Updated User Agreement and Privacy Policy

[amy]

***Updated User Agreement and Privacy Policy*** 

November 30, 2005 | 06:03PM PST/PT

Hi, I’m Scott Shipman from eBay’s Legal team. I’m here to tell you about some changes we’re making to eBay’s User Agreement and Privacy Policy, which will take effect for anyone with an existing eBay account on February 1, 2006. The new policy is effective immediately for any new registered accounts.

Why are we changing the User Agreement and Privacy Policy?

It’s been over two and a half years since we made a change to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy. Since then eBay has grown and changed considerably. We needed to make sure these agreements stay relevant to the current state of the site.

In addition, the old policies had become too long and complex over the years. Just as eBay’s other policies have been rewritten to be more concise and understandable, we’ve simplified and shortened the User Agreement and Privacy Policy to make them easier to read.

Finally, there are a couple substantive changes that we needed to make. Here is a quick summary of the main changes to the User Agreement (UA) and Privacy Policy (PP):

Late Fee Withdrawal From PayPal After 180 Days Past Due
This is a material change that we’re making to our User Agreement. For seller accounts that have balances more than 180 days overdue, eBay may collect the overdue balance owed from that seller’s PayPal account. The vast majority of our sellers settle their balances on time or before 180 days. eBay will resort to a PayPal withdrawal only after the balance has been overdue 180 days and our other collection efforts have been unsuccessful. We believe this helps level the playing field for the rest of the sellers who pay their bills. (Please note: Should eBay withdraw late fees, this will not alter the status of a seller’s PayPal account or funds remaining after the withdrawal.)

Use of Third-Party Information
This new section in the User Agreement and Privacy Policy outlines how, in addition to data from eBay, we might purchase information from third-party companies, such as about hobbies and interests, to better tailor the site according to your preferences. One point I want to make very clear: If you have opted out of receiving any of our marketing mail and email, this change will not impact you. This change merely gives us access to data that is already in the public domain and in use by other companies, so we can market to you in a more relevant way when you have your marketing preferences set to “yes.”

Shorter and More Concise Language
Previous versions of the UA and PP contained a lot of duplicate information that can be found in other areas of the site, especially within our policies. To make these documents easier to read and understand, we’ve removed most of this repeat information and tightened up the rest of the text. For example, the User Agreement used to provide information on our listing policy that allows only 10 of the same non-Store items at any one time. This has been removed since it is covered within our section.

To see our revised User Agreement, [url=http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/user-agreement.html?ssPageName=f:f:US]please click here.

To see our revised Privacy Policy, please click here.

Sincerely,

Scott Shipman
Senior Counsel, Global Privacy Practices

[accentnepal]

[quote author=amy link=topic=1504.msg5473#msg5473 date=1133407564]
For seller accounts that have balances more than 180 days overdue, eBay may collect the overdue balance owed from that seller’s PayPal account.
[/quote]

Paymentech, Yahoo Stores' lapdog of a payment gateway, got in trouble for that one. Some scammer hit them for a few thousand, Paymentech was then bought by Chase Bank, the scammer had an account at Chase which they tried to grab. Scammer sued and won, if I remember the story correctly.

'Course if it is in the user agreement then you are giving them permission. How many people actually read that thing?