eBay Australia Delays PayPal Change Indefinitely 56
Daehenoc points out news that eBay Australia has postponed their ban on all forms of payment other than PayPal. The ban had already been delayed once, but eBay Australia has now decided to simply wait for the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to determine whether or not the move is acceptable. We discussed the beginnings of this story back in April.
Use Google Checkout instead (Score:5, Interesting)
Although officially eBay does not allow Google Checkout, you can simply put that you "accept credit cards" with some credit card logos on your auction and then send people an invoice when they win.
Unfortunately a lot of people assume that everyone on eBay takes PayPal and are shocked to discover that you don't, but PayPal is such a terrible system for both buyers and sellers I don't use it any more.
In the UK PayPal make it impossible to deal with them. Any dispute always comes down to who can get a "police report" (crime incident report) which is impossible to obtain because the transaction is covered by civil law. In the event you can lie you way into getting one from the police, you automatically win - and if they refuse you automatically loose. If you are a buyer you can't ask your credit card company for help either because they only cover the transaction you make with PayPal, not the transaction made with the seller.
Worst of all is the customer "service" which is split into two groups. The first group are useless time wasters whose job is to make you go away. If you email them you always get a standard copy-paste response, which is usually not even related to your question. Basically it seems like they deliberately avoid the question. If you call them they know nothing, can't do anything and can't help. The second group will never ever talk to you, but is responsible for making all decisions and controls everything. These are the people you need to deal with, but they are impossible to reach.
Might it be... (Score:5, Interesting)
That PayPal sucks?
I'm not trolling here either. The serious problems that PayPal has are widely known. From buyers to merchants, everybody has a horror story that has prevented them from doing business in confidence. There is even a well known anti-PayPal website out there.
A few months back when eBay started making those changes I canceled my account and told them reason why I was canceling the account. Apparently, I was not the only one. eBay used to be a place where the "common" man could go to sell his used items. Sure, it turned out to be a nifty place for people to setup shop as professional sellers, but it did not start out that way.
Since eBay made it mandatory that you accept PayPal, regardless of what type of seller you were, it forced people to make a decision. I think there has been QUITE A LOT of those decisions made and possibly eBay is taking notice of it's user base diminishing quite rapidly, from casual sellers to professional merchants.
Heck, I have not even visited eBay's website since that last announcement. I used to check it for prices and good deals, and now I just use Google Shopping instead.
Re:Might it be... (Score:2, Interesting)
I also canceled my eBay and PayPal accounts in April, trying to show some solidarity with eBay users in Australia.
I made it very clear that I was closing both accounts due to the policy that eBay Inc was pursuing. (Whether anyone read the comments is another story.)
Over the past 10 years, I put roughly $40k through eBay, with about $20k of that through PayPal with a linked bank account. As a buyer only, I've never had a problem with either eBay or PayPal.
Frankly, the only thing I'll miss eBay for is buying items that fill my collections. Due to its' size and scope, eBay definitely made it easy to find what I collect.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:GOOD! (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, they favour the buyer over legitimate sellers...
But there are plenty of ways that an unscrupulous seller can use the system to his advantage.
Did you realise you can register your paypal account in one country, while selling goods in another? When a buyer wants to return something, they have to pay the cost of international shipping plus tracking service to wherever your paypal account is registered, regardless of where you are located or where the items were shipped from.
Assuming you live in the UK, get yourself a mailbox somewhere far away like australia and register a paypal account there, then start selling items worth under about 50GBP on ebay...
When someone wins an item, ship him a brick or something of similar weight... Ofcourse he will complain, and file a claim with paypal... Paypal will agree to refund him, but only after he has shipped the item back to your paypal registered address and used a shipping service with online tracking. The trick is to make the cost of shipping the item back more than what they paid in the first place, that way it becomes pointless for them to do it and paypal will just close their dispute.