paypal owned by ebay??

W.arner1281

W.arner1281

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Interesting fact I found out today. As I was looking into the paypal money market fund I found the following interesting;

The investment adviser for the Fund is PayPal Asset Management, Inc. (the "Adviser"). The Adviser is a wholly owned subsidiary of PayPal, Inc. ("PayPal") (which, in turn, is a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay, Inc.)...
Click to expand...

While we all knew ebay and Paypal were in things together, I never realized ebay OWNED paypal. That definitely explains a lot. What sucks though, is the fact that the same company makes you pay fees when you list and item, when you sell the item, and when you receive payment. Looking at my average auction start prices/selling prices/etc, I'd estimate they get between 10-15%. Anyways, just an interesting tidbit of information that everyone else already knew and I'm the last to find out. Flame on!

https://www.paypalobjects.com/WEBSCR-440-20070214-1/en_US/pdf/PayPal_Prospectus.pdf
It's at the beginning of page 9 (as number on the pages, not the numbers by Adobe).
 
ebay bought paypal a few years ago. It was big news then.
As a seller on ebay they get you coming and going:

Ebay gets you on the Listing Fee, the Closing Fee and the Paypal Fee. It sucks because they do tap into your profit margin. Ebay is not a small seller friendly business model anymore. They continue to raise thier fees and push the small seller out. A large portion of the ones that remain just increase their shipping fees to cover the increased selling costs . Ebay needs a strong competitor to motivate them to take care of their sellers (who should be treated as business partners).

Maybe Google will provide the auction marketplace with some real competition. I know many sellers are waiting for that day.
 
How DARE ebay charge a fee for providing service.
There's always Half.com....er...
or Yahoo Auctions...er...
Or your local newspaper, or craiglist, or *.forsale.
There are options/competitors.
If you want to talk about 'cutting into profit margin', look into setting up an actual B&M storefront.
I do agree that Ebay is no longer the home of the small seller. However, I'm not sure if that's entirely Ebay's fault. You get cheap bastard "Powersellers" who want to run a business, but dont' want to be saddled with any of that pesky overhead, and who epitomize the 'high fees' complaint, by being scumbags on their own and charging ridiculous shipping fees because apparently they have trouble given ebay another 30 cents or whatever. The high shipping, at least as far as I have seen, have been from the powersellers. It could be argued that because the fees are "high", the sellers are trying to cheat and profit via their S&H. I take issue with the idea the fees are 'high'. Sure, they're highER. Prices change. But ebay is still an amazingly cheap way to sell something, even if you take Paypal (which, don't forget, allows you to take credit cards--the average person probably wouldn't want to afford the monthly + transaction-based merchant fee from MC or Visa, even if they were able to get one). And one of their major competitors--Amazon.com marketplace--has fees that net even higher (99 cents per listing if you're not a Pro, plus a per-transaction fee, and a percentage, I think 15% for video games/dvds. Advantage is that you set your price, more like BiN instead of auction format, and you aren't charged till it sells, so amazon.com marketplace is more like half.com, but even there, they charge much more.)
Ebay also owns Half.com.
Personal Paypal accounts are free, but you can't say 'paypal' on ebay without a premier/business account, and you can't accept credit cards (which visa and MC get a cut of every transaction anyway).
 
[quote name='dtcarson']How DARE ebay charge a fee for providing service.
There's always Half.com....er...
[/quote]

scratch them, they're owned by ebay
 
Yeah, being charged $0.30 to post something on a website so that potentially hundreds of thousands of people can see it and bid on it is a complete rip-off. Heck, the $5 newspaper add that gets seen by about 500 interested viewers is cheap by comparison!

You want google auctions? That's not going to be pretty at all. For one thing, you'll start with a flat market, meaning no feedback, no insurance, no anything. All you will have to guide your buying/selling is trust and faith. Good luck with that. Fees? You think Google will be astronmically cheaper? Even better luck there as it will probably undercut your total auction price from listing to closing by 10-20% for the first year, after that there will be nearly identical fee structures.
Let's not forget that ebay has over ten years of "figuring it out" with online auctions and google has no infrastructure or support for such a thing.

