BaySpeak on PayPal in the Land of OZ

I HOPE the ACCC is a lot smarter than eBay and Paypal's lawyers in Australia think they are! Reading their final submission on their application for a waiver to certain provisions of the Trade Practice Act 1974, produces as fine an example of BaySpeak, half truths, diversions and plain prevarication as I have ever seen, and I have seen a lot.

Half Truth:

excluding Google Checkout, which, contrary to BPAY's submission, does not operate in Australia

Actually, Google Checkout does operate in Australia. Google Checkout is available to buyers in Australia. Google says "We're working towards making Google Checkout more widely available in the near future. At this time, however, we cannot provide any details regarding when Google Checkout will be available in specific countries." Therefore eBay's statement is half true, the system is not available to Australian Sellers.

eBay loves it's sellers!

It is not possible for eBay to achieve the stated objective of significantly reducing "bad buyer experiences" for all eBay users without mandating the use of PayPal ... One likely contributing cause for this is that a number of negative incidents are caused by fraudulent or otherwise dishonest sellers. Such sellers are unlikely to accept PayPal payments because of the security and fraud protection measures available to PayPal users on eBay and, in particular, the ability of PayPal to reverse payments and freeze accounts. It follows that any increased usage of PayPal can be expected to reduce the total number of such incidents.

eBay considers that many of the submissions contain factual errors or distortions and the ACCC may be assisted by eBay clarifying those errors. Accordingly, eBay has identified a number of the most frequently asserted factual errors issues and addresses these issues below.

Just a few:

PayPal is not subject to the same level of regulation as banks.
While not subject to the same regime as banks, PayPal is subject to comprehensive regulatory oversight by government agencies. It is the holder of Australian Financial Services Licence No. 304962 and a banking license. It is subject to regulation by the Australian Securities and Investment Commission and the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority. PayPal is also subject to the Australian Anti-Money
Laundering, Counter-Terrorism Financing and various other Australian and foreign laws.
Translation: well no it is not, but we can cite a whole heap of regs we are subject to

As a result of the Project, PayPal will become a monopoly provider of payments services for eBay transactions.
This is factually incorrect. PayPal will not become the only provider on eBay - EFT and CC will continue in use, the only difference being the imposition of PP as the intermediary to process transactions. PayPal will continue to pay the credit card merchant fees that would otherwise be imposed on sellers
Translation: No no, not a monopoly, we will just be the only payment method and we are telling you how we pay all fees for something most sellers do not use, without mentioning that we will charge the sellers even higher fees for something they get very inexpensively if not free from their banks.

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