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Ebay/Paypal Monopoly- can it be beaten?
 

Hola Everyone..I'm new here and I am not sure if this has been brought up before..nor did I research all bizillion threads to find out if it was posted previously..and I am not sure if we can DO anything...but food for thought....

isn't it illegal for Ebay to monopolize this market the way they do? If they own paypal and REQUIRE that sellers use paypal if they sell items and buyers to use paypal if they buy on the Ebay website. They shouldn't require us to pay Ebay, Inc (by requiring paypal use) on the Ebay website....isn't this using their power to minimize the threat of the competition on their website..by requiring the Ebay owned PAYPAL to be the preferred payment method on their website? Sort of the e-version of Bell and their violation of antitrust laws???

Sure. Also John Lennon wanted to change the world.

Listen. We don't care here. Save yourself all the pain.

You come here to learn how to beat the system and play the game. You play the game to make money because Lennon did NOT change the world. So play the game, save the moral to other more important things.

Nothing personal, it's business. And.. welcome.

X=D

LOL... Must be a full moon or something..:lol:

Yeah. Um...

er, something

schtthhh ooooppp acccckkkkkK!!!!!

growl

http://www.myotherdrive.com/dyn/file...d+Werewolf.gif

woof, even...

By requiring the use of Paypal, they are in clear violation of US anti-trust law, but they have bottom feeding lawyers that will tie up any ligation for decades. Your best revenge is to screw both Ebay and Paypal for every cent you can.

^^^^
Wow that was really rude.

^^^
For real! Quite harsh on the newbie-

I agree with Sycore. The only way we'll see any justice from eBay / PayPal is if we take matters into our own hands. This is why we all love this forum so much- it shows us how to seek our justice...:heh:

So don't be discouraged by eBay's wrath (or Cachufleta's comments)

this forum will help you :welcome;

I do want to know how to work around the rules..you have to know all the rules to know how to break them. :-)

I believe that change can always be made. It just takes someone to take action. Otherwise this site would never have come about..right? and as Henry Ford once said...Whether you think you can...or whether you think you can't...You are right.

woogie,
Welcome. What is it that you want?
ebay/paypal cover their backs by use of lawyers. Alternatives at this moment are use another auction site or try to best them. Many of use here are well aware of their nastiness and make use of the forum.:peace:

Woogie, stick around, read the threads and you will become an expert to deal with ebay/paypal in no time..

Some people on the forum seem to have forgotten the purpose of this site. It is to help each other get back on eBay/Paypal successfully. The front page keeps track of stats. Perhaps a new column should be added to count how many insulting posts are made by certain individuals.

I'm not sure what is more annoying...someone asking a question that has been answered a million times or certain people always constantly making rude comments towards newbies.

Give the guy a break..Its a legitimate topic...Why not discuss it..??

My 2cents:

Im very suprised no-one ha sent taken any kind of action against eBay.However right now they DO offer third-party payment methods such as ProPay(avalible only to PSs), PayMate(Have to be approved) and MoneyBookers(no approval acquired)..So for the average joe, MoneyBookers and PayPal are the only viable option.So they are offering other payment methods but to me the problem is that they REQUIRE you to have a PayPal account to list certain items, and place limits on yo if you DONT have a paypal account.

I have Moneybookers from years ago in my real name... Would they share info with Ebay? I am afraid so. Ebay has to allow third party merchants who are not controled by Ebay.. So, I agree with OP, there should be someone in Goverment who should put stop to that in the name of people. Let's all write a plea letter to Obama!:typing:

We here help each other, yet are helpless sometimes aginst Ebay's "iron hand". IMO if enough people complain, someone up there may have a look into it.

Since it appears to be an anti-trust issue, I'm thinking the Federal Trade Commission would be an avenue. Otherwise, maybe the appropriate Attorneys General. Either the state where eBay is headquartered or the state where the concerned party resides.

I'm not certain which would be more appropriate.

Yea, I wouldn't know exactly where to go with that first (maybe even Congress, maybe even Washington), but I would look for the higher authority than State...not state of California. Concerned parties reside ALL OVER the world, and Ebay is assuming the form of Dictatorship over people, cause that's exactly what they are doing. What about free market economy, free trade, free world, freedom of choice???? When it comes to Ebay/Paypal we have none.:tears:

Hi, Everyone..

I had not checked back on this thread since it was moved and kinda felt like it quickly went no-where (or a negative place)...

