An eBay spokesperson today confirmed that the auction giant has begun to enforce its new Safe Payments Policy, unveiled in October 2005, that bars sellers from advertising that they accept cash payments for listed auctions.
While the policy is months old, it is just now getting attention as a result of many sellers having their listings altered or removed.
"This isn't new," Hani Durzy, director of corporate communications for eBay, told ECommerce Guide. "We announced a Safe Payments Policy back in October 2005, and began implementing it in January 2006. It governs the types of payments services that sellers can market in their listings. Of course, due to the nature of eBay being a marketplace, we can't monitor or control how buyers and sellers actually complete payments and transactions."
"What we can do is make it against policy for a seller to encourage certain types of unsafe payments by putting them in their listing pages. Regarding cash, we allow sellers to say they accept COD and cash for in-person transactions, but not via mail," Durzy added.
eBay is engaged in a constant cat-and-mouse battle with fraudulent sellers, many of whom take advantage of naïve users. While the company regularly encourages buyers to pay via PayPal, con artists still squeeze newbies out of their money by getting the buyers to use services such as Western Union or fake escrow services. PayPal offers buyers protection from fraudulent sellers and has measures in place to ensure buyers that sellers on eBay are legitimate.
There is also a dedicated buyer protection tips page on eBay. Despite eBay's popularity and the number of experienced buyers, scam artists still find plenty of victims on the site.
Bottom line: don't pay cash for an item on eBay unless you deal with the buyer face-to-face. Ever.
Devin Comiskey is the managing editor of ECommerce-Guide.com.
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