Just money orders. And when I buy, I only buy from sellers who accept money orders. They're the only payment method that can be trusted at all. Forget this electronic trash. I'm going to stop using eBay unless they reverse this stupid decision.
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
It depends on what you want. If you want something new or modern, forget eBay. If you want something old or obscure (Apple IIc flat-panel display, copy of Suspended in the box), it's still the only game in town.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
EBay/PayPal holding the money doesn't solve where the buyer gets the item but claims he didn't, or where the seller ships something else.
It's still he said, she said. People on both sides will still get ripped off. The only thing different is the extra fees by using PayPal.
... I already started boycotting EBAY when they bought PayPal.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
unles you are a caancer.... or a publicly traded corporation ....
eby could be a fine, stable business... if they go private and quit worrying about how to do 'double digit growth'... a ridiculous long term goal for any company.
So, they tried this crap as a trial run in Australia, telling everyone it was going to become the policy... except, well, enough people saw it for what it was, which is purely trying to make even more money... and got the ACCC (Australian Competition & Consumer Commission) to rule it not allowed.
Huzzah for Australia, but man... eBay can't be going too well if they're going to keep trying this crap.
They're going to discover people aren't quite as loyal as they may have thought.
The more restrictions they put on their service, the less interest I have in using it.
I liked the good old days of ebay where you could buy a few sparc stations and then drive over to a guys house and give him cash for them.
That is still allowed under the current policy, as there are no restrictions on the payment at pick-up option, but very few sellers offer that.
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
As a sometime seller,this isn't significant.
In about 1,200 sales, I've had exactly one bad check, and that was about six years ago.
I've had 99+ buyers paying by PayPal for the last four years or so, with no push from me.
So this change is not going to change things for most buyers or sellers. It does simplifiy things a bit.
I used ebay for the last time a couple of weeks ago. Tried to use a credit card via PayPal and found that I couldn't without giving very personal information --- so I sent a bank check and decided then that I wouldn't be back.
Pity. Greed has no bounds, it seems.
I started ebaying at about the age of 14. the first 50 or so items that I purchased were done via postal money order. Prepaid credit cards are easily obtainable these days but they weren't back then. I'd get my dad to let me use his credit card sometimes, but it was alot easier to buy a money order.
I'm sure it wasn't too much revenue for ebay, but there are plenty of other 15 year olds out there and banking impaired people.... unless ebay is purposely trying to remove this demographic from their business as some sort of precaution or something.
Paypal acts like a payment processor, not a bank. They don't have a bank charter among other things. Payment processing regulation is very lax.
They are a teeeny-tiny player in the payment processing world dominated by hook-and-crook by the Visa association of banks.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Can anyone recommend any other online auction houses (I.e., one that you've actually used it to but/sell an item)?
Thanks,
SD
It's been decades since we've had a true competitive market in the US. Agriculture was the last to go.
They aren't trying to make it safer for anyone, they are trying to line their pockets with even more money. The sad truth is that eBay makes it a pain to pay any other way. It wouldn't be so bad if their fees were more in line with what a B&M store has for say, a debit/cc terminal. The last time I received money from an eBay transaction I got dinged for 2 or 3 bucks, which is on top of the auction fees. All said and done, I was out close to $6 in fees, which isn't a lot of money I suppose, but it's quite a lot when you look at credit card and debit transactions from a real terminal. Considering the sheer number of transactions they must make, I'm sure they get better pricing on the transactions themselves than the mom and pop dollar store in the plaza across the street, and yet I doubt it costs them $6 to sell ~$100 worth of merchandise in a single transaction.
I wish you Americans would learn to use the word "Cheque". Yes, I know any word with a "q" in it must frighten the bejaysus out of you, but "check" already exists as a different word with a completely different purpose, one it serves well. And while you're at it, it's a QUEUE, not a "Q".
Right now, eBay is the auction place. Sellers want to sell on eBay because that's where all the buyers are. Buyers want to buy on eBay because that's where all the sellers are.
At some point, both buyers and sellers could get sufficiently upset with eBay as to take their business elsewhere. Are we there yet?
And if we are, what is the most likely competitor?
http://online-auction-sites.toptenreviews.com/
One more thought: if the current situation is close to the tipping point, then all it would take is one single disturbance to cause a mass exodus from eBay to the new site. For example, if Google were to buy one of eBay's top competitors, and publicly announce Google Auctions, and announce that they would charge less in fees and allow checks and postal money orders... eBay could lose everything in the blink of an eye.
Remember how fast Xfree86 was dumped in favor of X.org? Dissatisfaction with the Xfree86 project was already high, and then they announced one more petty annoying license change, and *boom*, they were done. I wonder if this could happen with eBay.
http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3338031
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Besides if your dealing on the net the protection of a CC is a must
CCs only protect buyers not sellers. A buyer can always dispute a charge on their credit card, which is a good thing as credit cards or their numbers can be stolen. But it's bad for sellers, they may not get paid. And if they have too many chargebacks their merchant account can be canceled. As for paying with checks or money orders, banks will stop payments on checks and the buyer can get a refund with their money order receipt.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
How can a business stipulate that you cant use accepted legal forms of payment?
They get the fee from the listing, AND the pay-pal service fee. Double dipping and restrictive business practices from a virtual monopoly.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Don't hold your breath, they cant make enough money off the private 'yard sale' customers to make them happy.
I see craigslist growing due to this blunder.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
But not in this case. As a seller, you can't go elsewhere because all the buyers are there, and as a buyer you can't go elsewhere because all the sellers are there.
Ebay holds a fully locked down monopoly, and they need to be regulated as such.
To be fair, there are a ton of scams involving money orders and checks.
It's not just some buyer getting scammed by sending a money order and never receiving merchandise. It's also sellers getting scammed by accepting fake money orders and are then liable for cashing it. Often, they even pay the scammer, because the money order is too large of an amount and the gullible seller refunds the difference.
I would only buy using checks or direct credit card and stayed the hell away from paypal after they froze a close friends account that had 10k for some BS reasons about someone buying from him might have committed fraud, yea so 6 months later he finally got it back, but had to get another job and nearly lost his house.
And ebay and pay pall have no need to know of my bank accounts yet it is now a requirement.(stopped selling when they demanded it back in 99/2000 I think)
Ebay is taken over by big businesses so it is much harder to find used older stuff at expected prices.
Thats alright, I recently looked at ebay for something for ~$250-$400 range then found a local one for $100 on craigslist.
So long ebay!
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
For Australians the next best "somewhere else" is "Oztion.com.au". You can still use Paypal if you want but they don't push it more than any other option - probably because they don't own it...
They tried this shite out in Australia first, and had the Australian consumer watchdog and the Reserve Bank weigh in with an opinion.
