Ebay Changes Policy - Earth's polarities flip - zomg

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-Bill-

-Bill-

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Feb 29, 2008
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So eBay announced that they are no longer going to allow buyers to pay for auctions or BINs with checks or money orders.

Fees August 2008 Accepted Payments Policy Changes

From a business standpoint this would increase eBay's profit margin per transaction seeing as how they have paypal and all.

What do you think about the policy change in general?

For those promoting EPN, Do you feel this will have any impact (even the slightest) with conversions?
 


An amazingly large number of people still, sadly.

I get the feeling this is based on the transaction and market data that they got from down under, when they pulled a swifty and suddenly NO payment forms OTHER THAN PAYPAL were accepted.
Thankfully, PayPal's Australian arm is actually regulated like our other financial institutions are, and they quickly got a pimp slap for attempting to monopolize the payment market... But I get the feeling that even while everyone was proteting about ONLY being able to use PayPal, they were keeping track of how few people actually weren't.
 
This is about as fucked up as their somewhat recent policy change, making it impossible for Sellers to leave neutral or negative feedbacks for buyers, but the buyer can leave negative, neutral or positive for a seller.

So basically some buyers have decided to play hardball and threaten a seller with a negative (btw neutrals are counted as negative by ebay now) feedback to get what they want, and the sellers can't leave them negatives or neutrals in return.

Theres also a 30 day payment hold on certain categories (ebay won't say). Basically meaning, lets say rare cameras are the trigger category, the buyer pays you the 300$ or so, paypal puts a hold on that fund until one of two things happens... 30 days has passed, or the buyer has left you a positive feedback. But what seller is going to ship something without having the assurance that the money is in their hands?
 
HarveyJ said:
An amazingly large number of people still, sadly.

I get the feeling this is based on the transaction and market data that they got from down under, when they pulled a swifty and suddenly NO payment forms OTHER THAN PAYPAL were accepted.
Thankfully, PayPal's Australian arm is actually regulated like our other financial institutions are, and they quickly got a pimp slap for attempting to monopolize the payment market... But I get the feeling that even while everyone was proteting about ONLY being able to use PayPal, they were keeping track of how few people actually weren't.
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Yea that's the annoying thing. In the US Paypal is not considered a financial institution as we would relate with banks and such. But rather a "deposit broker", which is how they get around some of the laws and regulations (Such as them all the sudden locking up your funds for suspected fraudulant use, etc). It's also one of the reason why people who choose to transfer their money to their bank account gets a 3 to 5 day delay before it actually shows up in their bank (paypal holds the money to or from the bank in their own deposit account and collects a lil interest off it before forwarding it).
 
ebay is going to kill their business with the payment holds. Usually when something big like this happens, another site eventually starts picking up the slack. It will be interesting to see if something like that happens in the coming years.
 
LotsOfZeros said:
ebay is going to kill their business with the payment holds. Usually when something big like this happens, another site eventually starts picking up the slack. It will be interesting to see if something like that happens in the coming years.
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Time.com back in February (when ebay made their last big change which had the holds, fee change, removal of negative for buyers, etc), listed top 10 competing auction sites, some of which boosted in membership after the policy changes. (Trying to find that link again).

It might be handy to know who the top competitors are right now (I know that yahoo auctions called it quits, and amazon wasn't much better for some), since if this change happens it might be a good place to start seeing if the competitors want affiliates :D
 
eBay has a virtual monopoly, any other business would be investigated when it buys out it's competitors and enforces policies like this but they get away with it.

Some serious competition is long overdue and the only peeps I can see who've got a chance of taking on ebay is Google. Would make sense for them too - they've got the payments and shopping comparison stuff and I'm sure it could be easily integrated into Adsense/Adwords.

eBay really pisses me off the way they treat their customers like shit, but like most people I still use them as there is no serious alternative.
 
i think its better. If youve ever been an ebay seller you know checks and money orders are a complete pain in the ass.
 
Well, I know it's popular to say "the economy is in the pits" right now. But traditionally, money chases ideas. So I would suggest that someone work on a prototype for a replacement. Then pitch that replacement to people with money.

Ebay is getting how much of its traffic from the EPN affiliates? Any competitor could market the same way. And I know that an absolute shed load of sellers on ebay hate that there is no alternative. Given what people on here know about affiliate marketing, and the large and growing population of disgruntled sellers who would at least give an alternative a shot... I think the idea has merit. Maybe not to kill ebay, but at least to enter the market profitably.

So why not put together a collective brain trust and see what could come of it?

... only we would probably want to stay away from using paypal as a payment processor. Har har.
 
narsticle said:
i think its better. If youve ever been an ebay seller you know checks and money orders are a complete pain in the ass.
Click to expand...

If you've ever been an actual seller on eBay for any considerable amount of time you know that eBay and their policies are a serious pain in the ass and very anti-seller (unless you're some big Chinese warehouse company selling bulk goods in the thousands).

The sellers set the terms of payment in their auction, some have no problems taking checks or money orders (they just won't mail the goods til they receive and clear it), while others may say strictly paypal. It was fine the way it was, doesn't need eBay t to start forcing both buyers and sellers no option of using that method. Especially since not all international sales can be done via paypal (and paypal doesn't protect a seller if a chargeback occurs with an international buyer).
 
Was a great fan of eBay until google starting wiping out all the phpbay listings...
 
My aunt runs an eBay store selling antiques. The majority of her customers are older and pay with checks and money orders. In fact, she told me 40%+ is being paid for with checks in an email today.

Other than that, I couldn't give a shit. The few times I use eBay is just to get rid of shit sitting around - and I would never bother accepting checks anyways.
 
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