All Posts Tagged With: "paypal"
Ebay’s big problem
Jennifer McClelland | RSS | Tue, Sep 01 2009 | 3 Comments
Today’s big news is that Ebay will be selling off a huge portion of Skype, but in my house we can’t log in to the website due to a “closer alignment between Ebay and Half.com.”
What is happening is that when Chris attempts to log into his Ebay account, he gets a message saying that he needs to enter in his credit card information before he can continue. The next page is hosted on an old credit card processing server for Ebay and it (at least at one point in time) is legit. After he enters in his information he gets an error message that says, “Sorry, we cannot process your request at this time, please try again later.” This is on a page that is full of broken images.
After that it sends him back to Ebay’s homepage, and he’s still not logged in.
Every time one of us calls Ebay they give us the run around, won’t let us talk to a technical support person, and also tries to play it off like we have a virus on our computers. I know that all customer support people are trained to assume that most customers are computer illiterate and have downloaded 44 viruses on their computers and don’t know how to clear their cache, but I suppose we’re the exception. We have three computers and are completely unable to log in to Chris’s account due to the Half.com error.
So, here we are, we’ve spoken to three different people at Ebay: One on the online chat and two on the phone. The situation has yet to resolve itself so we started looking at online forums to see what other people are doing and there are people out there who haven’t been able to log into their Ebay accounts for months due to this error.
I suppose if it came down to it, Chris could sell on my Ebay account, but he has spent the last two years building up his feedback and credibility on his account and now he has regular customers.
This post may sound a bit scatterbrained, but we’re both pretty fed up with the entire situation and are starting to consider selling on Amazon and other internet sites to just try to stop this problem from happening again. Ebay (and PayPal) have been nothing but a headache for the past month anyway. After a package was lost in the mail and the customer didn’t pay for insurance on it, PayPal decided that (even though we had plenty of proof that the item was shipped and the Post Office will back up this claim) it would be holding onto the money until the package was delivered. Over 2 months later, the package was delivered and we got the money, but we really couldn’t figure out what is the point of offering insurance.
Related posts:Another EBAY update
Another Update on our Ebay situation
Ebay ex-CEO Meg Whitman is going to run for the Governor of California? (Plus, an update to our eBay situation)
Tags: computers, ebay accounts, technical support person
Paypal adds fees, and really hopes you don’t notice
Jennifer McClelland | RSS | Mon, Aug 10 2009 | 1 Comment
In June, PayPal started assessing a 2.9% fee on purchases that are marked goods or services to personal accounts. While their business is their own and they can basically do whatever they want, it would have been nice to know about the change prior to them just going for it.
There was an email saying that the Terms of Service had changed, but the email didn’t give any specifics. In order to find out exactly what happened, you would have had to go read the entire Terms of Service and familiarize yourself with the changes. I don’t know many people who read an entire terms of service document.
When you do most of your business through PayPal, then these fees really start adding up. In the past, with a personal account (versus a premium account), you wouldn’t have to pay fees to transfer funds from one PayPal account to another. however, now even if you do have the personal account, you will be charged the extra fee.
The issue doesn’t stem from the fact that PayPal decided to start charging for something that was previously free. The problem comes from the fact that PayPal was being deceptive about the entire process. It is rediculous to think that a company can just start adding fees for no reason and give no warning. Even when my credit card company decides to change something in their privacy notice, I get a letter along with an email. I mean, credit card companies typically REALLY want you to know what’s going on.
So, what was PayPal’s excuse? This is what they told Jared Newman, the guy who blogged about the changes:
“We didn’t want to make a huge formal communication out of this pricing change, because we weren’t really adding any fees, and we were hoping it would be a more useful experience for people.”
Wow.
Related posts:Bank of America says it won’t raise fees ahead of new regulations
Bank of America reduces overdraft fees: Opting out is now an option!
Things you can do to minimize your bank fees
Tags: personal account, credit card company, formal communication
Ebay expects Paypal to double by 2011
Jennifer McClelland | RSS | Wed, Mar 11 2009 | 2 CommentsPayPal is currently ebay’s second largest business. The auction website is expecting PayPal to double in size in the next few years.
PayPal’s expansion is a welcomed change considering eBay’s stock drop of 80% since 2004.
Speaking Wednesday during a day of briefings for analysts, PayPal President Scott Thompson said the service should double in size in the next three years, processing between $100 billion and $120 billion in annual payments by 2011.
EBay shares jumped 39 cents, 3.6 percent, to $11.49 in afternoon trading.
PayPal, which has 70 million active user accounts, processed $60 billion in transactions in 2008. It runs local sites in 17 languages and accepts 19 currencies for transactions.
No related posts.
Tags: currencies, auction website, scott thompson
Ebay fees just keep getting higher.
Chris McClelland | RSS | Wed, Sep 17 2008 | 0 CommentsAs a Power Seller on Ebay I’ve noticed how the FFV(Final Value Fees) keep getting higher as the insertion fees keep getting lower. While this is ideally good on the front end b/c people risk losing less money if there product does not sell, for Power Sellers like me and others who have mastered the art of selling on Ebay we just keep getting nickeled and dimed to death.
The latest wave of new fees by Ebay gives ample reasons to list with greatly lower listing fees and the new 30-day listing features which where previously only available to Ebay Store owners, however it comes with a range of final value fees that differ by category. Before FFV where pretty much standard across all categories except autos now they differ “GREATLY” depending on your listing category. Click here for the new listing fees.
With sellers constantly having to come up with ways to save on listing fees and FFV fees, PayPal fees and etc we are left with fewer and fewer options as our costs rise. I and several other Power Sellers are experimenting with listing our items in different categories than what they actually are. Because of this I wouldn’t be surprised if the category “Computers & Networking” has a spike in listing because that category carries the lowest FFV, almost half of every other category, as long as you target your keywords right you should reduce your fees without harm to your over sales volume.
Another EBAY update
Another Update on our Ebay situation
Tags: computers, death, ebay
eBay thinks customers (sellers) aren’t always right…
Jennifer McClelland | RSS | Thu, Aug 21 2008 | 0 CommentsWhen eBay changed their fee structure in January, they said it would benefit sellers. They said it would be cheaper in the end. Many sellers have found that they are now paying more in fees than they once were. This makes most people quite unhappy. Mix the higher fees with the inability to give a buyer negative feedback, eBay’s customers (sellers) are leaving.
Who can really blame people for leaving? After all, they are providing the same service (which doesn’t cost them any more than it did a year ago) at a higher price. Ebay says that the changes in fee structure was made to encourage sellers to list more items. They cut the fees for listing, but raised the ending commissions on a completed auction ending lower than $1000 or a fixed price sale under $100.
What it seems like eBay has successfully done is allow “diamond power sellers” to flood the market. One of the largest “diamond power sellers” is Buy.com. There is speculation that because Buy.com has so many fixed price auctions on eBay, they are being charged nothing or next to nothing for these auctions.
To appease disgruntled sellers, starting September 16, eBay says they will begin allowing sellers (in the U.S.) to list an unlimited number of identical items for a month at a time for $0.35.
Will this really make people happy? Well perhaps for some, but I don’t list unlimited identical items…ever. I occasionally list a few things. There have been times after fees from eBay and PayPal, I could have gotten more for it at a thrift shop. With the fee changes for auctions, sometimes it’s just not practical to sell things auction-style, and I find that buyers don’t always like paying what you’re asking in a fixed-price auction.
Related posts:Another EBAY update
Tags: paypal, speculation, ebay
