eBay have announced that as of next month, extended Paypal buyer protection will replace the old Standard Purchase Protection. Buyers who pay with Paypal will automatically receive £150 (or €200) worth of coverage against non-receipt or misdescribed items. Those buying from eligible sellers will be covered up to £500 or €1000.
This was rolled out in north America last January, and appears to be being implemented across all European sites from June. As I’ve said before, this is great news for most buyers, but takes yet more control out of the hands of sellers.
Sellers do not currently have the ability to block buyers without confirmed addresses or verified accounts, which means that they cannot insist on being made eligible for Paypal’s seller protection. Without this facility, sellers are left once more totally at the mercy of unscrupulous chargebacking buyers.
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Just thought it worth pointing out that you don’t have to accept a Paypal from anyone you don’t want to. Sellers should read section 4.2 of the UK Paypal user agreement.
https://www.paypal.com/uk/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/gen/ua/ua-outside
“When you make a payment to a third party through our Service, the recipient is not required to accept the payment, even if the recipient is already registered with us. The recipient may return the payment or, in some cases, use the Service to deny payments that you make.”
It’s a good point, Richard, but it really needs to be formalised into the eBay system. How many times do you see someone on the eBay boards agonising about whether to accept an unconfirmed payment, vs. getting reported as a non-performing seller and negged? I know the money is more important 😀 but if eBay would at least allow sellers the option to insist on verification, they might hold on to some of those big-ticket sellers a bit longer too.
It’s also replacing eBay’s Standard Purchase Protection in Australia.
https://www2.ebay.com/aw/au/200705090852542.html
PayPal is very unpopular with Australian sellers as domestic bank transfers are free and around 9 days faster in being credited to their bank account compared with PayPal. Also there is no Seller Protection Policy or verified addresses (with PayPal) available there so Australian sellers have no protection (except making a Police complaint) against reversals or chargebacks. Several sellers have already commented that effectively forcing them to offer PayPal on their eBay listings may amount to anti-competitive tactics (known as ‘third-party forcing’ in Australian business law).