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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.
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.
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
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...
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.
You're quite correct apart from one thing. eBay has been trying to bump its stock price for the past 3 years -- totally unsuccessfully. It's almost half of what is was 3 years ago(prior to the Skype purchase debacle). It's a dead man walking, and has been for some considerable time. Meg Whitman, the prime architect of its demise, baled a rich woman some time back. Just in time to avoid be caught in the wake of the ship as it sinks.
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.
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
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
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.
That is a fascinating financial strategy. Did she use a standard hay baler, or did she bale the woman by hand? Did the woman survive? Did Meg Whitman face any legal penalties for this?
Forget my job, I'm just gonna bale me a rich woman!