EBay drops PayPal bid

[pangasinan]

Victory

[ianoid]

"In light of the decision by the ACCC, we have decided to drop our bid for total control over all spending on eBay, for the safety of our customers, although our evil corporate attitude and well paid lawyers will ensure our ongoing battle for domination over all spending in the P2P space. "

[dark-aleph]

I think it's only a partial victory. Every seller must still have an active Paypal account and must offer it for every sale. This may have been ebay's intention all along, with the "Paypal only" move being just a gambit. Great if they pull it off, but if they don't it has neatly distracted people from the other half of their coup. They've been building up to this - for about a year now, about 1 in 3 times I've tried to send money by Direct Deposit, the ebay checkout has failed to send the seller's account details. I know it's not the seller's fault because when I email the seller they usually express surprise, 'cos "it seems to work fine most of the time!". It has become clear over time that ebay is deliberately sabotaging attempts to pay by bank deposit or money order, purely to delay any purchases other than by Paypal. After repeated instances like this, both buyers and sellers are liable to look for alternatives, and mysteriously enough, Paypal is always offered and always works.

 

I expect them now to accelerate this harrassment program. They will continue to inconvenience anyone not using their preferred option, and in addition I expect we'll start getting notices like this: "Ebay is always striving to make things more secure for our customers. In order to ensure that other payment methods are as secure and easy as Paypal (!) we now require all such payments to be part of our buyer protection scheme..." or some such nonsense adding extra fees or extra steps to further annoy any customers still pig-headed enough not to just send a cut of their money direct to ebay. Having failed to install a Paypal monopoly in one step, they'll move to plan B and do it in two or three steps instead.

 

Are you going to stick with ebay, pangasinan? I was going to leave the moment Paypal became obligatory. This halfway point leaves me in two minds. I can choose never to use Paypal and put up with the inconveniences this will attract, but even then I'm accepting in some way ebay's continuously less acceptable corporate practices...

[pangasinan]

Yes i will still stick with ebay,its really the only option for me to get rare pal games.If i sell something on ebay i state in the auction that i will accept paypal only from overseas buyers and bank deposit from local havent had anyone complain yet .

[mars242]

funny thing is for vintage "adult" magazines you can't accept paypal.

still got alot of those from my big find last year that i cant get rid of... and i feel uncomfortable with getting MO's or checks for that stuff.