Apparently ebay is no longer allowing users to pay via checks anymore, now paypal must be used. Since i dont trust paypal are there any better sites that are just as good that allow checks or money order? Someone suggested ioffer.com to me, does anyone have any experience on that site or any other good sites?

Do sellers on e-nbay still accept money orders? That's what I would suggest.

No money orders are accepted either.

That's just stupid! I can understand the checks...in case they bounce but money orders are as good as cash. I think this is a bad move. A lot of people don't use paypal so it will hurt the business I think.

The new eBay policy regarding checks/money orders does not go into effect until late October, so you still have a few months where you can buy at eBay using those methods, assuming the individual sellers will accept them.

I've not had a single problem with paypal in the entire year that I've been using Ebay.

I've been using paypal (buying and selling) for 5 years. My account got hacked once and they handled it within a couple days no problem. as good as or better than my bank when our check book was stolen. no complaints from me. freecycle, cheapcycle and craigsa list are all places to look but nowhere i know of thats quite like ebay!

eBay is making some additional modifications to their policies which are not good as well. Forced maximum shipping and handling charges on items in the media category (books, DVDs, CDs, video games) that literally leave many sellers paying the handling out of pocket. Raised final value fees on media items (CDs, DVDs, video games, maybe books but I'm not certain), so that they now take 15% of the first $50 instead of 12% of the first 25% and 8% after that. Removing the option of accepting money orders and checks is being whitewashed with the explanation that it's safer, but it's pretty obvious that the reason is that PayPal takes another big chunk out of the total received (including shipping and handling I might add), and since eBay owns PayPal, this forces sellers to give eBay more money for each sale. It has been carefully planned.

It has been speculated in the past that eBay is attempting to drive out the little sellers in favor of the biggest power sellers, because that's how they make their biggest profits. The policies they implemented early this year, and these new policies, make a person wonder if this is true.

I encourage anyone who uses eBay to read through their policy change page. Pay close attention to the wording, and their bold emphasis on "lower fees" at the top, while not drawing any attention to the raised final value fees which have been slipped into the fee table. Pay close attention to their generalized reference to "the majority of buyers" choosing this or that.

I still get a number of people buying things, particularly CDs, using money orders. This is especially true of people with APOs and people in other countries. This will hurt my sales a bit, but not as much as others who deal in specialized items with a niche market of buyers who shy away from electronic payments. I have already suffered from a decline in sales since eBay's policy changes early this year. It's been my hope that this has been due to the slow season, spring and summer, and that it will pick back up like it always has in the past. But policies like this may cause even more harm to my sales, as more people abandon eBay.

Based on the posts I've been reading on eBay's forums, this is not going over well with buyers as well as sellers.

I should also add, I now have to go through and modify every single listing in my eBay store. I'm fortunate that I only have 320 items listed right now, so this should only take me two or three days. Others who have a thousand or more with content that states money orders are accepted, or with content that lists shipping and handling for CDs and DVDs at greater than $3.00 per package, are going to have a lot of work ahead of them.

I should have added i no longer sell on ebay for many of the reasons listed above, but i do still use paypal for many other things.

I;ve never had a problem cashing a money order, even from foreign countries.



Arttie

I never had a problem with a money order (in more than 10 years on eBay). I had a lot of checks bounce, which is why I eventually stopped accepting checks from buyers with feedback lower than 10, and then upped it to feedback lower than 15, and then finally stopped accepting checks at all. Bounced checks were way too much of a pain to deal with. But thankfully money orders were never an issue.

And even though PayPal is much simpler for buyers to work with, I wish eBay would not strip buyers of their options. Especially while telling us that it's because that is what buyers want, when it's clearly because PayPal gets to take money out of every transaction.

I've pretty much stopped caring what eBay does at this point. It's not worth getting worked up. I want everyone to be educated and not be deceived by eBay's slick talk. But as for me, I'll just keep on plugging away, me against the world, because it's all I can do. When I sell a $3 CD, I'll bring in a little more than $2. When I sell a $50 CD, I'll bring in about $40. eBay will gouge me through eBay and PayPal, and that will be that.

I will continue to buy-only with my perfect feedback and suck the last bit of life out of the greedy dying beast.

I loved ebay at first but haven't used it in over a year. I'm pretty much on Amazon or private sellers like cdbaby. I don't know about checks or money orders on Amazon but they rock when their is a problem.

ioffer.com is set up a little like eBay but I've used for a few things and it's been pretty good so far