In the end the only time I've ever needed Paypal, it offered exactly what the fine print suggested, but this was of no use to me. I was a buyer had received a damaged repackaged low value item (about $30). The item was shipped within Australia but I was forced to send correspondence to the US and was directed to send an international fax and make international phone calls during overseas business hours. I was also told the matter would not be pursued unless I was able to fax a statement by an expert on a company letter head outlining why the goods were not as described. This is before they'd even persue the matter. Tell me where I can get an official unbiased evaluation and report on an item for under $30. Not their problem they said. Fine. I had bought by credit card so I issued a chargeback, closed my Paypal account and informed my bank that further charges from Paypal were not to be processed.
Now they may have honoured the terms of the fine print, but they also claim to cover low value goods, so as far as I'm concerned they offered me something which in practical terms was of no use to me. It's like insuring a car for $5000 where the excess is $6000. I'd be a fool to accept that deal even if they honoured the letter of the law. Bottom line: If I can't feel secure with Paypal for small payments, I sure as hell won't trust them with large sums of money.
I've made one Ebay purchase in the last 3-4 years. It was C.O.D.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I must be ignorant,
How is placing an ad in the paper providing any more protection then an ad placed on craigslist?
Spelling and Grammar errors have been added to this post for your enjoyment
eBay is done. eBay and Paypal both suck dick.
Buy/sell your stuff on Amazon instead.
The one time I ever paid for anything on Ebay with a check, was late in 2007 for an item I really wanted for a holiday gift. This is after a few hundred Ebay transactions, never had a problem before. This seller basically just cashed my check and that was that. Vanished. Ebay support and abuse departments would never even discuss it with me. And that was that, as far as me and Ebay are concerned.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
yet another reason why ebay continues to suck more and more.. i don't understand why i get emails from the CEO of ebay saying, "you've complained, and we've listened!" when absolutely NOTHING has been done to benefit the people that make ebay money.. THE SELLERS! TAKE YOUR HEADS OUT OF YOUR ASSES!! I actually used to work for an ebay powerseller, and we sold loads of stuff! after time the business went under due to many contributing factors.. higher listing fees and FVF's, paypal transaction fees, the *requirement* to use Blackthorne as opposed to Seller's Assistant Pro, and their newest additions to their feedback rating systems.. ebay, you need to understand one thing.. once you screw the sellers, you're going to screw the buyers too.. the fees don't seem like much until you're selling thousands and thousands of dollars worth of stuff a week.. then you realize, ok, ebay sucks..
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
Ebay has been going downhill since it decided it was more interested in being a big box store than a place where people could buy and sell their wares. I had an ebay business for a couple years closed with the first big fee increase a few years back, the last person I knew that was still a seller gave up and packed it in a few months back. Unfortunately with ebay's 25% stake in Craigslist if ebay went completely under it would likely do its best to ensure that it took CL with it.
Dang! That's the solution to the credit crisis! Sell all those mortgage bonds on eBay where there's already a lot of suckers^H^H^H^H^H^H^Heager customers for that type of product.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Every time I do that, I end up spending the next hour ranting to my wife (seriously, for real, I have one of those)...
Not for long, if you keep that up...! :)
Previously, the best way to pay was with a US Post Office money order.
Money orders are basically cash. This is a TERRIBLE idea.
What you would do is write a description of the item that you had purchased, and if you didn't get it, the seller had committed mail fraud.
The USPS doesn't prosecute individuals for mail fraud on eBay. And even if they did, the worst offenders are overseas and out of the reach of the USPS.
Other payment methods (Visa, MC, PayPal) isn't going to spend a whole lot of effort to recover minor amounts of money, they may refund your money,
The credit card companies will almost certainly refund your money because they MAKE MONEY on refunds. Ebay sellers are often charged $250 for each chargeback. American Express almost always takes the side of the consumer, they expect every merchant using AMEX to have a 30-day "no questions asked" return policy.
This goes back to the reason why you don't really want to hack government entities, is that they will spend a fortune on tracking down the perpetrator all out of disproportion to the actual damage caused.
No they won't. Most attacks against the Pentagon, NSA, and the White House aren't even investigated.
Think about this logically for a second: How many IP scanners are out there (lots) and how much IP space does the federal government have (lots and lots)? So logically if you run a port scanner on "the internet" (as many attackers do) you're going to hit a lot of federal IPs. Do you seriously think the feds investigate every one of those (several hundered per day) IP scans?
I used to work at a high-end guitar store in the Northeast, and my boss put his entire store inventory (that he owned) on Ebay. The reason was simple enough: his inventory was pretty unique, expensive, and collectable, so he felt he needed to reach a global audience to have the best potential to move his gear.
He stopped accepting PayPal for international bidders after an incident in which a international scam artist purchased an item online and reversed the purchase the day it was shipped out the door. Unfortunately, PayPal offers no insurance to the seller in international transactions. So PayPal is a no go for him.
Credit cards are also a problem. He has been burned before. While credit companies and credit card processing companies generally protect you more than PayPal, it can still complicate international small-scale business. In order to verify that the person is not using a stolen credit card, he has to call up the credit agency in its respective country and verify that the shipping address and billing address are the same. Interestingly enough, some banks (particularly in the UK) will flat out refuse to give you this information - even a simple yes or no response when you give them the address you have is against their policy. Also interestingly enough, this service is not automated for international transactions , although it is for US transactions. Now imagine doing this many, many times a day, especially if you sell cheaper items, lets say in the 10-20 dollar range. Also keep in mind that the more times you give a customer an indication of distrust (such as calling them at their residence to confirm other information or ask the bank to release information), the greater your chance to drop the sale becomes.
I'd estimate that roughly 80% of his international transactions over eBay were done via check, money order, or direct money wire, because these methods of payment were convenient while also fairly risk-and-hassle-free. Without this option, I don't see him making as many sales overall, especially in today's market, where the US economy is floundering and the majority of his sales come from overseas. Nearly 3 out of every 5 guitars we shipped last year went overseas, despite high shipping rates, and many of them went to England. Nearly 4 out of 5 of every 1000+ plus item went overseas.
Now, of course, many of you are probably saying "Well now, why didn't he just start a website?". He did. The problem is this: eBay just has too much exposure to let go of. He will probably keep his eBay store, but mostly because advertising through Google or anywhere else is just so damn expensive. He used to pour 500 dollars a month into AdWords. Guess where that got him? Nowhere. Analytics even said so. But when the customers contact him through Ebay, ethically he has to complete the sale through Ebay (or lose his merchant account). If he is restrained to completing the sales through Ebay, he will probably make less sales because for him credit card is now the only option (pay on pickup doesn't really make sense internationally), and his business and Ebay will both suffer. But if he behaves unethically by taking those contacts and processes them through his own website , Ebay still loses and there is the potential of him losing his account and exposure, along with the additional "untrusty" flag that comes along with telling a customer you are going to "bend the rules".
