eBay Australia has officially dropped its proposal to move to a PayPal only system in the country.
eBay’s decision comes after sellers expressed their anger last week at a conference held by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) on the company’s plans to only accept PayPal on the site.
The new plan would have forced sellers to pay fees to PayPal Australia on top of the fees they pay to eBay.
After the conference, eBay said it would continue to allow sellers to accept other payment methods, but they had to offer PayPal as an option.
“We have decided to withdraw the notification to stop any further confusion and disruption among the eBay Community,” eBay said in a statement. “eBay regrets any uncertainty that this process has caused among the community and believes that this decision will remove further doubt.”
eBay had argued that its PayPal service was more secure than other payment methods and that it would reduce fraud. “eBay’s goal has always been to provide members with a safer experience. Under the current circumstances, we will continue to look for ways to do that while still offering a variety of payment choices.”
Posted in eBay |
|
No Comments »
eBay users everywhere were pleased when the company gave up on making PayPal the only allowable payment option in Australia. But Hitwise has taken a look at the company’s standing on that continent, underlining what was (and may still be) at stake within its borders.
eBay does pretty well as a part of Hitwise’s Shopping & Classifieds category, receiving about 29 percent of all hits. Sandra Hanchard notes, “Visits to the online Auctions industry are in fact particularly high in Australia. Auctions websites accounted for 38.11% of visits to all Shopping & Classifieds websites in May 2008 in Australia, compared to 21.35% by U.S. Internet users.”
Then, within that Auctions subset, eBay cleans up. eBay Australia, eBay.com, eBay UK, and eBay Motors own the first, second, fifth, and sixth spots, respectively, on a list of the top ten Australian auction sites. And eBay Australia alone has a market share of 72.69 percent.
So if eBay had gone through with its PayPal-only plan, it would have either profited off its huge audience or sent said audience to the dozen nearest competitors. Given the anger expressed over eBay’s plan, competitors may actually wish the thing had been implemented.
There’s still the chance that eBay did some permanent damage to its reputation, though, as Hanchard found that a new rival and an old one are doing surprisingly well. She states, “Trading Post Online debuted at 3rd position (week ending 14/06/08) when it launched its auctions service and accounted for 3.78% share of visits during the week ending 28 June 2008. Oztion Auctions followed with 2.53% market share, reaching its highest point ever during the week ending 28 June 2008.”
Posted in eBay |
|
No Comments »
Australia has the highest incidence of cyber crime in the world, according to a global survey of nine countries by software security vendor, AVG.
The study, which canvassed 1000 users each in Australia, the US, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Brazil, and the Czech Republic, found that more than 39 per cent of Australians had been the victim of cyber crime, compared to 32 per cent in Italy, 28 per cent of Americans, and just 14 per cent in Sweden and Spain.
The most common forms of cyber theft experienced by Australians were:
Not receiving goods paid for at an online auction (16 per cent);
Fraudulent e-mails that resulted in financial damage (14 per cent);
Phishing (10 per cent);
Not receiving goods ordered online (eight per cent);
Credit card fraud (five per cent); and
Unauthorised bank transfers (three per cent).
Lloyd Borrett, marketing manager of AVG (AU/NZ), said the fact that Australia experienced more cyber crime was a little surprising, although it might have been impacted by the fact that Australians are more active online users than most other nations.
“While we don’t know whether Australians are actually targeted more heavily than other countries, these results highlight the importance of comprehensive security solutions to protect users from obvious threats like phishing and e-mail scams, as well as good education to warn people of the danger,” Borrett said.
Forty-seven per cent of Australians said they were more likely to experience cyber crime than to experience burglary, assault, or robbery, and 37 cent of said that cyber crime was a strong concern.
The AVG survey found that Australians had relatively high awareness of Internet security and demonstrated the second highest level of confidence (70.5 per cent after the US’s 73.3 per cent) in the protection provided by their software security vendor.
Posted in Privacy, Security |
|
No Comments »