eBay's PayPal Payment Policy Crash & Burn

For today we’ll venture away from guitars and toys as I share some hard-earned online auction smarts with you. You’ll notice I frequently mention eBay as it is a large part of my leisure time. I’ve saved good cash on purchases and have made a lot of money selling all sorts of items. eBay is a huge established site with a lot of how-to’s, rules and procedures that are not always easy to find or understand. Recently eBay tried to enforce a PayPal-only payment for purchases rule which meant a Buyer had to use an eBay-owned pseudo-financial institution to forward payment to Sellers. PayPal’s well-known ‘screw you’ attitude towards their customers have cost them thousands of customers but they don’t care. PayPal deals with over a million transactions a day. Those little fees add up to nice money by the time the five o’clock whistle blows. PayPal is free for Buyers to use; they make their blood money by picking the pockets of the Sellers as they nickel and dime them to death just like eBay does. Yesterday I did some sleuthing on eBay regarding Payments and I found the legality of their brown shirt tactics must have been pointed out to them by many site users as they have changed the Payment Policy once again. Actually, we mostly have Australia to thank, as their governing body and financial institution safeguards would not allow eBay/Pay-Pal to bully their good citizens like mindless sheeple. Sad to note that this policy change was not publicized like the ‘use PayPal or fark off’ rule was, but I digress. Just so you know, eBay at this time allows Buyers to pay via PayPal, Moneybookers, Paymate and ProPay; Payment upon Pickup is allowed, and if you are buying from the Adult listings or some things from the Motors (motor vehicles etcetera) or Business/Industrial listings you may pay by Check, Money Order, Allpay.net, CertaPay, Checkfree.com, hyper wallet.com, Nochex.com, Ozpay.biz or XOOM. Look under Help / Buying / Payment for the full skinny on what’s what.