eBay tightens rules for sellers

Cnet News ^ | July 19, 2005 | Paul Festa

[Panerai]

eBay has tightened rules governing credit card acceptance and clarified its prohibition of a type of fraud known as shill bidding.

eBay said Monday that sellers could no longer accept PayPal payments from buyers without accepting credit card transactions, thereby avoiding PayPal fees. eBay acquired PayPal in 2002.

Sellers' practice of restricting PayPal payment methods "was creating a bad buyer experience," said PayPal spokeswoman Amanda Pires. "It would be like walking into the grocery store and filling up your cart, getting to the check stand with your credit card and being told sorry, even after you saw the credit card logo outside the store."

Under PayPal rules, sellers can accept payment through bank transfers or PayPal balances for free. But sellers in the United States who accept credit card payments are charged between 1.9 percent and 2.9 percent of the value of the transaction, based on volume.

Pires sought to quell concerns that eBay was tightening the restrictions merely to boost PayPal's fee collections.

"We got a lot of community feedback, which is why we're changing this," Pires said. "And it was a very small percentage of sellers who were doing this."

Previously, only sellers who displayed the PayPal logo were disallowed from restricting credit card payment. Now all sellers who accept PayPal must accept credit cards.

eBay also spelled out to sellers what it said had been a gray area in its policy forbidding shill bidding, or bidding intended to artificially inflate the price of an auction.

Under the clarified policy, a seller's family members, roommates and employees are forbidden from bidding on the seller's items.

[skaterboy]

Ebay has really gotten crappy
I have several auctions canceled for rules violations im still trying to find!!

[Rabble]

Like they don't make enough money already! This is ALL about MONEY!

[The Chief]

There is an alternative to PayPal, www.greenzap.com/unclefuzzzy

They just hit the web about a month or so ago, and they start you off with $25 just for joining...

[The Chief]

www.greenzap.com/unclefuzzzy

[cuz_it_aint_their_money]

I quit buying anything from sellers that said they preferred PayPal, when PayPal said I had exceeded my buying limit!
In other words, they wanted to charge me an additional fee before they would let me spend more than $100 per transaction.
You would be surprised at the number of sellers out there that had no problem accepting a check after I told them of the crap that PayPal was pulling.

[BlueHornet]

I use ebay.co.uk quite a lot, for both selling and buying, and have never had any real problems. I wasn't aware of any rule changes. Maybe it mainly effects the USA site. I always make and accept payments through paypal.