“I’ll pay you in 21 days for a Hamburger today” says Paypal
eBay (NASDAQ EBAY) has really not been scoring points on the merchant front for the past few weeks. Ever since Meg decided to abandon the sinking ship, seems the entire business has been hurting, right down to the golden goose. The problem now, of course, is that many recent changes to their cash cow have really alienated some of their merchants.
Amongst all the boneheaded decisions the new president has made in the past few weeks since taking over Paypal, eBay’s most lucrative division, this new one is really out there. Paypal for years has long been admired as the ultra-fast way to pay online; after all, what’s better than instant? Seems, however, that Paypal is taking some lessons right out of the “Poor Merchant Services” handbook by delaying payments on certain transactions for up to 21 days.
While Paypal has often held eCheck transactions as well as returned item resubmissions for extended periods of time, this new policy has many merchants steaming. Seems that any number of reasons to qualify transactions as “high risk” will result in an extended 21 day hold on paypal transactions, including anything from a low feedback rating on eBay to a large number of transactions on Paypal.
Paypal justifies this new policy change by claiming that it will only affect less than 10% of it’s overall order base but let’s face it, when you process nearly 15 billion dollars every three months in transactions, even 10% is a lot of people to piss off.
Meg, as much as you are no supermodel, for whatever reason, you ran that place better than anyone else could. Remember the good old days when you had to learn coding in less than a day to fix the ailing downtime or the time you bailed out Paypal from getting shut down by many state regulators? Well, like it or not, those things worked and while the pressure may have gotten to you after 10 years, at least stick around to fix some of these recent issues.
Here’s my advice, Meg, get involved! Dump the new President of Paypal, I don’t know him personally but seems that every decision he’s made in the past few weeks has been a disaster. Dump the increased listing fees, and start being nice to the merchants, after all, they are paying for that new yacht you are looking to get.
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Comment by hardbody on 11 February 2008:
Lmao, impeach paypal! Just let the guy be he has done a great job so far, so he should keep his positon
Comment by Suyash on 11 February 2008:
i totally agree with you on this one.. the new president is making such crappy decisions that it’s hurting the entire companies.. only god knows what’ he gonna pull out of that moldy trick hat of his..
Comment by fanatic on 11 February 2008:
well to begin with the title is really apt for this post… what in the world are they doing?? taking 21 days is like killing an active online business man.. think of it this way, you have to make a payment in 3 days from now which you can only process in if you get you own damn money which is gonna take 21 days, what do you do??!! Eat hamburgers ofcourse…. :)
Comment by lunar on 11 February 2008:
wow!! i never knew paypal processes 15 Billion in 3 months.. that’s like owning a few small countries of you own.. and being a paypal fan all my life i believe in them and come what may i’ll follow them blindly..
Comment by pc on 11 February 2008:
Indeed! PayPal is slipping, while there is sooo much money in there! They should be able to get the best of the best in there!
Comment by computerman on 11 February 2008:
And yet, PayPal doesn’t seem to lose much customers, because there is just no serious competition on the net.
Comment by James on 12 February 2008:
Ebay should have consulted with the merchants before getting into this hard decision to penalize them indirectly with such stance. I feel that ebay is fight a losing battle in this regard!
Comment by KindSide on 12 February 2008:
Ebay did saw increase in listing fee and i am sure that no one would like that and as of the PayPal service i would say that they need improve a lot in their customer care service as they are really lacking in this thing.
Comment by Monkey on 12 February 2008:
I would say that Ebay and PayPal management need to sit down and do some talk thing and work something out which is mainly liked by their customers as they are the most important thing which keep this company runing and if they don’t like company’s new step then it would really be in some big mess.
Comment by bud on 13 February 2008:
This is really true, Meg Whitman was the reason why ebay and paypal are still existing and monopoly in their markets. But it is also true, they should have started grooming someone smart to lead the company. Now i hope she comes back and stays for a couple of years.
Comment by Sanjay on 23 February 2008:
Hay evreyone wish he all the best and this is myfirst comment good luck.
Comment by Jamie on 24 February 2008:
Paypal should think of their customer as the no1 priority. They are freaking rich because of the customers