Hacker News Reader

Comment by BizarroLand | Hacker News Reader

They were uncomfortable giving ebay the ability to wire their money into their checking account out of fear that ebay would then later take money directly from their bank account, not even considering that if ebay did anything fraudulent their banks and the federal government (assuming they are American) would have their backs in reclaiming the money.

View on HN

I can sympathize. I'd rather not fight that legal fight in the first place if I can avoid it. Plus I'm not a lawyer, and the Terms of Service are a thousand pages long. Am I entitled to small claims court or did I sign away that right and have to go to their arbitration firm? I'm not sure if the agreements I clicked through could say "I forfeit my right to any money and every dispute will be decided solely by eBay, Inc." and if it does I haven't read the thousands of pages of case law necessary to know in which situations that's invalid and I do still have some rights.

I'd rather just not play ball. Especially given that eBay harassed people who inconvenienced their business with bloody pig masks, live cockroaches, and death threats against the spouse[0].

0: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/ebay-execs-sent-...

I think you're being incredibly dismissive and a little condescending for no reason about his concerns, I'm sure they "considered" that while yes there is legal recourse if eBay were to take money out they weren't supposed to, the process isn't a 100% guarantee by any means, and you're still out that money while it's being investigated/resolved. Not everyone is in the privileged position of being able to float a couple thousand dollars while an issue like this is being resolved.

I get that there are external costs for providing things like cutting a check, or sending to paypal.

If that's the case, then let me agree to paying 1% or so to send via another method. I'm only asking for that option.

I don't allow any organization to reach into my bank accounts using an ACH. Simply put - I work in IT, and know that these systems have errors, and the errors are almost always in their favor. And I'm on the hook for a whole bunch of sadness waiting for them to "finish their investigation 8 weeks from now".

However, the biggest problem isn't that they demand this, but they demanded this *after* I had 5 sales go through.

You are already at their mercy. If they chose to take money out of your account I'm sure they could do it in ways legal enough to get away with.

The existence of a means of recourse doesn't undermine the point that they don't want eBay to have that power over their finances in the first place. Would you want your landlord to have unrestricted access (but for the law) to your finances? How about your neighbour?

By means of analogy: the utility of Android's fine-grain app permissions system is not rendered obsolete by data-protection laws.

It's especially galling as eBay could, presumably, just offer to wire the money over after enough time had passed that the buyer can't complain that the item didn't arrive as described. (This would cut out PayPal and card-transaction fees, which is presumably the whole point.) They choose not to offer this.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com