Only Pay-pal for E-bay?

[Mike Kennedy]

A seller just informed me that E-Bay is doing away with all paper transactions (Money order,etc.).Is this on the level or was the guy just being a prat.

[mjs]

E-bay announced that a while back (last year.) Guess who owns Paypal! You'll only be able to accept other forms of payment if the customer is picking up the item in person.

[Konical]

Good Morning,

At least several "Paypal Only" sellers have missed out on my bids, including some who later had to re-list items. Paypal only is extremely annoying; what's wrong with Postal Money Orders?

Konical

[aluk]

If you are listing on ebay.com you may not solicit other forms of payment, though a buyer may request to pay by money order etc. If you as a seller say on the listing that other forms of payment are accepted, you may find yourself punished by ebay if a buyer reports you. I do not think that this applies (yet) to other/international ebay sites (eg. ebay.ca).

Indeed, their new policy is extremely annoying, and seems rather anticompetitive, given that ebay owns paypal...not that I am a lawyer.

[Ian Grant]

The use of Paypal as the only accepted online method of payment is just symptomatic of Paypal's attempts to make money with disregard to the buyers wants & needs. It goes along with the stifling out of private sellers and the attempts at price rigging by many online Ebay stores which I've noticed particularly happening with LF equipment, but it's happening across Ebay.

Ian

[David A. Goldfarb]

Ditto what aluk says. I sold a couple of items recently and learned that this is indeed the new policy.

[BrianShaw]

You need to come into the 21st Century, sir... that change was made in January 2007! It's not entirely true, though... there are other payment methods allowed:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/pay/accep...t-methods.html

[MattKing]

I've posted on this before. I think that the genesis of this policy is the large number of disputes that arise because of problems with non-electronic payment methods. If you use PayPal, payment and receipt of payment can be verified relatively easily.

I expect that if you establish a competing electronic payment system, that is as easy to verify as PayPal, you will find eBay will accept it.

Matt

[Kino]

Be very careful with Ebay and Paypal in general; especially Paypal in particular.

Here's directly from the horse's mouth (for whatever that is worth):

http://paypalsucks.com/PayPalFormerEmployee1.shtml

[Mike Kennedy]

My security blocked the page from opening.
Go figure.