Not many are aware that as of the 23rd of May, Ebay has introduced a new sellerpolicy that all international cross sellers. (i.e sellers who are registeredatone country but also list their items in another country) can no longer listtheir items in any other country other than their registered country unless theyhave a verified paypal account.
Now Ebay's reason for doing this is to claim it is to prevent fraud, butone mayask how about those sellers who do not use paypal, who only accept cheques orbank wire? A service acknowledged by the banks themselves as extremely safe for both parties, as a trace can be placed on the bank account in the case of any irregularities or seller non performance. Ebay is still adamant that such sellers, still must have averifiedpaypal account inorder to cross sell.
Of course what many seller's suspectisthis is not about preventing fraud at all (if that is the case, thenshould notall sellers, regardless of location have verified paypal accounts? Some already fear that this is what this is eventually leading to, that inorder to trade on Ebay you must use Ebay's own payment brand, and may be forced to submit your credit card details to paypal (as part of it's verification process, the ramifications of these in the long run are well known to sellers who have had to deal with fraudulent chargebacks) ) Somesellers suspect this is justanother tactic to enforce it's monopoly on the auction market, by trying toforce everybody to use paypal, as many are already aware Ebay owns paypal, andgets a substantial percentage of payments made via paypal, so on potentially three fronts Ebay would receive payments from sellers, it gets a listing fee, a final value fee, and if the seller acceptspaypal, a percentage of that payment as well.
Dan Stevens is a reviewer for How to deal with a paypal dispute
Tags: safe, money, monopoly
