eBay and Adults Only Items
I've noticed a few interesting things happen recently, and I don't think they're by accident. :) I promise I am trying my best to make NO puns in this post, but it's not so easy. Every word sounds rude! OK, here we go...
eBay sellers who list in Adults Only (formerly "Mature Audiences") used to NOT be allowed to have an eBay Store. I was recently told that these sellers can now have eBay Stores. So there's some new revenue for eBay.
On a side note, I have always found it very bizarre how many overtly sexual devices are listed under Massagers: Other, which means they're outside of Adults Only. Anybody can see them. I know this is the biggest euphemism ever, but some of these titles have words that make me blush! No, I'm not buying these. We have a new potential client who sells such things, and evidently, I needed to freshen up on what's going on in Adults Only. I didn't even know the category had changed names... not like eBay put that in their Announcement Board! :)
For what seemed like forever, eBay sellers were not allowed to accept PayPal for Adults Only items. PayPal seemed to be staying mostly or completely out of anything porn-related. Very recently, eBay changed that policy. Adults Only items can now be paid for with PayPal. We all know that online sales of "devices" and sexual materials is always a big business, and now PayPal will get a piece of that.
I went to PayPal's "help" area, and tried to type in relevant words. I wanted to see if PayPal was going to allow people to use them for any website that might be pornographic or sell adult devices. Every word I put in gave me no search results.
I tried PayPal's automated help chat person, "Sarah." Luckily, she was NOT offended when I asked if PayPal can be used to pay for pornography. She directed me to PayPal's acceptable use policy. That page says that PayPal cannot be accepted when selling, "certain sexually oriented materials or services." I guess "certain" means that some will be allowed and some won't. The page said nothing else about what will or won't.
So I'm guessing that eBay will relax this rule for PayPal so that they can get a cut from all the Adult items being sold out there. Maybe in this economy, any revenue is good revenue.
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I think they did this because of their paperless payment policy. They stated that the paperless payment policy was implemented to increase trust and decrease fraud on the site. So how would it look if the only thing that they allowed you to pay for by check were porno films and other adult items?
Posted by: Larry Phillips | Tuesday, 10 March 2009 at 06:06 AM