GB, I was pretty much frustrated with the whole thing..I recently tried to sell some items and I of course..like many of you was booted out! So..I did some research found this thread, bought the book..and trying to work on it..and then I became even more frustrated that I have to jump through so many hoops in order to be able to do something that should be so simple to begin with..and I thought...Ebay is a huge company..why hasn't anything been done about this??....MS is not able to force people to use IE anymore..SWB (AT&T) is no longer the giant they were....and if you look around there isn't anyone that can truly compete..maybe a few letters can change things? Especially in an economy in which competition can create growth? ..you never know...I would love to break up the tag-team that ebay and paypal have..that's the one that really gets me..because right now I am in the phase of researching different merchants to figure out which one I want to use... The thing is..if the govt would step in..I think we could eventually be worse off...because then they would bring along a whole new set of rules and regulations we would have to deal with..lol..so it might just be a game you can only win by getting around all the current rules we have..Sorry guys- I'm new..i'm in that "I can't believe they get away with all of this!!" phase..

Well, good point, but we are in 'we CAN believe they are getting away with this' phase...Only some higher authority can order Ebay to allow sellers to use merchants of their choice and not be FORCED to use PayPal. The problem is we are all not raising our voices because we THINK it wouldn't work.

Lyda, perfectly said, paypal is not a bank but yet they are allowed to HOLD and make INTEREST on OUR MONEY, while we SHIP the goods with OUR OWN MONEY, risking the BUYER scamming US and everything they say they do is for OUR protection. There has to be some anti-trust violation here somewhere, remember the Australians fought PAYPAL down and WON!

I can print out tons and tons of letters of people complaining about PayPal. It's ALL on internet. But all problems actually come from Ebay, That's the cradle of all problems, not PP. PayPal will do whatever Ebay wants, since Ebay owns it. PayPal can never become an FDIC Institution, probably because it is owned by Ebay, and Ebay would not want any other financial institution to own paypal and not have control of te money. So, I think all complaints should be directed primarily at Ebay, not Paypal. If we can organize some sort of letter signed by ...oh, I don't know xxxxxxxx number of people, someone would just have to look into it and respond.

Lyda,

Excellent point. It isn't PP demanding to be the only eBay payment. It is eBay pushing PP on everybody.

Also, thinking about the Attorneys General that I mentioned earlier:
If the complaints were spread out by separate individuals across several states, it would get more attention AND spread the eBay legal team quite thin. In addition to that, it would increase the odds that a judgement be made against eBay. Suppose 200 cases came up in 12 states... How many lawyers does eBay have? What are the odds that one of the cases (early on) would get a disfavorable judgement for eBay, prompting subsequent rulings to reach the same outcome? DOMINO FACTOR.

I can arrange for a media leak, if something got started.

Just a thought that crossed my mind.

Excellent Vicvelcro! I would compose a letter myself, but I have no law background and English is my second language. If we can find someone that can write good and use all "appropriate terms" in composing such a letter of complaint, than I can do my own part in supplying copies of what I read on Internet, horror stories that people experienced being forced to use PayPal.

Than, we can put this in a Word document, distribute to each and every one of us, we can than print it, sign it with our own names, put in envelope, stamp it and mail out from wherever we are - God knows, that whoever this would be addressed to would be receiving bunch of identical letters signed by someone living in every state of US, than UK, than Australia, China, Europe (lets not forget our International forum), Japan, Korea, etc..etc.....Sorry if I missed anyone's country, you are equally important...;) And all his in relatively short span of time, it would inevitably draw attention. Than they would need to respond to each and every one of us! Wow! I am in, and I am ready to get to work and do my part! Anyone else??? :cheer:

I'm in, if we can co-ordinate this all in a very short time-frame. If it were spread out sporadically, I don't think it would be effective. If the filings could be synchronized, I think the sudden volume would be a HUGE benefit.

Maybe we should start a user group and have a pow-wow session.

President Obama would love this!!! I say we write directly to Mr. Obama. Let's shoot for the stars....!!! Of course, mail will be open by secretary, but it will overwhelm secretary's desk and I promise you, Mr. Obama WILL READ IT too.

Oh, common, who is a good writer here????:cheer:

Not me, I couldn't even spell a sentence without making a spelling mistake. Anyways, I don't think it will be as effective but why not give it a shot. I'm in this if everyone else is.

Great! We need to find one person who will write at least one page, addressing the problem in general and ask for greater freedom of choice for sellers to be able to select their own payment processor and not be forced to use paypal, who is doing this and that to us.... I can start folder tomorrow and than we can select few best complaints and include this as Addendums. We just need a volunteer to take a lead here writing this..and make sense of bunch of attachments we'd be sending. Than, when all is ready to go.. email goes out to everybody and all we need to do is print, put in envelope and send.

WOW! You guys are awesome! :-) ..I'd love to help- I'm in too. If I may suggest, what if we each (or whoever wants to volunteer) take a topic that we feel comfortable about and write on that topic? We will then end up with a pretty good letter and hopefully cover many points. I can work on gathering info on how the MS IE/Netscape came about and how that relates to Ebay/PP...I can write a paragraph or two....Lyda, what do you think?

