eBay: Thou Shalt Have No Other Payment Methods Before PayPal
Sydney Morning Herald: eBay to accept cash and PayPal only, and this story has generated quite a lot of discussions everywhere. While it does not really impact me as I don’t really live on eBay, may I borrow the words from the infamous Jedi Knight — “I flt a great disturbance in the Force… as if millions of eBay sellers suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.“
Indeed. You pay once to have your goods inserted into eBay’s listing, you pay the second time when you sold the item, and now you will have to pay the third time when you receive the payment, if it is not a cash on delivery/pickup deal.
You do understand eBay’s motivation though. After all its job is to create a convenient market place and to provide maximum protection to the buyers… Oh wait, maybe they just want to maximise their profit. After all these eBay related deals, PayPal still haven’t caught up with wide-spread usage in Australia. Fine — they do what the monopolists do. How about making PayPal the exclusive payment method in one of the largest Internet marketplace?
As a buyer it does not make too much difference — yet. PayPal is convenient, and I love to have payment confirmed as soon as possible for quick delivery. But over time we will gradually see sellers adding cost to their price, especially low-margin products like cheap Chinese imports.
Is this the beginning of the end for eBay? Or is there any viable alternative?
ebay are in a very comfortable position – they have the critical mass of members to make an online auction site work. Its a very difficult job for any competitor to move into their space. This is because without quality listings you cant attract buyers and without buyers you cant attract sellers. And if you give away free listings (which seems like the only way for a new auction site to compete against ebay) you attract dodgey and/or overpriced listings.
So its not that ebay provide a superior service, its just that they were there first and then wiped out any competitors early on (eg the old stuff.com.au).
However restricting users to paypal only is a very brave step (hence why they are trying it in Australia first). This means that competitors instantly have an advantage over ebay (ie offering other payment methods), which may be enough to force enough people away from ebay to make a second auction site viable.
I personally would love an alternative to ebay. Competition is good.
This totally sucks. I accept cash deposits, and now I am forced to pay more “fees” to Paypal. Feebay indeed.
Profit margin is already low on eBay, especially since they started allowing international sellers to get in on the action for the local market (i.e from China/Hong Kong). Paying a third time on PayPal will make it even lower. I used to be a huge supporter of eBay (heck, even my profile name there is trusty-bay). But not anymore.
Not to mention the fact that my PayPal account got hacked a few weeks ago. Talk about security!
P/S: I know that international sellers create more competition, hence lowering prices for buyers, but they should’ve kept the .au site for Australian sellers only. Most of them are misleading anyway (i.e ‘Posted from AU’, when in fact it’s sent from overseas). If people wanted to get things from other parts of the world, they should log into that country’s eBay website.
[...] critic. Worse, it has not only revealed that it is Google who hides behind the mask criticising eBay’s latest policy on payment methods, meta data in the PDF file has also revealed that some Google employees used Microsoft Word to [...]
PayPal have decided that my credit card is in the hands of a third party, this for the third time after difficulty placing orders on EBay. I am required, by PayPal, to re prove my identity for the umpteenth time due to their inability to run their site properly. I have refused to play this game any more or to pay bills or receive money through them. They have now blackballed my credit card and will only allow me to pay with another card on sites that they operate. Well people, I will not play your game and will stick to direct deposit or telephone my card through where necessary. I hate bullies, and that is just what these money grubbing ratbags have become!