I'm sick of all this BS about ebay being "bad". Show me something better or shut your shithole.
 
[quote name='nasum']Yeah, being charged $0.30 to post something on a website so that potentially hundreds of thousands of people can see it and bid on it is a complete rip-off. Heck, the $5 newspaper add that gets seen by about 500 interested viewers is cheap by comparison!

You want google auctions? That's not going to be pretty at all. For one thing, you'll start with a flat market, meaning no feedback, no insurance, no anything. All you will have to guide your buying/selling is trust and faith. Good luck with that. Fees? You think Google will be astronmically cheaper? Even better luck there as it will probably undercut your total auction price from listing to closing by 10-20% for the first year, after that there will be nearly identical fee structures.
Let's not forget that ebay has over ten years of "figuring it out" with online auctions and google has no infrastructure or support for such a thing.

I'm sick of all this BS about ebay being "bad". Show me something better or shut your shithole.[/QUOTE]
yahoo auction is much more popular than ebay in some regions. The kinda failed in the US but there can be other options.
 
[quote name='nasum']Yeah, being charged $0.30 to post something on a website so that potentially hundreds of thousands of people can see it and bid on it is a complete rip-off. Heck, the $5 newspaper add that gets seen by about 500 interested viewers is cheap by comparison!

You want google auctions? That's not going to be pretty at all. For one thing, you'll start with a flat market, meaning no feedback, no insurance, no anything. All you will have to guide your buying/selling is trust and faith. Good luck with that. Fees? You think Google will be astronmically cheaper? Even better luck there as it will probably undercut your total auction price from listing to closing by 10-20% for the first year, after that there will be nearly identical fee structures.
Let's not forget that ebay has over ten years of "figuring it out" with online auctions and google has no infrastructure or support for such a thing.

I'm sick of all this BS about ebay being "bad". Show me something better or shut your shithole.[/quote]

Umm the whole point is they NEED something better. Lets assume you list an item at $.01 and it sells for $50. You end up with $45.92 after fee's so ebay gets about 8% of what you make.

That number goes up when you don't start at $.01, use a reserve etc. I think most people are just mad that ebay has increased fee's multiple times. A flat 5% fee for auctions would be much fairer.

Plus they have pretty crappy customer service with paypal almost always screwing you over.
 
[quote name='Brian9824']Umm the whole point is they NEED something better. Lets assume you list an item at $.01 and it sells for $50. You end up with $45.92 after fee's so ebay gets about 8% of what you make.
.[/QUOTE]

So you take that into account when you set up your auction. If I buy a car for 15k, do you think the retailer gets 15k? No, a big chunk of that is for his cost, and salaries, and his rent, and his insurance, and his social security, etc etc etc.

[quote name='Brian9824']
That number goes up when you don't start at $.01, use a reserve etc. [/QUOTE]

You mean as you use more of their voluntary features, you pay more? What a concept. Sounds like...virtually every other industry.

[quote name='Brian9824']
I think most people are just mad that ebay has increased fee's multiple times. A flat 5% fee for auctions would be much fairer. [/QUOTE]

"fairer"? How does one determine "fairness" of price? Had you said "cheaper", sure, I'd agree with that. But to me a "fair" price, especially for a luxury [which ebay is], is a price both seller and buyer can agree upon. Seeing as how ebay currently has over, what, ten million listings, it seems "fair" to me. Especially given that there are options/alternatives. And if those options/alternatives aren't totally equivalent, well, that's part of what you're paying for. I sell on Amazon.com marketplace more than Half.com, even though Amazon's commissions are much higher--because my products appear to a different class of customer, who is willing to pay more for the same product, so the premium I pay is worth it.

[quote name='Brian9824']
Plus they have pretty crappy customer service with paypal almost always screwing you over.[/QUOTE]

I can't comment on this except to say that I have never had to deal with PP customer service, and have never been screwed over by them.
 
