eBay & Paypal Fees

[thecatspajamas]

Originally Posted by Acollector

How many buyers are willing to pay by cash, check, or money orders? Also if you post in your description you accept those forms, ebay will cancel the listings, so yes it is possible to accept them, but ebay doesn't allow it. The non Paypal requirement is if you have a merchant credit card account, so yes you can accept those payments, but ebay makes it online payments only. Ebay has brained washed their sheep to think the cash, checks, and money orders contain cooties and they will get robbed for sure if they send them. I prefer the other 3 classics for a couple of reasons. I think it as a major conflict of interest that ebay has paypal. If they are going to require Paypal, then it should be no Paypal fees for an ebay sale since there are seller fees. If Paypal payments are made elsewhere, I can understand the fees.

Ebay DOES allow you to accept checks and money orders, they just don't allow you to SOLICIT payment by those forms. Any text in your description that looks like you're soliciting those forms of payment will get your listing cancelled (or denied upload in the first place). If the buyer requests to pay with one of those forms though, it's okay, and eBay even has an option in the drop-down menu when you go to mark an item as "paid" where you can specify that payment was with a check or money order.

There are still a few old-school buyers who pay for everything with money orders, and even fewer who will pay with a check and don't mind waiting for it to clear. My experience has their number at around 1-2% of buyers paying with something other than Paypal though, and for some reason those also tend to be the cheaper items (perhaps even old-school buyers want that "Buyer Protection" on the more expensive items?)

As for the legality of requiring a method of payment (Paypal) that their company also controls, they get around that by allowing sellers to also specify other similar payment methods (ProPay, Skrill). Of course, nobody actually uses those options, but they are still options so from a legal standpoint, it's not a monopoly. You can also specify in-person payment/pickup, which will also kill your sale potential, but again that's beside the point legally speaking. That's all from a lay perspective, and there may be some argument for a de facto monopoly that could be made, but I would imagine eBay's legal team have things sewn up so that they are protected from any unfair business practice lawsuits, whether their practices seem fair to the average user or not.