Paypal is not our mate, mate
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s (ACCC) bark seems to be as good as its bite, with the outfit apparently winning a recent mini victory in the ongoing battle with online auction site Ebay.
After an ACCC statement questioned the legality of a move by Ebay to disallow all other payment methods in favour of Paypal in Oz, Ebay announced it would be delaying the changes from June 15th until July 15th instead. Now, however, it seems Ebay has had to push back that date too, sending out an update to its Australian members saying the move would be postponed “until the review process with the ACCC regarding its recent draft notice is complete”.
The Online giant noted that discussions were still underway with the ACCC (“to achieve an outcome that benefits buyers and sellers”) and that, in the meanwhile, Aussie Ebayers should disregard any onsite Ebay communications still referring to changes taking place on 15 July 2008, as these were being updated. Hoorah for the ACCC!
Meanwhile, demonstrating why Australians seem to be displaying a severe mistrust of Paypal and anger towards being forced to use it as their only payment method, a reader has alerted us to the fact that Paypal apparently uses a different exchange rate for currency transactions, to its own benefit (surprise, surprise).
Whilst Aussie news and online exchange websites use the rate of $1 Australian buys $0.96c USA, a reader who used Paypal on Friday was dismayed to find that the exchange rate used was $1 Australian = $ 0.933869 USA, an exchange rate over a month old. No wonder some people are skeptical of Paypal. We’d be fairly skeptical if we were being ripped off too.