I thought one of the supposed benefits of Mandatory Paypal Only was that they were going to simply direct debit buyers’ Paypal accounts for any purchases made. Whatever happened to that?

Guess it would have discouraged random bidding, cat bidding, etc

Can’t go killing those page views I suppose, can’t have that

(1) Other sites, like Amazon, control the communication (as you pointed out)and yet Amazon doesn’t hold me responsible for the emails they send to the buyers. Why should the buyer be allowed to rate me on communication if eBay is controlling the communication? I know… because eBay says they can. I got it.

(2) Amazon buyers don’t need to be sent dunning emails because they pay when they order.

(3) Amazon buyers don’t receive multiple emails from multiple email addresses telling them that their order has shipped because of two major reasons — an Amazon seller has to mark the order as shipped within the Amazon system or they won’t be paid AND Amazon doesn’t give sellers a buyer’s email address because it is not a necessary requirement to do so in order to complete the transaction on Amazon. Unfortunately for eBay, when a buyer pays with PayPal the email address can’t be withheld.

(4) Buyers on eBay will never receive a consistent experience. I liken Amazon sellers to franchisees where quality is overseen. With eBay, it’s more like the IGA – Independent Grocer’s Association. The ever-constant McDonald’s french fry concept just aint gonna happen with eBay sellers. And, even if it could and did, the buyer’s experiences would be different on eBay because of the fact that auctions and fixed price items are mixed together. There is inherently a different “experience” with an auction purchase versus a fixed price purchase.

(5) Let’s just say for the sake of argument that it is in the best interest of the eBay buyer for eBay to control the conversation… it is certainly not in the best interest of the buyer when eBay fails to educate the seller about the changes. As a result, many sellers are sending out duplicate emails and are not understanding why buyers are frustrated or confused since most sellers are not even aware of the new emails being sent out. eBay “forgets” that they actually need sellers — heck, somebody has to give eBay buyers that good experience and it eBay certainly isn’t gonna pick, pack, and ship. And eBay’s lack of seller education only sets everybody up for failure.