The company is using Australia as a giant guinea-pig to see what it can get away with, and has pre-emptively applied to the ACCC for immunity from prosecution under the parts of the Trade Practices Act 1975 that it is arguably breaching (such as s47). It received a lot of submissions by the cut-off date of 2nd May. Ebay has until 23rd May to respond to those submissions. It will undoubtedly continue to argue that, hey, PayPal is the only way to protect consumers from being ripped off according to these highly suspect figures we're waving about, even if they're too stupid to choose that "protection", and in fact are so stupid as to actively argue against being forced to use it, and who needs competitors in the online payment space anyway, how's that to anyone's benefit, and what's wrong with us triple dipping* on every single one of the millions of transactions on our online auction site that has a practical monopoly on the market?
What I'm trying to say is, eBay sucks. But type in "alternative to eBay" into Google and what do you get? A fragmented morass of smaller sites, none of which have - or can effectively ever obtain - critical mass to challenge the monopoly business. Buyers won't go where the sellers aren't, and vice-versa, and because no-one can really jump ship without everyone else doing the same, we're all stuck.
Using, if ACCC lets eBay get away with it, a system that apparently none of us want enough to choose without being forced to.
Let's hope the official "consumer watchdog" organisation doesn't let them get away with it.
*Fee to list; fee on selling; fee through PayPay on payment.
