eBay Pulls Google Ads Over Marketing Stunt 151
odoketa writes "According to the BBC, it seems Google scheduled a party to promote their payment system (Google Checkout) on the same day as a big eBay meeting, and this made eBay mad enough to pull their ads with Google. According to the story, eBay says it's merely an 'ongoing experiment' on their marketing. 'Google hoped to alert PayPal users who would have been in Boston attending the eBay Live annual seller event to its own service, according to market experts. It could also have been seen as part of an effort to get eBay to accept Google Checkout, currently banned on the online auctioneer's site. But in a contrite manner, Google cancelled its rival function a day before it was due to happen.'"
Wrong... (Score:3, Informative)
I tried yesterday, and again just now and nada. No eBay seller item links on the radar. No items being sold, including bowling balls.
Paypal useless (Score:3, Informative)
paypal excuse for a payment system. I hope google can actually tie this into your gmail account with higher security, although if eBay will not use this service, I dont know where else except the p0rn
sites where this might be usefull?
Re:UK promo was good (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Now we will see who has more behind them (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I PRAY Google takes eBay down at some point. (Score:2, Informative)
EBay's fees are quite high, though, and I don't have any experience with Paypal's CS so can't comment there, but the fees they're charging seem to be somewhat in line with meatspace...
Re:BEWARE of Google Checkout (Score:3, Informative)
Our system had a similiar mechanism to google. If a particular card was rejected by the bank, our software would refuse to resubmit the card to the bank for a period of 24 hours. This sounds like an irritating policy I know (and I had to discuss the issue with many people in the same situation as yourself), however what I can tell you is that your case is 1% of the story. The remaining 99% are fraudsters who get hold of a card number and spank that card number against as many merchants as possible hoping it will go through. Often these numbers are posted online so instead of one frauster you get a couple of hundred. The lines that the banks use for CC auths are shockingly obsolete and very low bandwidth so were a finite resource for us, there was thousands of lines of defensive code to limit access to this bandwidth. I did suggest that maybe would should only block after x amount of failures, but the CTO didn't want to know!
What we would generally do is advise any cardholders to contact the merchant they were purchasing from, who had the facility to unblock a card manually.
Its a PITA, I know, and I do think there are ways for processors to make this less of a problem, but just so you understand why...
Re:BEWARE of Google Checkout (Score:2, Informative)
I ask because a few months ago I sold a cordless drill on eBay through PayPal. I clearly said that either the battery or charger was dead in the as-is ad, and that I didn't know which one. I also said that I woudn't ship the battery in order to save the recipient shipping costs. When it sold, though, I found that everything fit best in a flat-rate box, which would save the buyer about $1.00. Since the battery also fit (and didn't affect the shipping cost), I threw it in so they could maybe more easily find a replacement.
The buyer filed an "item not as described" complaint when they got it because it didn't work with a new battery they bought. I actually tested the drill and charger beforehand, but didn't mention that because it sounds like a guarantee - but anyway, I know that they worked. And it was clearly (in large bold letters) sold "as-is, untested". So what did PayPal do? They sided with the buyer (who had started sending obscene emails and left offensive feedback).
When I called to ask why PayPal resolved the dispute in the buyer's favor, the person on the phone looked at the auction and said "yeah, it says that it doesn't work in the ad." I asked why again, and she said "You're right, it looks like they didn't look at the ad". Then she said "have a nice day" and hung up. The resolution didn't change.
So, apparently all you have to do is say "item not as described" and PayPal will give you your money back - even if it's exactly as described.