I don't see how this can be a win for Ebay.
Money.
Dumb question time -- I'm assuming we all know that eBay owns PayPal?
Microsoft Auctions. Or Google Auctions Beta.
They have the visibility, reputation, and deep pockets to survive a monopolistic battle with e-Bay, and it would give them
a) a portal for ad space
b) a key venue for an entry into the financial transactions sector
Microsoft is looking for a) and was trying to get into b) a few years back with their whole MS wallet deal. Back then it wasn't the time or the place (and their initial implementations had sucky security, surprise, surprise). But as eBay/Paypal try to rake more from their current users and alienate them, it opens doors that were closed.
Google Auctions and Google [Micropayments|Bank] would probably give Steve B. a heart attack.
I would like to also say "Apple Auctions", optionally bundled with iTunes music store, but that's unlikely since it doesn't fit with Apple's corporate image of providing premium value through design and quality.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
It's not a virtual marketplace anymore. They tell you what you can and can't sell, they tell you how you can sell it and how you can collect payment. And on top of that they charge you more and more. Hardly sounds like a marketplace to me.
Assuming London (+44 171) 'Marblemouth' accent.
I have a sack of marbles from which I will proceed to fill my mouth in order to speak properly...(klik-kla-klak-glug-gug-gack-mmm-mmmphl)
It's not a surveillance cahmerah; it's a BEHAVIOUR MUHDIFICATION DEVOICE...
The lettah kyuuu (Q) is too heavily linked to terrorism for the ahverage Yahnkee to handle discrately since 11 September 2001. It occuhrs freyquentlay in trahnsliteraytion from the Arabic: Al Qa'ida.
One must not forget that there also exists the DemAAAAhnd DrAAAAAhft.
Spit! SPitt! SPEWWWWWW! (ting! ting ting! kla-klakk!) (huff-puff-huff!) BAACK to NYOO YAWK TAWK!
Submission as evidence constitutes plaintiff and/or prosecutorial misconduct.
OK, but where did you go?
nom nom nom
I only been a member since 2006, the whole time I only used Money Order, I've put up with scrolling to the bottom of every fucking offer to see if it was "Paypal Only" every fucking time at an extreme annoyance, I've also accidentally bid on shit that was Paypal only, only to be outbid luckily. (I asked on their fucking forums about that and they dodged the question completely as to how the fuck that could have happened.) I never ripped anybody off, I always paid on time, and have 100% positive. And have bought many items from $100-$350.
eBay can go fuck themselves, the moment this rolls out.
Ebay should have waited until December to announce this. Every two years in the fall, there's a brief window of time when Congress actually listens to voters instead of corporations. Write your representatives and tell them what you think. It's election season. They just might give a damn.
While you're at it, let the DOJ know too:
Citizen Complaint Center
Antitrust Division
950 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Room 3322
Washington, DC 20530
Most states have their own laws regarding unfair competition. If you're ambitious, Google it and find other agencies that will take your complaint.
I really hate the fact that the site is swamped with commercial vendors rather than people selling stuff they don't need any more. eBay needs to be split into a marketplace where you can go to buy new things (like Amazon), and the good old auctioning of used personal stuff.
We need more regulations? You may want some but I don't. eBay has commercial venders because it works for them. A person can unload old items they have, and make some money at it. Once people start making money from selling stuff on eBay they'll sell more and more until they reach the point where they need to decide if they want to turn it into a business or just keep it on the sideline. Are you proposing that if a person does want to start a business they need to move to a commercial auction site, and perhaps require a business license as well? If so have you thought about the potential ramifications? People sell on eBay because they can sell for profit while buyers buy from eBay because they can get good prices as well. It's good for both parties. If those who sell in volumes have move to commercial auction sites, who's going to be their buyers?
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Gee...
Guess it's time to file a formal complaint with the USPS. The USPS Inspectors already HATE eBay and eBay sellers. Now eBay is going to (try) to BAN the use of a government sanctioned form of payment?
This oughta get good real quick.
There *are* lots of alternative auction sites - Last count I found about 3 dozen in the US. Unfortunately most are relatively unknown. The biggest second tier true auction sites are OnlineAuction.com and eBid. There are niche sites that do very well, like etsy for handcrafters, and many others. There are also sites like iOffer (not really auctions) and Overstock.com that are big, but have large quantities of the same dropship junk that has flooded eBay lately. Your best bet for sites are like eBay *used to be* are OnlineAuction and ebid. You can get awesome deals, but just like the EB early days, you can't find everything. As a seller, well, sales are slow, but they do happen. Another good option to find things is GoogleBase. Craigslist is great, used with caution - there definitely are scammers on the site - sellers and buyers. No one can replace eBay *Yet*, but with the numbers of buyers and sellers leaving and moving slowly to the other sites there will be a tipping point somewhere along the line. eBay's only long term hope for survival is to reverse many of the new policies, but that isn't happening soon.
Google's core competency is maintaining an inventory of eyeballs for ads. Selling ads on an auction site is a bit of gymnastics I can't quite imagine.
Also consider regulatory hurdles. Google Auctions won't happen in a Democratic FTC, because Google would be leveraging a monopoly. Google Auctions won't happen in a Republican FTC, because Meg Whitman is a GOP poster girl and big-business Republicans stick together.
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
As long as things like Google Checkout and Amazon payments are only available to americans, eBay will stay king.
Serendipitously, eBid.net officially launched today in the U.S. See the news here. Their fees are far, far lower, and they want to grab all the customers eBay is going to lose.
Don't know if this works (waiting to see what happens), but it was given to me by their online chat help.
http://contact.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ContactUs&wftype=2024&rcode=IV%25A00253&subject=Close%20my%20account&bcrumb=+Home+%3E+Help+Topics+%3E%A0Account+Information+and+Billing%A0%3E%A0Suspended+Account&instruction=&expirationDate=
Such a shame, really. I've been buying stuff there for over 10 years, and have always paid with a Money Order.
Chip H.
I'm sick of taking money orders and checks anyway. Cuts down on gas, no trips to the post office. I will finally shut off my stupid PO box too.
Is there anywhere else? Ebay used to be 'the garage sale to the world'.
There are plenty of online auction sites including Amazon. That's why it doesn't mean much if eBay wants people to use PayPal. If people don't like it they can go to another online auction service.
