Part of the reason for eBay’s policy is that eBay bought PayPal this year. They don’t want anything to impede PayPal use.
During the heyday of the 'cash discoun’t (70s/ 80s) you didn’t even have to ask about cash discounts. It was posted on cardboard signs on the register, and some stores had it programmed into their cash registers.
Credit card terms/conditions often include unenforceable terms, which may have been stricken by legal precedent. Sometimes they back off if you point out the law or court ruling (you may have to escalate to a supervisor at the credit card merchant call center). Sometimes they get nasty and threatening. Bottom line: they don’t make any money if they cut you off, so they aren’t quite as eager to do that as one might think. A small internet vendor is in little position to haggle, but companies like Walmart, Safeway, Sears and Circuit City can and have fought Visa and Mastercard over their policies and terms - and won.
I mention those companies because they just won a $2B class action settlement from Visa, and $1B from Mastercard, after a 7 year lawsuit on the the fee structure for debit cards and the “honor all cards” rule - Visa claimed merchants had to accept all Visa cards whether debit, credit or other) Walmart, for one, [url=http://www.forbes.com/2003/12/03/1203automarketscan03.html]will no longer accept Mastercard debit cards after Feb 1, 2004. Similarly, AMEX recently won a reaffirmation of a 2001 anti-trust ruling (Hey, the Big Boys know you don’t actually have to obey a court ruling until you’ve been hit over the heard 2-3 times) which also benefits Discover and other minor cards.
Heck, the Visa and Mastercard even try to use their coercive muscle against each other. Visa announced plane to fine banks who won’t do business with it! This so called “defection fee” against backs that switch to Mastercard (Amex, Discover, etc.) has already been downgraded. They used to “fine” banks for starting to do business with their competitors; now they only “fine” them if they leave Visa.
Admittedly, you won’t get far arguing with eBay (where the buyers and sellers are primarily responsible for each other’s satisfaction [1]) and this attitude will probably reinforce the policies of its subsidiary - though eBay/PayPal are learning that ignoring other big companies like Bank One and AT&T doesn’t work quite so well - they don’t have accounts that can be cancelled to shut them up.
BTW, I’d very much appreciate it if someone could link some recent article on PayPal’s current status as a quasi-bank. I haven’t read anything lately, but I followed the debate over the regulatory status of X.com and PayPal in the years past. Is PayPal a real bank yet?
[1] As I wrote this phrase, I had a chuckle, recalling a recent article on how credit card companies and PayPal turn a blind eye to prostitution rings. Such customers seem to be able to keep their accounts, even after major magazines do investigations and interview company reps about them. They say they’re ‘embarrassed’ by the disclosures, but apparently not embarrassed enough to cancel the merchant accounts of many types of known criminal enterprises.
