eBay and PayPal announced today that they are now offering Bill Me Later as a payment option during checkout. This means that "qualified" customers in the U.S. can now buy items and pay for them over time without using a credit card.
The option will be available for Buy It Now and approved auction purchases on eBay. It is also available at "tens of thousands" of online stores that accept PayPal Express Checkout.
Bonanzle has been around for a year now (out of beta). We've been watching it grow for the better part of this year at least.
eBay upset a lot of its sellers over the last year and a half or so with various announcements and policy changes. Evidence of this is all over the web on message boards, blog comments, and social networks.
Update: eBay is starting to test the badges. The company made the following announcement:
Over the next few weeks you may see a new seller badge appearing on some item pages and in search results. This badge is part of the new eBay Top-rated seller status announced last week and launching in October. Starting this week and over the next few weeks, we'll be testing the badge in search results and item pages for a small percentage of eBay traffic.
On Friday, eBay released a revised version of its user agreement. The changes deal with situations where a buyer has alleged receipt of a counterfeit item.
eBay Senior Counsel Scot Shipman discusses the changes in a company blog post. He says that under the changes:
eBay recently announced it was returning to its roots as an auction site more focus on the "secondary market". This is probably a wise move as interest and enthusiasm for eBay have both steadily dwindled over the past year or so.
It looks like eBay may be considering a program for "certified sellers." Ina Steiner at AuctionBytes talks about one of her readers who wrote in and told her about a survey for eBay he participated in that showed a made up listing page for a digital camera. It looked something like this:
eBay is 86ing its old search engine in favor of its newer one. Up until this point, users have been able to choose the one they prefer, but according to eBay the majority are using the new one, so you can kiss the old one goodbye.
eBay recently announced a change to product pages for books, music, movies, and video games last week - a change that will likely give sellers yet another reason to complain.
This ought to ruffle some feathers. An eBay seller forwarded an email they received from an eBay customer service rep. to Ina Steiner at AuctionBytes.