Comments on: eBay Australia forcing sellers and buyers to use Paypal

By: denise taylor

denise taylor — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 08:04:40 +0000

I use bank deposit all the time and have no trouble at all with any of the ebay sellers i deal with. i also have a pay pal acc which i never use as i don’t know how.Pay pal was on today tonight this week 1/8/08 as they would not refund a ladys money on a deal that fell down. i believed that is what pay pal covered you for i must be wrong or is that false advertiseing and i thought that was illegal and you can be charged for that regards Suzzy

By: Nathan

Nathan — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 23:21:24 +0000

Emma,

It is a worry. An Australian ‘current affairs’ program (thats what they call themselves) had a feature on the issue last night. Not a lot of voice was given to Alistair MacGibbon.

Oztion.com.au sent out their latest newsletter stating seller registrations had grown 300% week on week and site listings had grown 30%.

By: emma

emma — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 15:15:40 +0000

Already 60% of our customers are using PayPal, but it is the regular eBay direct deposit customers that have kept coming back to us for the last 4 years that we are worried about losing.

We have started adding information into our sales emails to let our customers know ahead of time what eBay is proposing. We haven’t received any feedback from customers as yet but we hope they all hear about it before it happens. We really don’t want to loose any of our loyal eBay customers.

We hope that if they do not feel like using Paypal then they will come directly to our website to purchase from us rather than losing them entirely.

Emma

By: Nathan

Nathan — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 11:57:03 +0000

Wai Hong,

I wonder how many user registrations were sellers vs buyers?

By: Wai Hong

Wai Hong — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 07:02:09 +0000

Oztion membership went from ~227000 members to 248233 members over the period of this announcement :)

By: Nathan

Nathan — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 00:20:53 +0000

Thanks for your feedack icie.

One of my concerns, and obviously that of other sellers too, is that many buyers won’t want to create Paypal accounts and may elect to shop somewhere else.

At the moment in Australia, there aren’t too many other places to shop! We don’t have Amazon, overstock, and the number of Comparison Shopping Engines that other more mature ecommerce markets have.

I like Paypal, it is a fast and convenient payment service for myself as a buyer, and as a seller it saves time (for a fee). But removing too much choice from the marketplace is a big move and I worry about the effect it will have.

Maybe in the long term yes, it will be a good move. But many other initiatives need to be put in place to ensure the eBay marketplace grows and improves the way eBay hopes it will.

By: icie

icie — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 22:59:48 +0000

Since I am predominantly a buyer on ebay, and I do use Paypal, it does not have a huge impact on me.
That said, I definitely do not like the move.
Firstly, I do not trust Paypal. It likes to pretend it’s a respectable financial institution, and if everything goes well, then it can be really convenient. But if something goes pear-shaped, you more than likely find yourself on the insidious side of the fine-print.
Secondly, I agree with the general opinion that eBay is trying to up their profit margins. They own Paypal anyway, so not only do they get the listing fees from sellers, but also that fund-receiving fee from Paypal. A possible solution is to waive either of the fees, but we all know that’s not gonna happen.
eBay needs to get over their power trip. Even though I am a buyer, I can’t understand why they keep trying to screw over the sellers (ref: negative feedback ban debacle).