[quote name='dtcarson']So you take that into account when you set up your auction. If I buy a car for 15k, do you think the retailer gets 15k? No, a big chunk of that is for his cost, and salaries, and his rent, and his insurance, and his social security, etc etc etc.
[/quote]

That's a pretty bad analogy. I mean when you sell on ebay you don't have people working for you, you don't pay sales taxes, etc. Its more akin to selling at a flea market where you pay a flat fee to use a table and everything you make belongs to you. You are paying for the location to sell your merchandise.


Heck I mean they raised the fee's for ebay stores and I think most people who sold in stores just added an extra $.30 or so to every item they sell for shipping. The whole point is thats wrong but ebay doesn't leave you any option other then doing it.

They charge you for listing the item, they charge you for selling the item, and then they charge you for getting paid with the item. It's the third part where you get charged for getting paid which pisses the most people off.
 
[quote name='Brian9824']That's a pretty bad analogy. I mean when you sell on ebay you don't have people working for you, you don't pay sales taxes, etc. Its more akin to selling at a flea market where you pay a flat fee to use a table and everything you make belongs to you. You are paying for the location to sell your merchandise.


Heck I mean they raised the fee's for ebay stores and I think most people who sold in stores just added an extra $.30 or so to every item they sell for shipping. The whole point is thats wrong but ebay doesn't leave you any option other then doing it.

They charge you for listing the item, they charge you for selling the item, and then they charge you for getting paid with the item. It's the third part where you get charged for getting paid which pisses the most people off.[/QUOTE]

It sucks, but what is the alternative to getting this kind of money for your games? Ebay / Paypal may rape you on fees, but it's nowhere near as bad as EB / GS and it's a hell of a lot more conveinent then message board trading sites and local sales.

I'll deal with Ebay / Paypal for now simply because the end result is much much greater than the hassle.
 
Yeah I agree Roufuss as of now they are really the only site for selling stuff which is why they need serious competition to drive their prices down.

Whenever I want $$$ for stuff I always go thru them.
 
[quote name='Roufuss']It sucks, but what is the alternative to getting this kind of money for your games? Ebay / Paypal may rape you on fees, but it's nowhere near as bad as EB / GS and it's a hell of a lot more conveinent then message board trading sites and local sales.

I'll deal with Ebay / Paypal for now simply because the end result is much much greater than the hassle.[/quote]

qft
 
[quote name='Roufuss']It sucks, but what is the alternative to getting this kind of money for your games? Ebay / Paypal may rape you on fees, but it's nowhere near as bad as EB / GS and it's a hell of a lot more conveinent then message board trading sites and local sales.

I'll deal with Ebay / Paypal for now simply because the end result is much much greater than the hassle.[/QUOTE]
My thoughts exactly.
 
I don't mind the ebay fees so much. What is the real scam is the PayPal premium account fees, even when they are just doing a balance-to-balance transfer. That costs them ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, yet they hit you with the same fees as taking a credit card payment. And, yes, PayPal customer service on the seller side is horrendous (nice for buyers though - all they have to do is make half-assed claims and get all their money back). It particularly pisses me off that they have these personal accounts that don't charge fees, so obviously they don't have to charge the fees on those transactions.

At least PayPal does have the money market interest though. It by no means makes up for their fees (particularly on the balance-to-balance, I have no problem with their fees on credit card payments) but it does result in my keeping more money there than I normally would (as my bank gives squat for interest).

But as for eBay buying PayPal: eBay tried to launch a competing service to PayPal (BidPay I believe?). No one used it as PayPal was entrenched. So they did what any good Internet mega-corp does and bought them out. THEN they started raising fees left and right. I remember when PayPal first started you could get a $10 credit simply by opening an account and sending someone money. And there were no fees at all I don't think (they made money off of investing your cash). I think they even allowed CC payments for a while with no fees. For a short time (when ebay still allowed it) I maintained 2 accounts and had people pay CC charges to one and balance xfers to another. That became too much of a hassle when people didn't read the instructions and I had to refund and ask for resubmissions, so I caved and upgraded my main account.
 
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