I have been an eBay fan for a long time now, and have bought and sold many products using the service. Their recent announcement about only accepting PayPal payments leaves a sour taste in my mouth, because I am one of those users affected by the change.

I offer Paypal as an option for payment, but also regularly accept direct bank deposits. To be honest, never have I had a problem with a failed transaction - but there have been delays because it often takes a while before the payment appears on the statement. I clearly specify to the buyer to leave the item number or eBay username when direct depositing funds.

The annoying thing about all this is, because eBay has such a strangle hold on the online auction marketplace, it will not significantly affect their usership. Sure, some people will stray away to alternative sites (and there are plenty out there).

There is a positive to all this though: PayPal payments are instant therefore further reducing turnaround times for delivery. This can translate increased sales, through increased sale numbers. Profits for eBay Powersellers can increase, but only through increasing their item sales per month. I suspect they will force buyers to supplement a % of PayPal costs. For what it’s worth, they are increasing Paypal fraud protection limit to $20K.

eBay quotes “To make our marketplace an even safer place to buy and sell, eBay.com.au is introducing some changes”. However, PayPal is not free you see. You get slugged for accepting payments through PayPal, and it can be a significant amount for large sales (recently I paid $1.96, and almost $4 for sales). One way to avoid the backslash is to reduce PayPal fees, but I suspect these rates will increase even further to promote a monopoly.

Mr Feedback not happy about eBay! Thanks Mr. Vice President!

Note to self: a number of Facebook groups have already sprung up about this.