It is a great idea Woogie and it would certainly help to get out point across. We would just need to be careful not to get lost in all of this and go straight to the point demanding our freedom of choice, which Ebay took away. I suggest we all start working on our own contributions and have the material stored in separate folder on our computer. As times goes on, we'll hopefully find someone willing to take the lead, kinda organize all this work we do, and create a presentable letter which will be sent to us as attachment to print out, sign, stamp and mail out.

Woogie: I apologize for my rude words - . Still my intention was to avoid you to waste time in that direction - we all know it's a real waste, we can't change nothing. I would have loved somebody slammed in my face like that before I spent many days / money whining in other places.. welcome =)

So how about making a letter thats pretty much all the same from everyone to Obama(why not make a letter for everyone to use)? That would be mailed out from different states and other countries about ebay/paypal correct? I would not mind doing that if thats how you put it~

x2r good idea. Definitely doable and worth a stamp.

I thought cachufleta's comment was pretty funny. Rude, but funny.

Yes, that is exactly the idea x2ruff4u. It would be one letter that would go out, would be the same for everyone.We would just contribute to someone who would put this all together as they would have enough work to do while we all help with related research.

I thought it was funny too. It's all about how you look at things since there is no body language associated with expressions here, so things can be interpreted different ways, obviously. I am sure Cachufleta did not mean to sound too harsh. Besides I respect Cachufleta for apologizing to those who took it that way.

I don't know if I'd want Obama to see all that info. He might get some bad ideas to use toward 'fixing' our economy. Heh. 180 hold on my tax return...

No way, Vic. Obama will consider everything that stimulates the economy.

Thanks for the apology cachufleta. No worries. :yar:

:focus: I think we can take of this as a group. We just need to take a piece of the letter and write up on it..in order to make one letter for all of us to use.
Let's start with concept- How do you want the letter to look/flow? Let's put our ideas out there of what the letter should look like and we can pick our best pieces to create one letter..Once we select the outline, we can then pick pieces of the outline to work on..I'll start...This is my vision of what this should look like...anyone else with ideas?

1. opening (I'm not good at this part..how do you think it should go?)
- ? we ask for your assistance? we need your help?
- ? Please take the time to read this..??

2. topic(s); 1,2,3,4,etc. paragraphs
- Ebay/pp - anti-trust laws?
- is one company (co. A) allowed to force us to use another company (co. B), that they own, in our transactions (making more money for co. A). ?
- Freedom to choose will put an end to their monopoly.
- Allow for competition and growth? possibly create growth in this niche?
- (I haven't read all the horror stories, but I'm sure they have done some things that would be considered more than questionable..we could include that also)..

3. closing/request for action

It's a very good start, Woogie...but, I was thinking, a person with a law background would know exactly how to put this together after we explain what we want, peoples complaints and other research?
If anyone has a family member - a lawyer, who would be interested to do that for a reasonable fee,- divided among all of us wouldn't be much, I think...They wouldn't even have to put their name on it...we'll be all signing this from different parts of the world..

I think this a very good idea but the way I look at is, no one is forcing us to sell on Ebay so that means no one is forcing us to use paypal, that's our choice to sell on ebay and ebay wants us to use paypal, which I can understand. I think this should be more directed toward the 180 hold, horror stories, and charging fees for both ebay and paypal, which is ridiculous and would be a lot better to write about! :croc:

well...just let ebay/paypal tie it up in litigation, but eventually they will have their day in court! i just wonder why NO lawyers are up to the challenge.
I mean it shouldn't be that difficult to do a little research on anti-trust law and then file some legal documents.

i guess we don't have any lawyers on this forum, everybody here probably sells on ebay full time but i'm all for it!

I think we can do this ourselves if we do not have anyone with a law background that can step up. We have history to help us. We can look at MS and SWB and see the similarities and point those out. I think we are smart enough to do that and the point is that it is a letter from a group of concerned citizens who are requesting action. So, we do not really need an attorney to write things up for us. I think sending a letter to the dept of justice (which started the suit to break up SWB) would help..and our reps, and anyone else you guys think can write up a story on this...And, I'm sure that a story on the big guy squeezing the lil guys out of making some money by making them jump through hoops is a story! I think this is where the eb/pp horror stories can come in and vicvelcro's help on leaking info to his connections..

Lakeman, I agree that they are not forcing us to use paypal (unless you sell in certain categories). But, they make it extremely difficult for us to use anyone else- by faxing forms, taking a week or two or three to set up things..giving us limitations, etc..we want them to make it just as easy to set up and use any other merchant as it is to set up and use paypal. It might be just the time..because on the news lately, you constantly hear about ways to make money..and a lot of people have turned to ebay..and other auction sites..to make extra cash in this economy..well..the stuff they pull hinders the little guy in making any money.

I'll try to come up with something and post it soon..