A few days ago, I wrote to and asked why I cannot offer checks and money orders as a payment method or PayPal without a credit card. Under the new policy, I have to offer PayPal with a credit card as an auction payment method. This would force me to upgrade my PayPal account and I would be charged fees for any and all transactions. I received a response that said, in part:

Please understand that Money Order or Cashiers check is no longer allowed as a payment method. Electronic payment methods give sellers more immediate access to funds. This allows for faster fulfillment and shipping, which should increase buyer satisfaction and the detailed seller ratings buyers leave for sellers.

I responded, noting that a seller has to pay eBay a fee to list and a fee when the item is sold. And now, the seller would be compelled to pay a fee to PayPal, which is owned by eBay. This amounts to pure greed on the part of eBay.

This morning, I received another email from

Thank you for writing eBay in regard to listing items with only PayPal without a credit card.

Yes, certainly you can offer PayPal without a credit card. Under eBay policy, however, sellers who state that they accept PayPal (either using logos or text in the item description) are required to accept PayPal payments made by credit card as well as bank transfers. For more information about this policy, please go to:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/paypal-payments.html

Most importantly, you'd be happy to know that apart from PayPal you can use your merchant Credit/Debit card and we have also signed up with ProPay which is another online payment method.

Please note that by late October you'll need to do at least one of the following:

- Add PayPal as a payment method to your listings. This can be done through your seller preferences page in My eBay.

- Sign up with ProPay to offer this electronic payment option to your customers. We are also working closely with additional electronic payment providers to add them to our approved payment providers list.

Learn more at: http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/payment-method-accepted.html

- Accept credit or debit cards through your Internet merchant account.

In these case, I suggest that you try using a prepaid debit card.

For more information, below I have provided the link to this announcement:

www.ebay.com/sell/August2008Update/Payments

If you need additional assistance, please contact PayPal's Customer Support directly. For PayPal's contact information, please go to:

https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_contact_us

If you need further assistance, please don't hesitate to reply to this email and let us know.

ProPay? Somehow, must own a piece of that pie.

If I were to look up doublespeak in the dictionary, I wonder if the logo would appear?

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