Oh, and as for "garage sales", I'm pretty sure there are people who do what my sister used to do. She'd go to garage or yard sales to see if she could find things to buy she thought she could sell for a profit on eBay.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
http://pages.ebay.com/sell/August2008Update/OtherFAQ/#3
Fixed rate shipping on media (cd's, books, dvd's, etc), while it sounds good, in many cases their maximum allowed shipping and handling cost is several dollars less than the USPS flat rate box which is currently the cheapest way to ship. Their "faq" basically suggests that sellers just raise their prices. This leaves book rate as the only viable option, but try explaining to customers that they mey not get thier item for a month.
IMHO this is nothing more than a further attempt to deter the mom and pop businesses they have been so eager to push out over the past couple years.
If you read further you will also find they are eventually going to get rid of 3rd party checkout as well so regarless of whether you have your own credit card processing you will have to use ebay checkout.
DSR's (Detailed Seller Ratings) are required at 4.3 or higher..which is great, but it has to be that way in the last 30 days...so you have to constantly sell things in order to keep it maintained. Bought a new laptop and want to sell the old one? You are no longer welcome at ebay and have to find a consigner.
Ebay has forgotten who made it what it is, I dont know why they feel the need to be Amazon (actually amazon is more welcoming to the small seller) but I have a feeling this may finally be the push over the edge the rest of the old timers needed to bail on ebay and find something else to do.
This is what EBAY wants. They want to get rid of the casual sellers(higher fees, forcing them to adopt one type of payment..etc) and only have commercial sales. They make way more money doing this. Of course this means that they are stabbing in the back, the seller base that made EBAY what it is. What we need is a NEW auction site to take away ebays crown.
What eBay is basically doing here is slowly phasing in a closed payment system. If you buy through eBay, you pay through eBay (PayPal). It's totally their perogative to do this. Of course, it's totally your perogative not to use eBay if this model doesn't agree with you. If enough people object to it, then it opens up an opportunity for someone else to step in and offer an auction site with open payment options. eBay competitors have failed before but perhaps this will change the landscape.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
before you say something really stupid-- like you've stopped using ebay and now use craigslist.
do you know who is like a 25% owner of craigslist?
that's like saying, I don't buy eggs from those chicken slaughtering farms, I buy them at the grocery store
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Yes I do.
Growth is the sole raison d' être for a corporation.
No it isn't. The sole purpose of a corporation is to serve the common good or pubic good. The first corporations granted corporate charters were the Honourable East India Company in 1600 and the Dutch East India Company in 1602. Both India Companies were shipping businesses, the Honourable company shipping goods between Britain and India and the Dutch operating between India and the Netherlands. Shipping was a risky business, a ship could be attacked by pirates, the crew could mutiny, or the ship could run into bad weather. And the ship's owner was liable for any and all cargo lost as well as for the lives of the crew. If for whatever reason a ship was lost that could bankrupt the owners. So the British and Dutch governments granted corporate charters to these companies which gave them limited liability. With limited liability the most an owner could lose is the amount they invested.
But because of this limited liability corporations were only granted charters if they served the public good. Once a business no longer served it it could have it's corporate charter revoked. Unfortunately as foreseen by Thomas Jefferson corporations became too powerful so they are no longer held to the standards of serving the public good.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Tell the greedy f@cks that you'll cancel your Ebay and Paypal accounts if they try to pull this crap.
Sparc stations? Craigslist?
I think freecycle has filled that void.
If you can't exhibit to the general public a lot number, the title to the property being sold, and the district where the property is to be found then how do we know or not if you are just an anti-eBay shill that just likes to sing along but doesn't know what it means...don't know what it means when I say yeah?
I have a reason to hate eBay. Her name is Beatlejew Beatlejew Bea - tle - jew!
You can't use an echeck for payment unless you already have a paypal account.
If you're creating a new account, you have two options for authorization:
1) Give paypal the ABA and account info and they will make two small random deposits in 2-4 working days. You then confirm the dates and amounts.
OR
2) Give paypal your online username and password to your bank account and they will log in to your account, verify that those work and authorize your account instantly.
Riiiight.
I couldn't believe I'd heard this, and called as a merchant to verify. Sure enough. When I asked them what they'd smoked for breakfast, they fell into the script "Of course you know paypal is the most secure, reliable and trusted online payment--" *click*
I told the client to send me a check in the mail.
Let's hope the banks are still functioning.
I don't believe in credit cards.
I wonder how many people out there can't GET a credit card.
I'm not a goofus moron that has no credit, I just choose not to pay exorberant amounts of interest to some faceless bank to use their money temporarily... money that happens to be in my account, and readily available.
Without these options, I guess we purists have no on-line options.
Sad.
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. ~~ Hunter S. Thompson
In fact, a good way to tell the legitimacy of the seller, especially if they were a "private" seller, is to see if they would accept a USPO money order.
As a seller, I used to love the USPS money order, and gave a discount (I think it was around 5%) to anyone who paid with it. I'd cash in the money order while dropping the package off at the post office (which was right down the street from my house). Cleared instantly, no chargebacks, no bounced checks, no need to go to the bank *before* shipping. It was well worth giving away the discount, which was more than the what I'd have paid in paypal fees.
For a moment I thought "checks" meant "security checks" and I starting to get worried. Then I realised they actually meant "cheques", and had somehow misspelled it.
Homonyms are fun!
You're driving your car, but they're riding their bikes there.
Banks tend to have ridiculous security measures.
No, I don't mean "ridiculously secure", I mean ridiculously annoying, and ridiculous that anyone believes they make it more secure.
I'm particularly looking at the wish-it-was two-factor authentication. I absolutely do not want that on PayPal.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
They're still around?
cat
Hell, you'd have loved me. I've been known to mail people cash because I hate paypal, couldn't be bothered to get a money order for a $10 purchase, and didn't want to wait for a check to clear before the seller would send my item.
And you know what? Not once did anyone ever fail to send my item when I mailed them cash.
Slashdot as a whole seems to have a pretty negative attitude towards eBay; if it's not their policies, it's their practices, or proposed practices.
So where are the alternatives? I don't do any online auction stuff, so I don't know of any, but I've rarely seen any +4/+5 posts with a competing auction site in them.
I propose that we, as Slashdot, list what we use (if any) as an alternative to eBay. Amazon? Craigslist? Something else? Then, when something is posted, people can swing their mod points around and up/down something based on their agreement (trying not to harm the user's karma, of course). Not quite the way the mod system is supposed to work, but useful.
While we're at it, alternatives to PayPal would be useful, as well.
Actually, has there been an Ask Slashdot on this? If not, perhaps it's time for one.
You could create a clearing house for junk loans and secure them with taxpayer dollars... oops!
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
It seems like eBay is a dinosaur in its slow decline, maintained only by the massive inertia. Ripe time for competitors to pull the rug underneath their feet? As for inertia, there is no perpetual motion machine, you know.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Funny how British colonization served the common good.
