Paypal - online tool that allows you to pay for items online, especially eBay, without sharing your bank information.
From June 17, eBay buyers will no longer be able to use direct deposits, personal cheques or money orders to pay for items they win or buy on eBay. They claim this is to enhance security.
One of the issues that has arisen is Section 47 of the Trade Practices Act. It prohibits excluse dealing which involves one trader imposing restrictions on another's freedtom to choose with whom, in what or were it deals. Forcing customers to only use Paypal is not online unfair because it takes away our right to choose how we pay, but it is a blatant grab for profits on eBay's part. It may be more safe and secure, but it also makes eBay a lot more money from it's partnership with PayPal (Paypal was acquired by eBay in 2002). What gives them the right to tell its users how they are allowed to pay?
Another huge problem is for sellers who are forced to have Paypal as their only payment means. You are allowed to have pick up on your items but obviously that cuts down the amount of people that can bid because they are not local to you. The cost of eBay for a seller is atrocious anyway, without adding on the PayPal fees the seller has to pay. An eBay listing has an initial listing fee which starts with items 99c or under being 30c listing fee. Once the item has been sold, eBay take a percentage of the final price that the item is sold for. This can sometimes add up to a lot of money. If you put an item on for 99c and it is sold for 99c, you are still charged by eBay 5c (5.25%). This means that you have only made 64c. This may not seem like a huge difference, but once the items become more expensive, the more eBay take. To make this worse, Paypal take 30c + 3.4% of the amount that is put into your account.
The strange thing I think is that buyers don't have to pay more to use Paypal, it is the sellers that are getting stung every which way.
References
eBay Fees. 2008. http://pages.ebay.com.au/help/sell/fees.html (accessed April 19, 2008)
Fees - Paypal. 2008. https://www.paypal.com/au/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_display-fees-outside (accessed April 26, 2008)
Foo, F. 2008. ACCC to probe eBay policies. http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,23548903-15306,00.html (accessed May 4, 2008)
1 comment:
I just wanted to leave a quick comment in regards to this topic Ebay and Papal vs. Australia.
I love shopping online and especially Ebay was was saddened to hear that direct deposits and money orders will not be accepted anymore as of the 17th Junne.
If you dont have a credit card what are you meant to do? I thought direct depioits were such an easy and good thing to be able to do when shopping on Ebay.
And i completley agree that the sellers are getting the downside of it all by having to set up Paypal and then the cost to sell your items on Ebay is ridiculous!!
What ever happened to good old fashion helping one another out......
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