eBay: do unto Australia what you cannot do in the US

Stan Beer
Monday, 23 June 2008 15:38

Opinion and Analysis

It is hard to fathom the behaviour of eBay in Australia over the past couple of months because never in the history of the technology industry has a multinational company so flagrantly flagged its intention to flout this country's commercial laws. The question is how should Australia as a market respond?

eBay let it be known in April that it intended make the use of its subsidiary payments system PayPal mandatory to the exclusion of all other methods except cash on delivery for users of its Australian auction site. The problem for eBay was that in Australia, like just about every other developed economy, what it was trying to do was illegal. It's called third line forcing.

Knowing this, eBay on April 11 notified Australia's competition regulator the ACCC of its intention, arguing that it should be granted immunity from prosecution for its illegal behaviour because what it was doing with PayPal would be in the  public interest. However, on June 12 the ACCC rejected eBay's argument in a public draft notice.

So what has been the outcome so far?

eBay Australia has effectively ignored the ACCC draft notice and has been bullying both buyers and sellers on its site to use PayPal to the exclusion of all other systems.

In particular, sellers must offer PayPal as option for buyers and they have been publicly warned by eBay not to advertise alternative payment systems in the body of their advertisements or their listings will be removed. CONTINUED