German news weekly Der Spiegel reports today that the one-time head of PayPal Germany doesn’t trust PayPal payments for his own eBay sales. Frerk-Malte Feller was in charge of PayPal’s German arm until February, when he became head of auctions for eBay Germany; he on the site. The terms and conditions of these listings make very interesting reading, stating in both German and English:
If you pay with PayPal, I need copies of your passport/ID as well as from your credit card that you are using within PayPal (both sides). Please provide these documents as electronic scans immediately after the end of the auction. The tickets will only be shipped after you have provided these documents.
These additional terms are important, as PayPal will only protect sellers from unjustified chargebacks in accordance with the above. You as a buyer remain fully protected through PayPal’s Buyer Protection Policy. So both sides are well protected. 🙂
Assuming that Der Spiegel’s identification of this seller with Frerk-Malte Feller is correct, then he’s in breach of the , as he hasn’t identified himself as an eBay employee. The seller also appears to be breaking UEFA’s ticket resale rules (see section 8).
If you read German, there’s an interesting thread on the German community forums about this, but so far apparently no official comment from eBay.
23 Responses
1949.
Bugger sorry wrong thread….1949 calories today and still 1lb overweight.
I need copies of your passport/ID as well as from your credit card that you are using within PayPal (both sides).
And I’ll pass them on to my friend in Nigeria
By the way if you sell a high-value item using paypal as payment method you should indeed to ask for a scan of the passport and credit card scan in which the first 12 numbers can be concealed.
This is the perfect protection against people which claim the payment was “not authorised”.And since you ship a high value item using a secure courier a claim against you because “not received” is not gonna work as well
Of course they could stillclaim not as described
Considering the big push in Australia for Paypal only, where does this leave us?
I have asked on the ebay AU “hidden board” https://forums.ebay.com.au/forum.jspa?forumID=500000001 for a comment from our own managing director (who has not openly spoken to us for coming up 2 years – since fee hike days). I asked if he trusted Paypal more than the German MD does……………..so far no response.
Considering the big push in Australia for Paypal only, where does this leave us?
I have asked on the ebay AU Hidden boards for a comment from our own managing director (who has not openly spoken to us for coming up 2 years – since fee hike days). I asked if he trusted Paypal more than the German MD does……………..so far no response.
Keith – yeah, we think the same thing 😆
Mandy – I don’t believe that having a passport scan would stop a PayPal chargeback if your buyer later wanted to do one. Sure, it would be great evidence if you wanted to sue them later, but how many buyers are you going to put off in the meantime?
Simply – I don’t blame AU sellers in the slightest for feeling aggrieved over this (more aggrieved than you were already). 🙁
Auctionbytes has an interesting statement back from eBay: on the employee identification issue, “he did inform buyers after the listing closed that he is”. Super, but that’s not what the policy says he has to do. He broke the policy, end of.
And on the passport issue, “some sellers in higher risk categories do ask for additional identifying information”. That’s not the point. He’s the head of auctions in Germany; he used to be the head of PayPal in Germany. He might know that scrutiny would happen, and he might know the sort of message his T&Cs send out. So if he feels that selling tickets on eBay is too risky without additional ID from the buyer, he shouldn’t sell tickets on eBay!
The sale was “perfectly legal” according to PayPal spokesperson Sara Gorman?
(as reported in Auctionbytes)
Here’s what the UEFA says on its website, in the competition FAQ/help pages about re-selling tickets:
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Q25: Are my tickets personal?
A: Tickets are allocated to you personally and your surname will be printed on it.
Q26: Am I allowed to give my tickets away, re-sell or to offer my tickets in a good cause?
A: Tickets for the UEFA Cup Final 2008 are not transferable and may not be used for any promotion or advertising or as a prize in a competition or sweepstake, or as part of a hospitality or travel package (for example combining flights, hotel and tickets). Successful applicants and their guests may not sell, offer for sale, auction, re-sell or otherwise transfer the tickets.
Q27: Have tickets been distributed to agencies or brokers for resale?
A: UEFA and The Football Association Limited (the Host Association) are the only bodies permitted to sell tickets to the general public.
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According to the UEFA you are NOT permitted to re-sell/auction your tickets…
sorry, seems I made a mess of the ‘a href’ html in my comment above 😳 if you can ‘repair’ it please do so, thanks! 😉
No problem, WD; fixed for you 🙂
UEFA’s T&Cs seem rather specific, don’t they? Thou shalt not auction. There’s also the use of the UEFA logo in the auctions; was that authorised by them?
Richard(Forbigboys) posted this morning an interesting link regarding this matter. https://blog.auctionbytes.com/cgi-bin/blog/blog.pl?/comments/2008/6/1212688011.html#1212735460
Does the expression “perfectly legal” as used by PayPal’s spokesman here mean the same thing as “entirely legal” when the UK Head of Trust & Safety used it in relation to compulsory PayPal???
Thanks for the repair, Sue B. 😀
Btw. this frerk-malte has been an eBay-member since April 5, 2000 – according to his eBay-profile – but his first feedback is from August 14, 1999 …. how can that be? 😯
Also his eBay-account is still active despite him breaking eBay-regulations + Paypal-regulations + UEFA-regulations… 😕
Ebay! Why is he still not NARU’d?? 😮 😡
This seller is a disgrace and a serious threat to the positive buyer-experience! 😮 😆 🙄
The dates I would *guess* could be from combining two accounts; the older one had the 1999 f/b and the newer one was the “main” acct into which the other was included.
