PayPal, eBay & Skype

More of a rant here then anything else. Fair warning.

Ok, so years ago little BB logged onto eBay for the first time and bought something. Can't even remember what it was now, mighta been the gear need to hack his GameCube; not sure. Anyway, he payed via netbanking, took him five minutes, and he thought it was good fun.

So over the years he went back and picked up other bits and pieces. Obscure things, stuff that didn't sell in his small hometown hidden down in Tasmania... Or if they did, not for the prices he could get online.

Now, increasingly he found that some items could only be purchased via PayPal. Eventually he took the plunge and opened an account. Painless enough, even if it did take well over a week to get things up and running, and took him an extra week every time he needed to add some funds. He made sure to keep it well stocked with credit ahead of time, and then tried to use it as little as possible.

Fast forward to... Yesterday. I finally decided to jump onto the VOIP bandwagon (which I'd already been using in the form of PC to PC chat) so I could call me poor sick mother in hospital without racking up a phone bill. Of course, I realised that in order to call to a landline I'd need to pay, so with my PalPay login at hand I went out in search of a provider.

First port of call: Skype. Other users on the net had bugged me into using it for online chat, so I already had an account and so forth. I check up on the calling rates, found them a little confusing (what's an "Australian Ex Territory"?), but figured I'd give it a go. Went to their payment screens and tried to use PayPal.

As I selected the option and entered my login, I noticed this friendly little reminder on the left:



Yes indeed, one of the few things I liked about PayPal was that no credit card was required. Which brings us to the next screen, in angry red lettering:



Eh?

After clicking back and forth a bit, a browse through the support docs, and finally a trip to Google, I came to the Skype forums and the crux of the matter: Using PayPal for Skype requires you to enter a card number "for identification purposes and backup funding if need be".

Well, for starters, I'm already PayPal verified so they can shove their identity claim where the sun does not shine. As for "backup funding" with a prepaid service? I'm not sure what they're smoking.

Anyway, after reading through about six months worth of vagually amusing angry posts (which made me grateful that I'm no longer on the helldesk), it became clear that the change was made some time ago (but with no prior announcement), PayPal and Skype are essentially the same company, but neither will accept responsibility for the change.

Well, fine, no real skin off my nose, just an oddity of big business I supposed. I went off and found some other company to deal with.

Fast forward to... Today. I log onto eBay as I occasionally do, to check if the few remaining oddities I'm searching for have turned up yet (did you know that there was a Bomberman 64 2? I didn't until it randomly turned up on eBay, it was never actually sold in this part of the world).

I check my messages, and low and behold, there's a notice that eBay's "attempt to protect consumers" will be put off until next month. Righto. But on closer inspection, I see what those changes are: They aim to abolish all forms of eBay payment in Australia other then PayPal!!

Well, it just so happens they'd've done this already if our ACCC (fair trade watchdog) hadn't stepped in and said no. A browse through the eBay forums turned up petitions and talk of emails to the ACCC, bulk protest in short. It appears they won't be allowed to go through with this legally, though they're trying to get the decision reversed common opinion is that they have the proverbial snowball's chance.

And so it should be! Consumer protection? I for one won't be a consumer if they remove my preferred methods of doing business, even though technically I would still be able to work with eBay it would cost me more time, trouble, and cash. I'm quite happy to risk doing business with an eBay seller who has spent years making other customers happy, and I'm also quite happy to suck it up if I make the mistake of sending cash to someone with a poor selling record!

(Though to my understanding, this won't actually change that much with a "PayPal only" scheme).

PayPal/eBay/Skype are all essentially the same company. For who knows what reason they're trying to get rid of their "customers" in the name of, I can only imagine, profits. Doesn't make a lick of sense to me. I've known for a long time that these companies aren't essentially "likeable", but I figured so long as I only dealt with small amounts of cash I'd never be seriously ticked off if the worst did happen.

Now it's starting to feel like they're going out of their way to make sure people get ticked off anyway.

So, uh, anyone know of a good world wide auction site which stocks just about everything?

New StarCraft II Unit Announced

Yep, sure, we're a week late with this but you still have to take a look.

EA Looking For Take Two Takeover

After a failed $2 billion offer for Take Two's ownership, EA made it's intentions public on the 25th of Feb.

Take Two owns several IPs of note - X-Com and GTA among them. They also have members of the original Irrational Games amongst their staff.

Although 2K was uninterested in their initial offer, EA is apparently continuing their pursuit.

9/11

One day however many years ago, I got out of bed and wandered down to my living room. My little brother was in there on the computer (he's not quite the tech head I am but we share our gaming addiction) with the TV on.

"A plane flew into a world trade center building," he informed me.

"Righto. What's that?"

"Something in America."

And if only because the computer chair was already taken I sat down in front of the TV. But it was no good, all the channels showed the same thing (I assume everyone remembers the video I mean, repeated endlessly). All it meant to me then was that there was nothing to watch so I stopped paying attention altogether (thinking the news would pass just as every other disaster did).

Move onto today, the dawning of '08. 9/11 is a date everyone knows. It catapulted a war using the same sort of ignorance that made everyone think the y2k bug would end civilization, dealt serious blows to airlines and even the world wide oil price hikes can probably be traced primarily back to that date.

Ok, so fair enough, it was a preventable disaster. People died. Or, to be more exact, they were killed. And that sucks.

But the bloody date has integrated itself into western culture and I think it's gotten beyond a joke.

One of the first examples of this was a Spiderman movie in production about that time. A trailer had been released where the sticky superhero had slung a web between the two towers and snagged a helicopter fleeing from a bank job. This was pulled and of course the scene never appeared in the movie. Fair enough, the towers no longer existed, and using them on the big screen would hardly attract glowing reviews ever again.

Move onto today (well actually a week ago) when the source to the original SimCity has been released. Normally I'd be sticking this link in our general gaming section as it opens the door to all sorts of ports and mods, but this one line set me off:




How is this justification?!

Planes crash from time to time. It's a thing that happens. This is also true of cyclones and hurricanes, tornados and fires, earth quakes and nuclear meltdowns. You get the general idea - humanity has seen many different tragedies on many different fronts. And just like 9/11 many have been mostly self-inflicted. Take the disaster that was Katrina, for example - It didn't have to get so far out of hand. It ended up turning into something akin to a war zone, with snipers taking shots at ambulances.

Should all possible 9/11 referrences be removed from games and movies, or is the event really getting undeserved attention over other calamaties? If all this really is deserved, should all the other disasters be pulled for the same reason? Will this mindset of "9/11 this, 9/11 that" ever really die down?

SF '07 CCA - UFO: Alien Invasion

UFO: Alien Invasion has made it into the SourceForge.net 2007 Community Choice Awards nominations list for the title of Best Project for Gamers.

Check out their homepage before casting your vote.