posted on July 7, 2001 09:49:52 AM new
I'm curious as to what you thought of the
Paypal email sent out this morning? The letter encourages Paypal users to take action against Ebay for inserting Billpoint
logos into relisted auctions. They encouraged Ebayers to close their Billpoint accounts and even provided a link for this to be more easily accomplished.
I, for one, am very disappointed with Paypal and their attempts to undermine the competition. They have the nerve to try to enlist the support of their members after repeatedly increasing their fees! They even state in their email that their fees are lower than Billpoint for most items. Not by my calculations! I sell mostly under $15 items and Billpoint is definitely the winner as far as fees. As I've done some research, I've also found several companies providing merchant accounts to sellers that have lower fees than both of them. My only regret is that I ever supported or recommended Paypal in the first place. Any thoughts?
posted on July 7, 2001 11:32:04 AM new
I thought it was the other way around. Billpoint is using the underhanded tactics not PayPal. If you join eBay now they automatically set up a Billpoint account for you unless you catch the fine print. That's not sneaky?
posted on July 7, 2001 02:35:19 PM new
Well, the way I look at it, eBay can include their payment service automatically if they want too! They could even make it mandatory, if they wanted to. It's their site they can do what they want. Would I like it? Well, if I didn't, I would just exercise my right NOT to use their site. Would I complain to eBay? Probably. How would they know it bothered me if I didn't tell 'em???
PayPal, on the other hand, is a third party. I don't think they make any kind of payments to eBay. I could be wrong. I think it's pretty bold of them to notify all users, that Billpoint is being forced on them and then provide a link to have the BP account closed!
I think it would be pretty funny if eBay required all thirdparty users to pay a fee for their logos. Funny that is until PayPal passed the fee on to me!
eBay could (if they really wanted to) refuse to have any other payment service, but theirs. Wouldn't necessarily be smart, but they could...
This mornings email from PayPal was the second one I have received. Hope it's not going to become a weekly thing!
posted on July 8, 2001 05:43:53 PM new
The whole story is that you can get 1.5% cash back on a paypal debit card if you listed your auctions with only paypal advertised as a payment method. Soon after paypal started doing this, ebay had what they say was a glitch in thier system and if you had ever signed up for billpoint, even just to look at it and never used it. Your auctions starting advertising that you accepted billpoint. A lot of people were losing their 1.5% cash back deal by this happening. Paypal looked into it from customer complaints and is reporting only what you need to do in order to retain your 1.5% cash back on your debit card.
posted on July 9, 2001 07:56:02 PM new
I agree with Paypal in that for ebay to arbitrarily replace my Paypal logo for their Bill Point was at the least "sneaky". I wasn't aware this had happened until I was suddenly notified that two of my winners had elected to use Bill Point. I have canceled the Bill Point account. If ebay had made it mandatory that the seller must use Bill Point I would have canceled my account with them as well. I have been selling on ebay since March 1997 when their page views were only 2 hundred thousand and have seen the incredible arrogance displayed by this company since those early days and an almost a dictorial attitude towards the sellers. Unfortunately, they are the only auction left that advertises and pulls the buyer/bidders, but, if they insist on dictating the payment method I will opt out of their auction site as well. This would be the last insult.
I started selling on yahoo when it was still "onsale.com" have watched it completely atrophy to almost a nothing where only flakely no payers lurk for a vicarous ego-surge when they win an auction, but can't or won't, complete the transaction with the payment. Seems as if only adolecents are left doing the bidding and accounts being canceled at the whim of some sub-mornic TOS observer. Then the chutzpa to charge a listing fee.......? I left with large feed back. I instead started shorting their stock every time it hits 20 and have made much more. It appears as though the successes on the net can't handle success and are bent on self-destruction.
[ edited by zjq on Jul 9, 2001 07:58 PM ]
