Chinese listings, PayPal and the Yuan

Alfie_E · 15 March 2006 at 6:46AM

What happens when an item is listed with PayPal as a payment method, but the price is listed in Yuan (Renminbi, RMB)? The Yuan is not a PayPal-supported currency.

Also, does anyone know exactly what a feedback score of “unverified” represents? There’s a nice Unverified Members FAQ on eBay explaining in detail how it effects feedback scoring, but not why it exists.

Alfie_E · 7 April 2006 at 3:39AM

The answer is that you have a problem. The Yuan is only supported when both sending and receiving PayPal accounts are registered in China. It would be nice if eBay only displayed the PayPal details on the eBay China website for items listed in Yuan, or at least had a warning when viewing the item on other country’s eBay sites.

And, I still don’t know what an unverified member is…

wendyl1967 · 7 April 2006 at 8:09AM

I buy a lot of dvds from this guy http://stores.ebay.com.cn/liyge_W0QQssPageNameZstrkQ3amefsQ3amesstQQtZkm

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ru=http%3A%2F%2Fsearch.ebay.co.uk%3A80%2Fsearch%2Fsearch.dll%3Ffrom%3DR40%26satitle%3D9507156686%26fvi%3D1&item=9507156686&rd=1

All listings are in Yuan. You paste the number into our ebay and it comes up in English. You click on the buy it now but don't follow through as far as the pay now (or whatever it says). He then sends you a paypal invoice (through the American paypal I think as this supports Yuan.) I still use my usual paypal account, I did not have to set up another one and everything goes through as normal. I hope that makes sense.

boglin · 7 April 2006 at 9:21AM

This link tells you what a seller has to do to become verified and gain this sign

- it looks like it refers to overseas eBay members:

"On eBay.com an additional safety feature is available to members. Some sellers choose to get ID Verified through eBay as an extra sign of security for buyers. When a member gets ID Verified, a third-party company working with eBay confirms the member's identity by cross checking their contact information across consumer and business databases."

Alfie_E · 8 April 2006 at 4:47AM

I’ve now had words with eBay support. Unverified and ID Verified are two different things – the two extremes at either end.

People signing up on eBay China can get an account with minimal checking from eBay. When we, in the UK, sign up for an account, we must give either the details of a bank card or an email address from an ISP, and not a free web email address. A large proportion of Chinese have neither a bank card nor a fixed Internet connection, so only have a free email address. When these people sign up, they get a feedback score of “unverified”.

However, this does mean, if you’re, say, British of Chinese decent, you can do the following. Create your account on eBay China, by giving some address in China. Wait thirty days. Change your address details to the UK. You then get something that looks like fooooooxy’s profile. I’m not suggesting that this is what this particular person has done, as they could have genuinely moved from China to the UK after creating the account.

ID Verified is at the other extreme, where you pay eBay to perform an ID search using a credit reference agency or similar, and you get an extra symbol to go against your name. This can be in addition to having already put your bank card details on file, although it does allow you to become a seller, for example, without needing to give bank card details. In the same way you can go through PayPal’s Expanded Use Enrolment process in addition to getting your PayPal account Verified, even though Expanded Use isn’t normally necessary for UK accounts. As far as I can see, ID Verified is not offered to those with eBay UK accounts.

Chinese listings, PayPal and the Yuan

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