I’ve just listed an MP3 player for sale on eBay in the UK. I was surprised to see that I was required to accept PayPal and only PayPal for the transaction, making the “Decide how you’d like to be paid” section of the form redundant:
It is not even possible to state that someone who collects personally may pay cash.
As I understand it, eBay is not applying this rule to all transactions. I suspect this one is regarded as higher risk because it is electronics. The company justifies it on the grounds of security; but since eBay owns PayPal, and gets a double-dip on the fees for transactions processed by PayPal, it has other incentives.
I don’t like this. It is a step backwards; I prefer to have control over what payments are acceptable. I still listed it though, since Amazon (the obvious alternative) is even more expensive, and also acts as payment provider.
eBay has run into some trouble over this policy in Australia; I wonder if the UK will make a similar fuss?
Update: I’ve discovered that eBay UK is now forbidding payments other than PayPal on the following types of sale:
1) Sellers using a 1-day listing format
2) Sellers listing in these categories:
- Video Games > Consoles
- Consumer Electronics > MP3 Players
- Computing > Software
- Wholesale & Job Lots > Mobile & Home Phones
- Business, Office & Industrial > Industrial Supply/ MRO
There are some broad categories there. Further, I presume that once eBay starts restricting some sales to PayPal only, it will be tempted to extend the list further.
Related posts:
- eBay reinvents English language, punishes good sellers
- Former eBay scientist complains of “Dilbertian compromises”
- Amazon’s cloud computing to surpass its retailing business?
- Amazon, eBay, FaceBook: the risk of building your business on a third-party platform
- Amazon FPS – is this the micropayment revolution?
That is strange! I used ebay to sell my laptop recently and it seemd to impose no such rule?