PayPal Station 3
eBay - that bastion of quality and value, and not at all the modern spiritual home snake oil salesmen and purveyors of over-priced junk - has shown its true colours, and the real reason behind its purchase in 2002 of the online payment "service" PayPal. (Sneer quotes intentional - see sites such as paypalsucks.com for exactly why.) In an announcement today from eBay.ie terms for vendors pre-listing Sony PlayStation 3 units in Europe. Amongst the terms - on threat of punitive action against the sellers in case of non-compliance - are that payment must only be made through the aforementioned PayPal. The implication is that it is for the protection of the buyer, but this overlooks the very simple fact that credit card companies tend to offer purchase protection anyway, and that surely if the purchaser wants to take the risk upon themselves and use another payment method - well that's their right isn't it?
It's fairly typical business cynicism that eBay and PayPal should want to scalp the scalpers, in what is clearly going to be a short-term high-revenue market. It should not be at all surprising to anyone who remembers eBay's exploitation of a VAT ruling in Europe as a smoke-screen for increasing their own net fee revenue. That eBay should be so blatant about the exploitation of this particular opportunity to drive business to PayPal is, however, a little disturbing. That eBay are abusing their dominant market position (much as my favourite bane Micro$oft have in the past), to bolster another revenue source under their control should surely be attracting the scrutiny of monopoly control organisations throughout Europe. As yet - although, granted, the announcement is only hours old - not a dicky bird from any of them. If the pair get away with this, it will only encourage them to do it again, next time with broader reach. Can anyone tell me, does Ireland have an equivalent of the British Monopolies Commission?
