Posted below is a copy of an email I sent to eBay in response to the changes they’ve recently made to the seller’s payment options. Soon, sellers will no longer be able to accept checks and money orders. This seems to me a very bad idea and I explain why to eBay.

Hello,

I am emailing in response to your new policies regarding checks and money orders. I would strongly suggest that you add jewelery to that list of categories exempt from this change. We sellers of high-value jewelry are already too vulnerable toward Paypal charge backs and the less we are able to work with our customers while ensuring secure payment for ourselves, the more vulnerable we will be. Additionally, my buyers usually prefer to pay with a money order rather than use a paypal e-check because of the processing time. By sending a money order, one of my customers can get his item within the week, with paypal delays, it might be a week or two before I even ship.

Further, due to the risk for us sellers to deal with chargebacks, more sellers will no doubt chose to downgrade their paypal status so that they cannot take credit cards. This means less payment options for buyers and much less revenue for paypal/ebay.

We all appreciate ebay trying to bring more business to sellers and safer business to buyers, but with this policy in place, no one will win.

Please reconsider this policy and the adverse effect it will have on buyers and sellers of high-ticket items, and ebay itself.

Sincerely,
Diane Wiesner