Will UK sellers be forced to accept international cheques?

June 10, 2008

This post was written in June 2008; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

eBay UK have just announced some updates to their payments policy, specifically a new section titled ‘Misleading and Discouraging Payments’:

Sellers who state in their listing that they accept certain payment methods must not selectively offer those payment methods to buyers or discourage buyers from using those payment methods.

A similar policy was introduced in Australia last September, where examples were given of sellers saying “I only accept PayPal for payments over $10″ or “I only accept PayPal from overseas customers, not domestic ones”. To this, I think we can add “eBay are forcing me to say I accept PayPal, but in fact I only really want payment by cheque”, as I’ve seen UK sellers start to do recently.

If it were a policy that only related to PayPal, I’d be content: making things clearer and simpler for buyers has to be good for all sellers, and a few sellers having silly bits of small print designed to get around eBay policies is unacceptable.

But the policy doesn’t say “PayPal only”. Does this mean if your payment terms say you accept cheques, you have to accept them from the whole world? Are UK sellers listing worldwide going to be forced to accept cheques in Euros, Dollars and Yen? Many sellers will just not be able to deal with cheques in other currencies, so if the policy does apply to cheques, they will be forced to stop offering them. Is this PayPal-only by the back door?

Yet again, this new policy seems to have been introduced by people who have absolutely no experience of trading on the site. It needs clarification, and it needs it now.

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under Featured, Site Changes, eBay.co.uk | 60 Comments