Well incorporating isn't the same as colonization.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Yahoo tried for quite a while to compete with eBay. But the momentum was against them. So they shut it down.
Sounds like the time is right to dust off that code and open them back up. eBay is losing a LOT of the people who made it happen so if there's another 'named' auction site the transition will be rather swift.
The other sites mentioned are either 'fixed price' sites (not actual auctions) or are niche markets where you're not going to get the eyeballs that will make it worth your while.
I tried using one of the niche sites to find some books I wanted. The seller NEVER bothered to respond to my e-mail. Tells you how committed he was to that site. And yes, I know that happens on eBay too. But if you're going through the effort to post on a niche site you might occasionally check on your auctions.
UBid & Overstock Auctions are two off of the top of my head. One thing that people don't seem to do is change auction houses when ebay pisses them off. Ebay got as large as it is due to timing, luck, & and hard work . . . . the net is big enough for more than one auction house, someone just needs to figure out what it would take to start luring sellers. Buyers would automatically start showing up for the great deals before an equilibrium was reached.
I stopped using PAYPAL because their servers been hacked so many times I have lost count. Its a simple thing to do really.
Just say NO to EBAY.
Seriously. Fuck eBay and Paypal. That is all. Now toddle off and sell some more old broken shit.
They allow you to move money from your bank account to your paypal account.
So do any number of gift cards. Sorry. Not a bank.
They allow you to elect to make payments from your paypal "balance"
As do gift cards, a positive balance on any given utility, your cable bill, etc.
They offer a "debit card" that draws from your paypal "balance".
Any company with a few thousand customers could do the same thing. Visa pays a bounty in the $40/per sale range. It's a Visa product originated by a Visa member bank with an Ebay logo on it. Other than the bounty and providing a logo for the card, Ebay knows nothing and has nothing to do with the branded debit card.
If someone sends you funds, it goes towards this balance.
When you pay a bill it does the same thing... Your average utility/store credit card is not a registered bank. They may use something that SOUNDS like a bank, but they do not offer simple interest savings accounts, originate home and business loans, provide business banking services... I could go on and on.
If they put a hold on your account, they deny you access to this "balance" that is your money.
This is not banking. I don't care if you think it is, it simply isn't.
Bottom line: I know Paypal sucks, but they are not a bank. Not even close. You and the informative moderators don't have a clue how it works. Please learn something from this post.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
I guess I'm not using E-bay for a while. Sorry, but this kind of bullshit is wrong, no matter what excuses they have for it.
It ain't about helping the consumer.
http://www.powersellersunite.com/auctionsitewatch.php
Has some competition and data listed.
Unfortunately I don't think any are auction format which is a shame (and the format eBay is veering from more and more).
Still, if we all list and buy a little at other sites it could help.
It seems to me like PayPal is acting a lot like an introducing broker.
That's exactly what they are doing and they get some kind of bounty for each customer captured by the scheme. This is not new or unique in the financial world. You could do the same thing with a few hundred thousand active customers.
Paypal sucks and all of the animosity generated recently is warranted. They utterly failed maximizing value and totally avoided disrupting the payment overlords. Instead, they make it progressively harder to use paypal. It is only a matter of time before whatever market value they have created is destroyed by the seat-warmers and procedure-makers in executive management.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
True, eBay does own some of Craigslist, but CL would love nothing better than to boot them out. http://blog.craigslist.org/2008/05/unlawful-and-unfair/
The content distribution should be torrent based freeNET by a series of 802.11cowboyneal satelites. Our userID should be the bonding date and given name (not legal name, because clan/tribe have nothing to do with commerce). We type what we are exactly looking for, and it is the seller not the auction company administration that makes the marketting calls. The domain is stock-based for participation, measured in duration of trade and spoilage, securities attached to the proprty as tenable and titled to assure proof of claim and quit claim at close, and as insurance for pending and conditional sales that revert to the lien holder to discharge tax and liabilities either contracted or impelled. The auction form shall be dynamic to the will of the property owner, and offers of value are to be accepted in the denomination of currency, cache, money, or unappraised trade for property declared as equaly acceptable determined by the owner.
Telemarketers become guildsmen, under oath and respected. Shatan become obedient and repent. Christ the ruler, not Stanley, not Sears' Craftsman, not Husky, not 3M, not Office Depot, not Office Max, not Walmart.
Sorry. LOTS of rage at EBay. After buying selling responsibly for a number of years, and getting fucked by other sellers and buyers and getting no assistance from EBay (they got their shekel, they don't care), I refuse to give them ANY more money. EVER. I closed out my PayPal account. I closed out my EBay account.
The final straw was getting sold a laptop that was actually stolen property, and the merchant refusing to even ATTEMPT to make it right. I spent several months badgering EBay to make it right, but the SOB is STILL a power seller on EBay today.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
In case of the local newspaper the customer will call you and later show up at your house to inspect the item, and if all is well then he will pay in cash and take the item. If you sell on Craigslist the buyer can be anywhere, and then you have to deal with shipping and payments (and escrow, and returns etc.)
have you heard of it? thought not...
Ask Me About... The 80's!
eBay's strength isn't it's auction functionality. That bit is just a gimmick to addict a few people.
eBay's real strength is it's categorization. Although far from perfect, it is better than any other classified ad site on the market. Probably because the other classified sites don't realize what market they're really in. They think they're in the buggy whip and wagon wheel business, So it's no surprise that the car manufacturer is eating their lunches.
But mark, the market likes to relax to the point where goods' prices are close to their marginal cost. And eBay's scheme of skimming off the top is the kind of inefficiency that can last only so long as they can keep a stranglehold on their monopoly.
The eBay killer is not another auction site. It's a classified ad site with auction widgets and a database with lots of things to filter on. One that encourages listers to properly and correctly classify their offerings, and charges based on bandwidth, CPU, and storage space, rather than final selling price.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
the summary is incorrect. Sellers can accept payment methods other than PayPal, but they may not promote them in their auction ads. If a buyer asks if a check or money order is acceptable, the seller is free to accept it. Totally stupid.
To clarify: by "with auction widgets" I meant to say a variety of page templates for postings, some of which offer auction-like functionality, for items whose rarity makes valuation difficult, or sellers who like blink tags.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Has anyone else noticed that, for identical items, those sellers allowing checks/Money-Orders will generally have a higher final bid than those requiring a paypal account ??? It seems that the market is adjusting to the perceived risk of checks and the prices are higher. I wonder if Ebay management realizes this will reduce profits.
Eh? If a commercial vendor is on ebay, chances are their prices are close to retail (sometimes even more!). Filter out a certain price range in your searches and guess what you're left with...
