p2pnet news Freedom | P2P:- Both of Australia’s remaining eBay customers are off the hook.

The company decided it’d order OzBayers to use its PayPal.

Then the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission suggested “in informal comments that it would likely block eBay’s effort to require all Australian trades to use PayPal for payments,” said InformationWeek.

Now, eBay has, “dropped its bid to use Australia as a guinea pig to trial a new policy where all other modes of payment are barred except its own transaction gateway, PayPal,” says Australian IT.

“As a result, direct deposits, personal cheques and money orders will continue to exist as allowing all existing payment methods on eBay.com.au.”

Having thoroughly disrupted and confused eBay users,”While we disagree with the ACCC’s draft notice, we have decided to withdraw the notification to stop any further confusion and disruption among the eBay community,” the story has eBay Australia vice-president Simon Smith (right) saying, adding:

“EBay regrets any uncertainty that this process has caused among the community and believe that today’s decision will remove further doubt.”

And in what will surely rank as one of the finest example sof eBay double-speak, “Although we have decided not to move ahead with the further planned changes, eBay is pleased that all buyers can now choose PayPal along with other permitted payment methods of their choice,” said Smith, presumaby with a straight face.

Having fallen flat on its face in Australia, is eBay planning further adventures elsewhere?

In a Business Spectator interview eBay eBot Simon Smith, re-posted in the eBay forums, “Is this something that eBay is planning to pursue in other markets, outside Australia?” – asks Isabelle Oderberg.

Says Smith >>>

We will probably look at the markets on a case by case basis. Within Australia we looked at what the drivers were – a small number of people were having bad experiences and we realised that if you pay with PayPal on ebay.com.au you are four times less likely to enter into a dispute than if you pay with credit card, bank transfer, cheques or money orders. Once we saw that, which was specific to Australia, we concluded that really it was very hard for us to do anything, but do our very best to promote PayPal here in Australia. Now, each market is based on different payment mechanisms and different situations. We chose what was, what we considered to be best for Australia. Obviously it proved to be more disruptive than we anticipated. We weren’t expecting the ACCC to issue their draft notice against us and we have listened to our community and that is why we’re withdrawing from the process here and not going any further with changes around payment mechanisms in Australia.

“Simon is a keen collector of vintage Qantas posters, which he purchases on eBay,” says his eBay blurb.

Below, he tries to justify the changes.

It’ll make good fodder for a spoof movie.

So copy it quick before eBay orders GooTube to take it down

. .Stumble It!

---

Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. It’s really easy!

Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php

---

Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details. Download here.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 7th, 2008 at 10:20 am and is filed under Freedom, P2P. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

HOME

Viewed 2901 times