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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
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.
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 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.
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...
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...
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.
have you considered a career as a /. editor?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
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/
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.
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.
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.