"This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private."
Once you have won the auction, you are indebted to the seller. Being as such, you may pay cash and eBay can't do shit about it if you so choose.
cat "ebay.com 127.0.0.1" >> /etc/hosts
No more ripoffs.
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
Yeh, in Australia the ACCC kicked their asses good.
The following was my reply to EBay's mail regarding the suspension of the "PayPal only" change, back in June;
"Let me be perfectly clear. If I am forced to use pay pal only I will stop using ebay completely forever and use another auction siye.
I am glad our government has prevented your blatant profiteering regading pay pal.
The arrogance of your company in attempting this frankly disgusts me."
Pity about my proof reading though ): I really should learn to type properly. It's only 34 years since I started learning.
I suspect they got a LOT of similar mails from users.
eBay is doing everything they can to destroy their own business.
I believe this would be called restraint of trade.
When you interfere with how a business receives payment, Or dictate how they get paid. Thats a
restraint of trade.
Also seems to blur that "venue" shield they wave around.
This is what they did when it was ruled that they were subject to FSA rules in the UK. from the link:
A third of all adults in the UK - around 15 million people - now have a PayPal account. That is an account primarily used to buy and sell online. Customers are currently protected by the Financial Services Authority which regulates PayPal and also have the right to complain to the Financial Ombudsman. Now the PayPal headquarters is moving to Luxembourg it will no longer be regulated by the FSA.
As the have no branches and only a virtual presence they can be run anywhere. Where would US operations be run from. Bermuda? Guantanamo? Somewhere beyond the reach of the regulatory organisations anyway.
It's not quantity of regulation that you want, it's quality.
Maybe the government shouldn't use a heavy hand but a good hand instead?
After all the heavy hand of government is handing out taxpayer money to the companies involved in the recent financial crisis.
Sure it may be necessary.
But perhaps the hand of the government should have skimmed off profits from all those financial companies during the good times, and kept that money in a Bailout Fund to be used for bailing them out. That'll be fairer right? Every 10 years they go bust, and they keep saying "No you shouldn't regulate us" and "You have to bail us out". Yeah right.
You don't need more or less regulations. You need better regulations.
You don't need more or less government, you need better government. Code quality is not strongly correlated to the number of lines of code.
Less regulation does not mean a better state of things (nor does more regulation either).
For instance, if it were up to me, I'd have imposed a "Bailout Tax" or levy on all companies in the financial industry during the good times. The money goes to a Bailout Fund.
Then during the bad times, the Bailout Fund is used to bail out companies. If the fund is not enough, the bailout tax is increased. If bailouts aren't needed after a few decades and the industry "grows up", the tax is reduced/removed, (but the fund is still kept just in case).
The other industries seem to manage themselves better and not have to run to "Mama" every decade. So as long as they haven't grown up, they need extra rules.
During the good times, they get all the money, and during the bad times the taxpayers have to pay? Yes there are already corporate taxes, but do they really cover the bailouts?
As someone said, what we have here is: privatize the gain and socialize the pain.
We need better regulation than that.
he has to call up the credit agency in its respective country and verify that the shipping address and billing address are the same. Interestingly enough, some banks (particularly in the UK) will flat out refuse to give you this information - even a simple yes or no response when you give them the address you have is against their policy.
That's because the UK has legislation specifically blocking this - the Data Protection Act.
I believe card transactions in the UK can be put through in such a fashion that the billing address must match the card's registered address or the transaction will be declined (and so if you enforce this, the next logical step is to only ship to the billing address) but I don't know if this works internationally. Probably not because there isn't an international standard for how addresses should be written or communicated.
There is an alternative, at least in the UK, that I use in place of eBay - www.gumtree.com.
Totally free (for small-midsized items), lots of members, and i've posted items with my phone number and received a call 10 minutes later and sold the item cash in hand. Fantastic!
None of those places allow buyers or sellers to access the marketplace that Ebay has a monopoly on.
Can you sell to the same market? Unless Ebay is listing those auctions, then no, you can't.
If Wall Street gets that money then Washington should get a cut of the action. I'm not sure how it can be dealt with though, not all businesses financial or otherwise used questionable practices but if the ones that did are bailed out then it sends the message that government will take care of you even if you do bad things.
I'd had CNN on almost all day and I kept hearing about how McCain has criticized Obama for not releasing a plan to deal with the financial crisis but to me McCain is reacting too fast. We don't need to treat the symptoms but not do anything about the cause, and I don't think more regulations is the solution. Better ones perhaps but not more. So I'll wait for Obama's plan. Not that I support either one, I don't.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
But when the customers contact him through Ebay, ethically he has to complete the sale through Ebay (or lose his merchant account).
I'm not sure what you mean by "contact", but if he puts an item on eBay and someone buys it, he's not just ethically required to complete the sale that way but also LEGALLY. It's a binding contract.
Honestly, if your boss doesn't get that, I feel less than sorry for his other problems, because I've gotten burnt by this before myself, as a buyer, and I can tell you it's extremely annoying.
I stopped using Ebay when they doubled their prices, and explained that it was only a marginal increase, because most items sold for x amount. Meaning what? That they consider all the money passing through their fingers as theirs?
Until they stop being so greedy, I'm staying clear of them.
to buy something. Ad said that paypal wasn't required. Signed up and went through the buying process and at the "payment" page was told I needed a paypal account to pay.
So I cancelled my eBay account and told them that I was closing the account because to use it I had to sign up to PayPal and have no wish to.
I just posted an item to be sold and it gave me a message that I was not a sufficiently qualified seller to use payment options other than paypal but it implied that I could become so-qualified with more positive seller ratings. I went ahead and posted my item and then I went into the 'edit' mode and the editing allowed me to add a bunch of additional payment options including check and money order...so I added them.
From the buyer's POV I'll say that the money order was perfect for me. I get the money order and drop it in the mail in one easy motion at the post office, and I never have to worry that my credit card number is out there. My total exposure is limited to the amount of the money order. I'll also add that I never even once was ripped off on Ebay. I also never bought an item over $40. Anyway, with this move, I'm done with Ebay, not that I was ever a big part of it I'm sure, but there are probably millions of casual buyers like myself, picking up maybe a dozen schotskis a year, and I think that portion of the business is going to all but die now.
Jealously hoarding mod points since 2007.
I used to be that guy, always sold my good used 'toys' on Ebay. Not anymore, and it wasn't the competition from the power sellers that made me stop, it was Ebay with their constant upping of fees. By the way, all my auctions always said "no paypal accepted, money orders only." Why? Paypal cost me money. I sell everything on Craigslist now. Why do you think Ebay went after them? Ebay knows Craigslist is what they used to be.
