Billpoint The Auction Bully
Written: Nov 22 '01
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Pros: Conveniently bundled with Ebay
Cons: Bully tactics to wipe out competition
The Bottom Line: The site is very easy to use, but you are almost forced to use it instead of their competitors.
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| pj_the_pug's Full Review: BillPoint |
As an avid user of Ebay, I have used Billpoint many times. I find it convenient to use as it is bundled with Ebay and provides your bidder fast access to "checkout" and pay for their auctions with a credit card or online check. However the downfall to it is it costs a little bit more than it's biggest competitor, PayPal, and if you don't know what you're doing when you list your auctions, you are pretty much forced to use it as your primary credit card merchant. Personally, I like having the choice to use PayPal and I don't like the "bully tactics" Billpoint uses to discourage the auctioneer from using the other pay online services.
Bully Tactics Examples
Since Ebay owns Billpoint you have the option of signing up to use Billpoint immediately when you register for Ebay. Therefore it's very convenient rather than going off site to register for PayPal on their website.
When listing your auctions on Ebay, you have to be very careful of the "checkout methods" that you use. By simply saying that you accept credit cards for your auction now forces you to use Billpoint instead of PayPal. It used to be that you could say that you accepted credit cards and then put PayPal as your preferred method. Also a new feature of Ebay is the "fast checkout" at the end which provides a "check out now" button on the auction page immediately after it ends and guess where it takes you - to Billpoint. It's very nice to have that button on your auctions when you want your bidder to checkout immediately with a complete invoice in front of them, but it forces you to use Billpoint.
Also a previous bully tactic that they used was after you inserted your PayPal logo on the site and you wanted to edit or modify your auction, after you went to save the changes, it would give you an error unless you manually removed the PayPal logo. I have actually talked to a PayPal representative about this and they have now made a work around, but in the past it was another attempt at Ebay/Billpoint to play games at discouraging you in using PayPal.
The Pros of Billpoint
However there are some very convenient things about using Billpoint. As I mentioned before, the "check out now" button is extremely handy for the bidder to instantaneously pay for an auction rather than waiting for you to contact them, but you'll pay for that convenience.
The break down of prices of PayPal vs. Billpoint is as follows:
Billpoint
Transaction fees: 2.50% + 35¢
PayPal
Transaction fees: 2.20% + 30¢
Also PayPal has the option of keeping your balance in an account with them. So you don't have to withdraw the money until you want to and you can earn a dividend on it. Billpoint has no such program. After each transaction, they automatically deposit your sales into your checking account. This is all personal preference though, I can see how people would like the "auto deposit" from Billpoint, but I like to earn the dividend from PayPal.
The Website
The actual Billpoint website is quite user friendly. You can click on "summary" and see all of your recent transactions with complete descriptions of the buyer's email address, item number and product description. It also keeps track of the invoices you've sent out to your buyers to get them to pay.
Also there is a "deposits" link you click on to see all of your recent deposits made into your checking account. Billpoint won't deposit them one at a time, they lump them together by every 3 or 4 days worth of transactions.
Then there's a personal profile of your user information and the other feature I find quite handy is the "sales history" area. You can search for your previous sales you've made by date, item number, or buyer's email address.
They also have the option to send an invoice to your buyer (which coincidentally takes you to the Ebay site when you click on it) and it will keep track of all of your invoices that you've sent until the buyer either pays or you cancel the invoice.
Other handy site features of the Billpoint site is the link back to "my Ebay" which will immediately take you back to a viewing of your auctions that you currently have running. So Billpoint and Ebay are quite nicely bundled together and simple to use with one another.
The Bottom Line
All in all I like Billpoint. But I also like the option to choose PayPal when I want to pay less fees on an auction listing. Yes, we are simply talking a matter of pennies here but when you have several auctions going at once, those pennies can add up to dollars. I just wish Ebay was more flexible in which checkout method they let you use and gave a more competitive fee schedule. I would recommend Billpoint to the casual Ebay seller as it is more convenient to use than PayPal, but for power sellers I would recommend using PayPal for it's cheaper auction costs.
Recommended:
Yes
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pj_the_pug
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Member: PJ Pug
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Reviews written: 88
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