Ebay Australia: we’re not a faceless entity and PayPal better than Paymate

Stan Beer
Tuesday, 22 April 2008 15:04

Business IT - Technology

iTWire:  I can imagine that Paymate would dispute quite vehemently your contention that they don’t have a buyer and seller protection program.

eBay: My understanding is that their buyer protection is that you pay by credit card and you’re covered by the credit card scheme. That applies to PayPal as well if you fund your transactions via credit card. What PayPal offers is on top of that protection that all credit card holders have will be a $20,000 buyer protection program which is going up from $3000. I’m unaware of Paymate’s seller protection but I do know that PayPal introduced seller protection which can cover the seller from charge backs and claims that result from unauthorized payments. That is when pay someone using a stolen credit card or made up credit card number or can cover them for items not received charge backs and claims. That’s been one of the big gripes of eBay sellers for a long time and PayPal last year introduced that seller protection to give them that cover. To my knowledge that’s an industry first.

iTWire: What do you say to the accusation that in Australia you’re a faceless entity because you don’t have a listed office address, just a locked (post) bag? You also don’t have a personal office telephone. You do have a 1800 number which is obviously a call centre. The only way people can get in touch with you is via email.

eBay: The 1800 number is a PayPal number. It’s manned during office hours and for some time on Saturday as well. People can call that number and that goes through to PayPal’s customer support. That’s the best place for people to raise an issue because they can deal with a customer issue directly whereas the local offices are admin and marketing offices and not equipped to deal with customer support enquiries. There is also email support and on eBay there is also live help where people can have a live Internet chat with a customer support representative in real time. A large number of power sellers on eBay all have telephone support.

iTWire: If you force people to use PayPal rather than direct credit card purchases from larger merchants or an alternative payments clearing method you’re automatically forcing them to use your subsidiary system which incurs extra fees that you recover from the purchase. Without having to raise your (eBay) fees you would still be getting extra fees for (PayPal) purchases. Isn’t that simply double dipping?

eBay: I think there’s two things. First, PayPal is investing significantly through the uplift in buyer protection and the seller protection program which only came in the last couple of  months. It’s really unclear how much that investment is going to cost until the claims start coming through.  The investment is there to build confidence and we believe that if confidence is built there will be more sales for sellers, which does better for the seller and subsequently eBay. The second point people need to understand is that when you’re paying your listing fee on eBay and your final value fee, you’re paying to have your item listed on a site that has over 200 million plus members globally, a marketplace that just can’t be compared to anything in the offline or online space for the volume of buyers that it could bring to you for a relatively low cost. With PayPal you’re paying for a totally separate service to have that transaction processed and there are fees associated with doing that.