WD your quotes in post 7 are referring to the “UEFA Cup Final 2008” which is an event that has passed. Do the same rules apply to tickets for “Euro 2008”? The “UEFA Cup Final 2008” took place in England were there are very specific laws relating to the resale of football tickets. 🙂
Jimbo #14: thanks! that’s a very good point, I obviously missed that.
So the quotes & conclusion derived from those quotes in my post #7 can be disregarded, sorry about that 😮
I’ve found the for the “EURO 2008” tickets now and they state (with the relevat part bolded by me):
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8 Transfer of Tickets
8.1 Applicants shall retain one Ticket for their personal use and shall transfer the remaining Tickets to Guests for their personal use at a cost no greater than the face value of these Tickets plus the invoiced pro-rata administration charge or service fee.
8.2 Subject to the above, neither Applicants nor Guests may sell, offer for sale, resell or otherwise transfer their personal Ticket without the prior written approval of Euro 2008 SA. Tickets may not be used for commercial purposes such as, without limitation, for promotion, advertising, use as a prize in a competition or sweepstake or as part of a travel package (for example combining flights, hotel and Tickets) without the prior written approval of Euro 2008 SA.
———————————————
So now the question is: did he have written approval of UEFA EURO 2008 SA to re-sell them by auction to the highest bidder?
In his auction he doesn’t mention if he has or hasn’t, but he does refer to the official eBay rules concerning ‘trade’ in these tickets, that essentially quote the same regulations as I did (but then in German 😉 ) + some extra info & caution about actual uncertainty whether re-sale on auction-platforms like eBay is permitted at all….
So probably we’d better (?) assume that he had written approval for re-sale…
However, the eBay terms for these EURO2008 tickets do state:
“Sie sollten auch keine UEFA EURO 2008-Logos in Ihrem Angebot verwenden, da dadurch eventuell Rechte Dritter verletzt werden könnten.”
which means that it is forbidden to use any UEFA EURO 2008 logos in the auction…. so it seems he did break that regulation 😎
Sue B. #13: yes, could be due to a merge of two accounts, but I’ve never seen such ‘non-corresponding’ dates before 😮
Anyway, fascinating developments in eBay-land 😆
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ps. Sue B., in my preview of this message I see the href-html will be messed-up again, don’t know what I’m doing wrong, but I hope you can fix it again, sorry & thanx 🙂
Btw, using Goofbay it seems one buyer of frerk-malte‘s tickets is a huge UEFA EURO 2008 fan as he has spend some £23,000 on UEFA tickets the last 30 days 😯
And it seems in the past month frerk-malte has sold12 tickets for about £2,328 in total 😮
Funny aside – here’s a comment left by frerk-malte‘s big-spender-buyer for one of the other ticket-sellers:
(negative feedback left Jun-03-08 13:30)
“Belive it or not – He claimed his son eat up the two cheap tickets! Unrelieable!”
😆
another point is thatthis guy is breaking so many rules you won`t believe.2 examples:
Like mentioned by Sue he is not stating that he is ebay employee.This he gets justified by Paypal spokeswoman Sara Gorman:
Finally, while Malte did not include the statement that he is an eBay employee in the actual listing, he did inform buyers after the listing closed that he is.
wonder if ebay would be that lenient to another seller but more ebay.de states on on https://pages.ebay.de/em2008/ :
Sie sollten auch keine UEFA EURO 2008-Logos in Ihrem Angebot verwenden, da dadurch eventuell Rechte Dritter verletzt werden könnten. also you shouldnt use in your listings UEFA EURO 2008-Logos as this could possibly infrige the rights of a third party.
finally some funny thing I just picked up from an US board discussing this matter.a search on ebay.de for “of your ID-card and your creditcard” gives today only one day later already thousands of results see here
so German sellers are adopting and coppying Fellers demands
Has Ebay gone off it’s nut? Blatant disregard of seller/buyer rights. Example please????????
Horst #17:
“a search on ebay.de for “of your ID-card and your creditcard†gives today only one day later already thousands of results see here”
Wow, that is amazing 😯 😮
What does this mean? All these sellers quickly copied frerk-maltes example? Or has this been common practice on ebay.de for a longer time already?
Fascinating again nontheless and I’m sure the Australian eBay-members will be very interested to hear about this as well!
#WD evenso there was never a to me known search before, I even admire the guy first going to do such a crazy search(for getting the idea to do so),but i never heard of anything like that before so must asume that within one day those sellers just copied Feller.What you want to mention as well is that Germany is a country where it is a excemption that a seller offers Paypal so if you would like to compare to the UK you would have at least to tenfold that figure.
I suppose if he had said he was an employee in the listings, he’d be on the way to being naru’d by the hoards of unhappy sellers 😆
Link to this article quickly deleted on ebay.ca forum, though similar posts linking to tamebay never have been deleted before (I did not get moderator “email warning” though)
On .ca, we had an ebay employee make hundreds of posts without identifying himself as such. The nature of posts would not have made the company look good. Eventually he identified himself as staff involved in member suspensions and offered to help one of his “buddies” who went NARU for signing up for piles of false contact info ids for the purpose of trolling the boards/avoiding sanctions.
Staffer did help NARU user, worst poster in history of .ca board, come back from the grave.
LOL now even the English text “I need copies of your passport/ID as well as from your credit card” gives thousands of results on ebay.de see here