DK
craigslist.org - It is what Ebay was
I didn't read all posts here, but I wanted to add that you used to be able to auction items on eBay and allow a "PayPal cash" only payment, one that did not use a credit card for payment through PayPal. Not long ago, eBay disallowed that and said that if you offer PayPal, you can no longer have that restriction. This meant that if you received a payment through PayPal and a credit card was used in the transaction, you ether had to have their Premier account or upgrade to that type of account. (When you receive notice of your first payment with a credit card through PayPal and you have a personal account, you have to upgrade before you can receive the payment.) This doesn't sound so bad, even when you consider that they will take out of the transaction 1.9% to 2.9% + $0.30 USD, but here's the catch. If you have a personal account, you don't pay anything on money received or sent. Once you "upgrade" (that's what they call it, an upgrade) to a Premier account, you pay a fee on ALL transactions where you receive money, not just on thise where the person sending you a payment used a credit card. The work-around here is to have two bank accounts and two PayPal accounts, of course. My work-around has been to allow payments by USPS money order or contact me for other payment options (which would include PayPal cash payments--I just can't say in the auction description that I accept PayPal if I ONLY accept PayPal cash). Once they begin the PayPal only for eBay payments, I will no longer sell on eBay. I have been doing well on Craigslist selling items I no longer need. Since there is no fee penalties using a PayPal account to pay for things (from the buyer's point of view), I do use PayPal as a fairly secure payment method, using a second bank account that I transfer money to when I am going to make a payment through PayPal. (I keep the balance low and transfer money on an as-needed basis just in case PayPal has a security breach.) I see one of two things happening here. The US government might step in like Austrailia did and force eBay to allow other payment methods. Or, some other auction entity will start up an eBay-like company and be more fair about the whole thing. (There are quite a number of eBay issues that bother people, mostly sellers, but that is another issue.)
I just Googled "Ebay Alternative" and was glad to find many options. A bunch are outlined right on: http://www.salehoo.com/blog/sick-of-ebay-try-these-alternative-places-to-sell/
With the exception of Netflix, I find that expressing grievances with business practices to large companies usually has little effect. Legal shakedown seems to be the only thing CEOs understand, and that's because litigation is potentially bad for their stock value.
It's easier for me to just jump to another company that doesn't feel the need to sacrifice customer service (in this case standard payment options) in order to achieve a better revenue stream. Hello uBid!
I think what the OP means is that eBay's TOS forbid initiating a transaction or communication via eBay.com and then completing it elsewhere.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
According to the rules "Important: PayPal may not be used to pay for any item listed in eBay's Mature Audiences category."
How do you buy or sell things in that category now?
ebay in a slimey way, bought their stake in Craigslist from a former Craigslist Employee. Craig would buy them back if he could and Craigslist Stock is not publicly traded so the likelihood of ebay taking over Craigslist is slim and none.
I don't have any stock in EBAY, anymore. I already sold it years ago in disgust. Now I guess it's time to short their stock and profit from their misery.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
So what is the problem? From what you described, the priority of your former boss was minimizing the RISK (very aggressively, nearly ignoring other variables). Did he still expect to make PROFIT?
Anyway, I don't really see how this is related to eBay/ PayPal problem apart from the fact that the story you told uses it as an example...
I rant to my wife about it too, and she completely agrees with me.
Unfortunately, I still use Ebay a fair amount. The problem is that there really aren't any decent alternatives to it, except for Craigslist which is only good for local stuff (which usually means large items which can't be cheaply shipped, like furniture, appliances, etc.), and not for small, easily shippable, rare or specialty items. I've checked other auction sites like "ecrater", but they just don't have the selection that Ebay has. For instance, if I need a new inverter for my laptop, and it needs to be part number "PK070006T00", there's a very good chance I'll find it on Ebay. There's virtually no chance I'll find it on a competing site. Worse, now that I've gotten really pissed off with Ebay for their high fees and other antics, and the poor way they handled a bad transaction recently, I try a lot more to find independent web sites so I can just buy directly from the seller, and let us both avoid Ebay and its fees. But when I look for items like this, I usually find sites with much, much higher prices; the bargain sellers are still on Ebay. Even with the added fees and such, it's usually much cheaper to buy on Ebay. And that whole thing about inflated shipping fees? That's also a problem on many independent websites I've been to. I recently had to buy some cheap rubber gaskets for a blender, and I had places wanting to charge me $10 for shipping, even though they had their own merchant account and had no good reason to jack up shipping fees like Ebay sellers do.
I disagree. The categorization is useful I suppose, but I usually find stuff on Ebay by doing a keyword search, not browsing. The thing that's useful about Ebay is that it allows sellers to cheaply list items to sell, and allows buyers to easily find them (with both browsing and searching). The auction format isn't essential, but it is very useful; many people don't know the true value of their goods, and the auction format allows the market to find that true value more efficiently. I recently listed a bunch of old Nintendo Power magazines (and the forerunners to it) from the late 80s that I had sitting in a box. I was quite surprised when the auction ended and the lot had fetched about $110. I wasn't expecting to get more than $20. Similarly, sellers who have an inflated opinion of their item's value will quickly find out how much people are really willing to pay for it with an auction. Even with reserve prices, if they relist several times and never get over 1/2 their reserve price, they'll realize that it just isn't worth that much.
I think the combination of the auction format, and the locationless, internet-based nature of Ebay is what made it succeed so brilliantly. Any replacement will probably need the same features.
No, it's not. Ebay was never tied to a specific location, and made it easy to find items no matter where they were located. Craigslist is too local in nature. It's great if you want to buy a secondhand piece of furniture, and are willing to move it yourself, because you can look through listings by people near you. It's great for sellers because it's totally free. But if you want to buy a replacement laptop part, or a CD, it's totally useless: there's no reason to constrain yourself to your local metro area in searching for that, since the cost of shipping is generally very low for such items, and a better value than spending a few hours driving across town to pick it up in person.
When I want to buy or sell furniture, cars, or find a landscaping service, I get on Craigslist. If I want to find a rare CD, buy an iPod charger, or a replacement laptop part, I go to Ebay.
Yes. Of course second issue is that I have not seen a REAL item for sale there in what - six months? It's always some cheap chinese knockoffs that just get relisted if sold as auction.
Powerseller these days is a put-off instead of a promise of smooth transaction. New users in 5-10 tx range seem to be much more reliable.
Yep, there's a bunch of sellers who advertise by Ebay, but then get a buyer to buy some other way, and then take down the Ebay auction claiming it was "lost or broken". It might not be strictly legal (as it violates their contract with Ebay), but good luck prosecuting that. Worse, it's not even "illegal", as it's not a criminal offense to my knowledge, it's a tort. So Ebay would have to sue the seller to get any justice, and again, good luck with that. The legal fees would far outweigh anything they could regain from some guy selling crap out of his basement.
