As if the recent Ebay price hikes weren't enough

Simon says, "At Ebay we aim to please... please bend over" ;-)

...Jim Thompson

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| 1962 | America: Land of the Free, Because of the Brave

I think the "Why is eBay making these changes?" section is largely disingenious. They have some valid points, but they leave out what I believe is their largest motivator: eBay makes money from all PayPal transactions, so making it the only way to pay (other than with cash), eBay makes *more* money.

Have you ever tried talking to paypal about a dispute, let alone any other subject?

The canned text returned answers, usually don't match the questions you ask. Then they have the front to regularly ask for user feed back.

And I'm a daily PayPal user. :-)

I agree, we are the guinea pig!

It's a little like Micro$oft buying out Apple. Boy, what a dilemma for customers.

Don...

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Consider too that Ebay also owns Skype.

They had a little buying binge a couple years ago now they have to justify it all so you're seeing the money grab.

In sorting out my papers for tax day, I realized that I now have a PayPal credit card. I don't recall ever asking for one.

W ell given that Ebay owns Paypal, it's kind of obvious that they were going to do this to channel all the funds through their e-bank. It's not just for the commissions, it's also a drive to increase the number of account holders.

Gday Fellas,

Personally I like the concept of EBAY and PAYPAL is good too but being forced to use PP sucks big time... If I want to have PP `protection' it is MY choice.. If I chose to pay via bank transfer without PP protection that too is my choice..

I once made a claim on PP for a $51 (plus $10 postage) 2 Gig USB stick that was cheap at the time (2 years or so ago) I did the right things and bought off a seller that had 1,000s of +ve ratings etc and few negs..

I gave him a +ve rating too as it appeared to be fine... till I found out it was really a 256meg FAKE stick that reported to be 2 Gig. I contacted PP and they said that I had a right to a claim and I had to return it to the seller in a `track-able' manner.. now they wont refund postage so I get $51 ok... but they would have deducted $25 for costs so I get $26 then ... I didnt find out what it would cost me to send a `trackable' parcel to HK but I guess $20 so I would have got back $6 from my initial $61 I paid.. so I decided that I would keep my 256meg (`2 gig') stick instead of a $6 refund..

Basically PP was worthless to me... maybe on a $10,000 item they may be ok to consider but not for cheaper items

Regards,

Mik

But now you can be 'confident' that eBay will screw you and line their pockets in the process.

Ok, so any bets what phenomen that will screw eBay in the long run ..? Price hike doesn't seem like a lasting strategy.

sellers will simply leave E-bay on mass, buyers will then also be forced to also go to Oztion, if they wish to continue buying

for the seller , pay-pal has a lot of advantages, for one people in the bush, won't have long drives to find a bank to pay direct deposit. For me, it's a 120 k round trip to town, and that makes a $20 purchase expensive.

But for those that stay with e-bay, increased costs will simply be passed on with increased "Buy Now" prices and increased postal charges. And who can blame them

bassett

I can top that. A friend who uses PayPal a lot was a victim of a scam that emptied out her PayPal account as well as taking even more cash out of her credit card through the PayPal account. She did find out about it and reported it to the credit card company (and I suppose PayPal). But the scammers were pretty bright and realized that often people were not sharp enough to know the difference between PayPal and them. So they sent her a request (apparently from PayPal) to fill out an *affidavit* saying that the charge was ligit and all of the moneys should be given *back* to the scammers. She didn't catch the jist of the affidavit and was going to fax it out. When she had trouble with faxing from my computer, I got in the loop and asked what this was all about. After finding out what was going on, I clued her into the fact that this was again the scammers and not PayPal.

Contacting PayPal about this second level of scam got very little response. Again I got in the loop and started talking to the people at PayPal so see what they were doing about prosecuting this activity. The first person I spoke with told me I had the wrong department and needed to speak with someone at a different number. That person gave me yet a different number and so on..., until I ended up back with the *first* person under a different title! She now admitted that she was the right person to speak with about fraud in the first place!!!

The bottom line was that they had ***NO*** interest in reporting this criminal activity to the police. The way PayPal works they almost

*always* get their money back or the victims get no money back. Either way it costs PayPal nothing. As far as PayPal seems to be concerned, reporting criminal activity on PayPal only serves to create negative impressions about PayPal. So clearly they are not motivated to help victims other than getting the funds back if they are still available. If the funds had been transferred and their bank account had been emptied out, I am sure that my friend would not have gotten a cent back!

