PayPal isn't compulsory on eBay UK (if you're a big enough seller)

PayPal Candy Bar
Creative Commons License photo credit: Anh Thai

eBay UK sellers must accept PayPal. It’s the rule. It’s been the rule since 3rd June. And it’s to increase buyer protection and confidence, so that’s alright. Right?

Not quite. Not if you’re one of the really big sellers, whom eBay will keep happy even if it means ploughing up that famous level playing field.

Questioned on the PowerSeller Board about Dell’s lack of a PayPal offering, pink Joe had this to say:

When we made the Paypal change, our seller support teams contacted our largest accounts to discuss this. A very small number of sellers, including Dell, who use a different checkout process were unable to adapt their technologies in time. So we created a new policy such that if a platinum powerseller met certain conditions, we would work with them to migrate their systems. Those conditions include that the seller must offer their own payment protection policies such that buyers have access to the same cover as Paypal would provide and that they migrate quickly. It is that, and not the country, that allows Dell to list without Paypal for a short period of time.

Smaller sellers who want to use their own merchant accounts to process card payments rather than PayPal will be extremely unimpressed with this. As several people have commented on the original thread, not accepting PayPal seems more like to be about “wouldn’t” than “couldn’t” adapt technology. Plenty of other sellers were, after all, expected to change their technologies to ensure that their buyers had PayPal’s protection, and eBay announced the change in March: four months should be long enough for Dell to change a computer system, shouldn’t it?

What’s more, buyers learn that “all eBay UK listings now offer PayPal”. How is it improving the buyer experience if a few of the very largest sellers and the most well-known names are allowed to flout the rule?

Thanks to Whirly for the heads-up.