If you agreed to a contract that prohibits cash payment then there is nothing you can do. Legally any one can refuse to accept a hash payment, or even make special requirements for the payment such as no $50s or $100s after 8pm. A common policy at gas stations.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Can you sell to the same market? Unless Ebay is listing those auctions, then no, you can't.
There are services and software that allows people to monitor auctions on different websites. However like eBay other auction sites don't allow people to bid or sell on items from other online auction websites. That doesn't make them all monopolies.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
This is the first time in quite a few years that I've heard someone mention the (defunct) Amazon Auctions service as if it were active.
Not having heard Amazon's auction was defunct I googled it and found this "Amazon vs. eBay: Battle of the Online Auctions" from 31 January 2008. It was the third result out of more than 3 million. Restricting the search to just the past month still results in about 137,000. E-Commerce News published the article "Online Auctions, Part 1: The eBay Earthquake" on 9 September. In it there's this: "By restructuring its fees, eBay is likely attempting to ratchet up its competitiveness with Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) Latest News about Amazon.com, which has no listing fees." So they didn't know Amazon went defunct either. Also in the ad area to the right there's an ad for Amazon Auctions, now why would Amazon be buying add for a service that doesn't exist anymore?
On the other hand, I don't see auctions listed on Amazon, so maybe it's only been recently that Amazon stopped auctioning. What I find ironic if true is that the first result searching Amazon for auction is "How to Sell Anything on Amazon...and Make a Fortune!".
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
From the FAQ:
"Are there any categories excluded from these payment requirements?
Vehicles (Motors), capital equipment (Business & Industrial), Mature Audiences and Real Estate will be excluded from the new payment requirements."
You can still pay for the necessities by check!
But when the customers contact him through Ebay, ethically he has to complete the sale through Ebay
But once the purchase is complete on Amazon, eBay, or wherever, he can put an ad for his own web site on the packing list, enticing customers with offers of free shipping for domestic orders or reduced shipping for international orders.
Because they control the online auction market. It's absurd to suggest otherwise.
Down in the business law section of that page (you know, the part pertinent to the discussion) we find this definition:
Monopoly
A commercial advantage enjoyed by only one or a select few companies in which only those companies can trade in a certain area.
If we go back to my original post, which you obviously didn't read, we have this:
Ebay holds a fully locked down monopoly, and they need to be regulated as such.
Nowhere did I say Ebay is "illegal", just that they hold a commanding market position and need to prevented from making anti-competitive moves. Like the ones in TFA, which you also did not apparently read. Did you even read the /. summary?
My last complaint to PayPal support a week ago:
I still get a message that says
"Security Measures
We are currently performing regular maintenance of our security measures. Your account has been randomly selected for this maintenance, and you will now be taken through a series of identity verification
pages."
It then asks for a certain credit card number that I have in my hand at
the moment ending in XX##. After entering it then takes me to an error page that says Sorry- your last action could not be completed.
I don't see how this is random if I get it every time. The fact that I cannot proceed means that this is a problem with the Paypal website and you need to elevate my complaint to a higher level of support who can check your logs and see why I ended up at a dead end.
Their response:
Thank you for contacting PayPal.
Hello my name is Sarah Marie, I am sorry to hear about the situation regarding the problems you encounter when logging in to your account,
and understand your frustration and concern over this issue. I am happy to assist you with your questions.
In viewing the email that you sent to us, in as much as I would really want to assist you, I have limited resources to determine a resolution
since I would need additional information. I suggest that you contact us again with more information about your concern so that we may assist you accordingly. You may also contact our Customer Service agents at 1-xxxxxx / our toll free number 1-888-xxxxx. We would be more
than happy to help you. I would like to apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.
In some of my past complaints, I even included the URL for the PageNotFound as it had this long hex looking part and suggested they examine their logs. I have given them all the info they need to fix this, and now they think a phone call will connect me to an agent who can support a website bug?
I am at the point where I just don't want to bother with them.
Organization: alphabetical, sometimes numerical or messy
Item terrible. Unsightly packaging. Delivery was ever so late. Have never bought from anyone so obnoxious. Disgusted. F-!
Immensely intimidating quality! Quality of the wrapping was shocking. Delivery was very, very sluggish. Ever so angry. E-
The item was detestable and bad. Immensely sluggish delivery. The packaging was exceptionally foul. Seller is shoddy. F-!
The item was abhorrent and terrible. The packaging was immensely unprepossessing. Remarkably slow dispatch. Disgusted. D-
Item was of the most shameful quality. Packaging was odious. Late delivery. Have never bought from anyone so hideous. F-!
The item was shameful! Packaging was daunting. Sluggish delivery. Have never bought from anyone so horrid. Disgusted. F-!
The item was terrible and rotten. Packaging was horrible. Remarkably slow dispatch. Seller is dismaying and loathsome. F-
Item was of the most beastly quality. Contemptible packaging. Very, very shocking delivery. Would not buy from again. F-!
Item was of the most gruesome quality! Packaging was offensive. Exceptionally frightening delivery. Seller is heinous. F-
Quality of item was horrific. Exceptionally loathsome delivery. Piggish packaging. Seller is terrible and detestable. F-!
Now you can truly get scammed!
Previously, the best way to pay was with a US Post Office money order.
What you would do is write a description of the item that you had purchased, and if you didn't get it, the seller had committed mail fraud.
The reason this was the best, is that they (the post office)have a whole division dedicated to mail fraud, and would actually work at tracking down fraudsters and shutting down their operations, as the laws on mail fraud have teeth, as opposed to something that belongs in small claims court otherwise.
Other payment methods (Visa, MC, PayPal) isn't going to spend a whole lot of effort to recover minor amounts of money, they may refund your money, but the scammer gets to continue their operation, maybe with a minor name change, taking advantage of the next sucker to come along.
This goes back to the reason why you don't really want to hack government entities, is that they will spend a fortune on tracking down the perpetrator all out of disproportion to the actual damage caused. *
In fact, a good way to tell the legitimacy of the seller, especially if they were a "private" seller, is to see if they would accept a USPO money order.
If they didn't it was a red flag that you may not want to deal with them.
I can understand (from a purely greed standpoint) of EBay not wanting to allow this type of transaction, as they don't get even more of a cut of the PayPal action, and just have to make due with the listing fee.
Oh well, just another nail in the coffin for fiscal responsibility.
I don't acept money order. Who want trouble to wait for money order to arrive and then drive to somewhere to cash it?
Check, money order are just too slow to me. I only accept Paypal. Come on, 1.9%, not a big deal for me.