Opinion: Buy it now

But is this really about competition? And even if it is, since when is ‘competition’ such a high moral principal that it must be defended even when it patently guarantees a haven for online scammers?

Here’s a quick reality check. If eBay closed its doors and re-opened them next week under a new name, and only allowed PayPal transactions, do you really think nobody would use the service? Of course they would.

This is another of those furphies which we are forced to suffer now and then in the name of some nebulous concept. Not all that long ago we were told it was a serious breach of privacy to be forced to display caller ID on phone calls. How so?

If you initiate a call to me, exactly what privacy should you be entitled to? If you knocked on my front door wearing a ski mask to protect your privacy, would you expect me to answer? No, far more likely I’d just call the police.

Instead call centres hiding their ID behind so-called ‘privacy’ laws bombard us with nuisance calls. If these pranksters had to display their IDs nobody would answer. Ever.

Then to fix the problem we invent a “do not call register” but allow all kinds of exemptions, and it doesn’t apply to overseas callers anyway.

Now we’re being asked to believe a bunch of dodgy eBay merchants are suffering serious hardship because they can’t make buyers send them money directly to their bank accounts.

A transaction with no comeback whatsoever for the buyer – you are effectively making a donation to the seller. And this cry goes up because PayPal charges the seller some fees? Never mind that credit card companies charge fees to both buyer and seller and have done since they began.

Apparently a bunch of eBay sellers have declared they will just go away and abandon the site if they are forced to use PayPal. And do what exactly? These people didn’t even have a place to sell things until eBay arrived.

Now they claim they would rather sell nothing than operate in an environment where they can be made to provide the goods and services they have promised. Let them leave. Good riddance.