The Wholesale Forums

[knightxxx]

Just completed a sellers survey. Here are a couple of questions about payment methods offered and how it will affect sales -

To make eBay a safer place to buy and sell, sellers will be limited to accepting only the following safer payment methods for their eBay sales:

• PayPal
• In person payment for local pickup items

Sellers will receive full protection from payment reversals for items sold on eBay and paid with PayPal when they ship to the address provided by PayPal. Buyers paying with PayPal will be fully covered, no coverage limit, if their item doesn't arrive or is different than described.
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To make eBay a safer place to buy and sell, sellers will be limited to accepting only the following safer payment methods for their eBay sales:

• PayPal
• Credit Card or Debit Card payments made directly to the seller's Merchant Account (Sellers will need to acquire a Merchant Account from a bank or other provider)
• In person payment for local pickup items

(Compared to the policy shown earlier, credit and debit card payments made directly to a merchant account would be an additional payment method allowed.) Sellers can accept any one of the above payment methods, or they can accept all of the above. Sellers will receive full protection from payment reversals for items sold on eBay and paid with PayPal when they ship to the address provided by PayPal. Buyers paying with PayPal will be fully covered, no coverage limit, if their item doesn't arrive or is different than described.

I opted for the second scenario obviously! Looks like cheques & PO's are out soon by the way they are thinking however the personal collection bit could be something of a U turn.

[lighthousedirec]

the personal collection bit could be something of a U turn.

Or maybe they will insist on paypal for collections as well.

[PT]

Originally Posted by lighthousedirec

Or maybe they will insist on paypal for collections as well.

I hope not. The only time I've used collections is when picking up either bikes or cars, so as you can probably imagine, not small amounts. I can't say I'd feel comfortable using eBay anymore for that purpose, if this was implemented. Unless of course, they adopted some kind of Escrow feature?

[knightxxx]

Its already happening on ebay Austrailia:
Google puts the boot into eBay

May 31, 2008

As part of eBay’s request that the ACCC approve their request to implement a PayPal only policy on eBay all interested parties were able to make submissions which the Commission would consider when forming their decision.
Following eBay’s response (and after the deadline for public submissions expired on 3nd May), one more 38 page anonymous report was submitted, which set out in detail why they considered eBay’s move to be anti-competitive.
It didn’t take too long though for one eBay user to expose the culprit, examining the hidden (but easily accessible) meta data of the document he found the phrase “ACCC Submission by Google re eBay”. The document has been replaced with an amended version with Google’s name removed.
This has to be embarrassing for Google, all the major banking institutions that made submissions did so publicly, and it looks much worse have your intentions revealed in this manner than it would do to be up front in the first place.

[knightxxx]

eBay responds to ACCC re PayPal only policy

May 26, 2008

eBay has made a response to the ACCC (Opens in PDF), regarding their move to compulsory PayPal for eBay Australia transactions. The response makes three main points
1) PayPal only on eBay will not significantly reduce competition in online payments as payments on eBay do not comprise a significant proportion of all online payments and PayPal’s membership base will not increase significantly by making it complusory on eBay. They point out that “eBay buyers and sellers who do not wish to pay PayPal fees are able to avoid doing so by listing and purchasing items through competing services”. An additional point is that buyers still have choice of which underlying payment method to use such as bank transfer, debit card, credit card or PayPal balance.
They quote Oztion’s report that their membership has risen 22% since the PayPal announcement, saying “there is evidence to suggest that a number of sellers will choose alternative sales platforms in response to the implementation of the Project, providing a strong incentive for eBay to maintain a competitive offering”.
2) eBay state that use of PayPal will actually increase protection to users. They say “PayPal users automatically obtain the benefits of the security and protection mechanisms offered through those [credit/debit card, Bank funded] payment methods plus the additional layer of security and protection benefits offered by PayPal.”
eBay also highlight that even their main competitors acknowledge “that the information-sharing between eBay and PayPal gives PayPal an advantage in reversing fraudulent transacfions..” as justification for insisiting on PayPal only.
(3) eBay reject a number of claims made in submissions, such as PayPal is not the largest and longest established online payment provider, PayPal will not become a monopoly for eBay payments, it will merely be an intermediary to process transactions made via other payment institutions, and that they don’t discriminate against high-volume and/or low-margin sellers as they offer micropayments and volume discounts.
eBay’s submission suggests that PayPal will not become an online payment monopoly, and that buyers and sellers have choices of venues to buy and sell on. They insist that payments via PayPal not only offer additional security to alternatives, but enable eBay to protect buyers and sellers from problematic transactions through monitoring buyer and seller behaviour.
In conclusion eBay said changes would not be substantially lessening competition, and in any event, any lessening of competition would be clearly outweighed by the significant public benefits that would be likely to result from it.
The big question is will the ACCC grant eBay’s request to go PayPal only, and if so how long will it be before the policy migrates to other countries around the eBay world?

[Andy777]

It hasn't been introduced to UK yet.

[MathewLisett]

.seems to me like ebay are getting like microsoft ever single day

[D M]

Originally Posted by MathewLisett

.seems to me like ebay are getting like microsoft ever single day

Don't know what you mean but both are clever companies that know how to make money.

[MathewLisett]

DM in other words mate, they are both non competitve companies that will stoop to anything to be at the top, and at any point actually get fined for such things, just like miscrofot has had done to them over the past 10 years been fined i believe its now 3 times, and this year was their record breaker of 500 milllion? and that was becuase they like other years previous had trie to buy out other companies so that other cmpanies really had no choice be to either fold, or indeed sell microsoft products, which would in effect ean that the company they were battling against were also the company they were selling the product of.

[mintynw7]

Its highly annoying and seems abit wrong. All my listings now HAVE to have paypal as a payment term along the same lines as my normal payment. Ebay have done 2 major bad points recently. Stopping sellers from giving neutral or negative feedback as well as this paypal payment as well. Not making many sellers very happy and how does ebay make money = Sellers.