To me, the bottom line is that PayPal has a disincentive to publicize any criminal activity on their service. So you can't believe any data they give you showing that their service protects you.

All that said, I would never buy anything on eBay without using a credit card. PayPal being in the middle does not bother me too much, but I want to say it doesn't cost the seller anything. But others have told me different, that they have to pay something like 2% no matter what. I thought you could get the funds transferred into your bank account for free. No?

Hopefully that's exactly what will happen.

Sooner or later eBay is going to really start screwing both buyers and sellers to the point that there will be another auction startup on the scene - by that I mean a decent one, with good backing behind it.

So in a way, perhaps the sooner eBay starts really screwing their customers, the better.

It is never good when you have something like eBay who has no real competition.

It is a pity that Sold.com.au went down the gurgler, because it wasn't all that bad really.

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the big problem is , if you have a dispute with your cash, then your faced with a nice "curry muncher'' in Mumbai, or countless electronic e-mails giving you the run round. And in both cases you end up with bugger all.

the safe way to work with pay-pal is defiantly NOT a credit card registration, BUT a DEBIT card registration. I've run one now for about

18 months, and everything works fine. There's only a few hundred in the debit account [Visa] So if things go pear shaped, that's all they get. And if you know it's gone wrong, simply access the account and transfer money out of the account electronically, before things really get out of hand. And by the same token, If you spend a considerable amount , simply transfer that amount into the account, just before you click, "pay now" Plus the fact that these debit accounts cost nothing, No bank charges, no fee's. etc.

The alternative to e-bay will be http;//

It's only small at the moment, but more and more sellers are transferring over, and once you get through the registration process, it works the same as fleabay, except there's no pay-pay system.

The big problem for people living in the bush, is distance, pay-pal's easy as far as the buyer is concerned, direct deposit means a 100k round trip to town, which makes a $20 purchase expensive, both in time and money.

bassett

With a "personal" paypal account, there is no fee for sellers receiving payment except from a credit card sourcewhere it is 3.4% + $0.30 per transaction. A merchant account doesn't see those fess, but get to pay a monthly fee instead. I'm sure DonMc has one of those, so he would know what the recurrent cost is.

I live in a big town (Brisbane) but my bank is Adelaide Bank - they have no presence in QLD. I've been banking with them for over 12 years and they are the only bank I have account with. In that time I never had need to drive to their branch, I do BPay for most of my bills, I transfer money from my account into peoples accounts in other banks (plenty of times to Ebay sellers) using my computer and internet banking. Before internet I used telephone.

If you have Ebay then you don't need to drive to the bank, you can do your banking online.

Tom

Not yet, but I had a letter from the Bendigo Bank saying they were going to charge me $3.00 per month for my Visa debit card starting in May.

My idea exactly. I don't trust Paypal at all. There must a reason why they have their European banking activities in Luxembourg.

Over here Paypal is pushing hard to make direct withdrawels from people's bank account (they finally realized the Dutch don't like credit-cards). Luckely I still know a trick around that so I can push money from my back account into my Paypal account.

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:Primarily of interest to Australian Ebayers: :

:But what's the bet we are the trial, and other countries will follow. : :Dave. :

It is to be hoped that the ACCC will put the kybosh on these new Ebay proposalas. My main objection is that after 17 June EBay sellers will no longer be able to offer payment by direct bank deposit - at least not as part of items offered for sale. However, there is no way that Ebay can stop anyone from paying for items by direct bank deposit via other on-line methods permitted by their banking organisation. They are only going to shoot themselves in the foot on this one.

paying

I will be simply charging a $10 (or whatever is suitable based on the approximate value) handling fee (to cover these losses) on top. The fee will be waived for cash/pickup.

(please note that any postage/handling component of the sale paid through Paypal will also incur the Paypal fee.)

Maybe then offering a "pick up service" (payment by bank account but worded so as not to break the rules) to those that dont live locally.

However, there might not be that many selling things though after this starts to bite people, this will begin a downward self-feeding spiral of "less on offer, less people look, less people buy less buyers even less sellers (start again at beginning)" situation. With the slow reduction of spending in the general economy at present due to rising interest rates, massive size mortgage debts compared to the past, this all is only going to make it worse for Ebay. (and evernone else)

When selling, I want nothing to do with paypal. I don't believe in paying fees to pay for things.

So who do we email to express our feelings??

A specific name would be good.

Not that it might do much good, but ....