Are you guys serious? Am I reading this correctly? It will be necessary for both myself as a seller and for my buyers to adopt PayPal Business accounts so that we can complete simple transactions for items being sold on this site?
I have been buying and selling here for almost 20 years and have a hard time believing this. Was there no general announcement from Audiogon explaining what they were doing and why? Did I miss something?
Geoff, are you not already a business? |
Is this issue being initiated by PayPal or by Audiogon?
|
@rdk777I don't get why anyone would want to fork over another unnecessary fee for what should be a free service. Why should advertising be a “free service”? There are certainly costs associated with maintaining this site and I believe this is a business and not a charity or tax-funded government entity. Did you ever place a for-sale ad in a newspaper - we paid for those too. In terms of advertising power, it is probably the most-viewed audio site for sales of used stuff.....I just hope they don’t screw it up. |
Ok, I don't sell there (yet) but I did recently purchase stuff there using PayPal.
eBay must have figured out they can make money off the transactions. |
@uberwaltz I am fairly sure it is all driven by PayPal right now In that case, is eBay doing the same thing? |
|
I guess we could be back to accepting only money orders or waiting for checks to clear like back in the old days..... |
@uberwaltz
Audiogon WILL allow sellers to accept other forms of payment besides PayPal ONLY if you become a registered business user here on Audiogon.
When was this communicated? Did I miss another memo? I thought the "registered business user" was a PayPal thing. I was not aware that is a classification by Audiogon. |
I went back and re-read the post below from Admin but I do not see any "work around" instructions. I also looked at the Audiogon "Safe Payment Methods" article that discusses PayPal and still nothing. Can you point me to where I can find the work around instructions. Thanks
|
Ok, so if I don't want PayPal merchant status do I need to quit selling here? Without PayPal, it seems I will only be able to accept money orders as payment for stuff I sell here. However, even money orders do not afford the same protections as PayPal did.
There continue to be new listings here every day and even though there seems to be more business-sellers here than in the past, there are still private individuals using the site. I wonder if all of them have accepted the merchant status or if they may have some of the problems reported here when they finally conduct their transactions?
I have a bunch of stuff to sell and was waiting until the end of summer to take advantage of the historically better fall sales environment. I guess I will try something small to see how things go here without accepting PayPal as a payment method. I will probably start listing at USAM since they have indicated their agreement with PayPal does not require folks to accept merchant status, however that might change....seems like maybe an opportunity for another PayPal-like entity to step. |
Where are things at on this Audiogon/PayPal issue? Are folks using the work-around, are they setting up merchant accounts, or are they doing something else? I have not sold here since this came up and I just listed some expensive stuff on another site but I do plan to try listing something less expensive here to see how things work. |
I found that I had a "merchant id" on my PayPal account that I didn’t ask for and never knew that I had. This had nothing to do with Audiogon, but rather was a PayPal thing. I used the merchant id to post a recent listing here and have since sold three high-priced items on a different site - each for close to or at my asking price. I still believe Audiogon has the biggest audience and best platform for audio sales, but it is not the only option. |
So in the case of @jdt1 can we assume Stripe was the credit card processor for the seller? Odd that information wouldn't have been disclosed. I would hope that Stripe would be authorized to keep @jd1's "credit card and personal information" on-file, unless he actually signed up for a Stripe account.
I recently made three rather large transactions as a seller on USAM and all three were excellent. In two of the transactions, I was thankful to be able to arrange hand-delivery of the equipment and especially my two very heavy (95 lb) monoblock amplifiers. In the other case, payment as usual through PayPal went very smooth. Reminded me of how things used to be here. |
@jdt1 in these days of heightened awareness of online privacy and security, I want to know who gets my info. And whether or not I want them to have it. Absolutely, I agree. Correction to my post below, the second "would" should have been "wouldn't" so it should have read:
I would hope that Stripe wouldn't be authorized to keep @jd1's "credit card and personal information" on-file, unless he actually signed up for a Stripe account.
|
