eBay pushes PayPal for buyer protection

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 09 May 2007 07:33

Your IT - Home IT

eBay has upgraded its buyer protection for customers paying by PayPal, to $3000 for those buying from highest rated sellers, but has scrapped an existing protection scheme that applied to other payment methods.

Purchasers with PayPal from any seller will be protected up to the value of $400, but the safeguards will not apply to intangibles such as software, nor to motor vehicles. The $3000 protection will apply only to purchases from sellers with 50 feedbacks at least 98 percent of them positive. Also, claims under the old protection scheme attracted a $25 processing fee. There will be no fees uunder the new regime.

The new scheme as been developed specifically for Australia, but similar schemes are being introduced in a number of other countries.

The old scheme was put in place  before eBay acquired PayPal, which has three million registered users in Australia, according to eBay. The company said that "as PayPal has become the most popular payment method for eBay buyers, coupled with the fact that PayPal is one of the most secure online payment methods eBay believes the PayPal Buyer Protection program offers better protection for buyers."

eBay says that a recent PayPal study found that eBay sellers who offered PayPal as a payment method on the site experienced up to 15 percent per year higher sales than sellers who did not.