BIRD TALK

Dear Bird Talk,

I am a Canadian spending my winters in Arizona. Last winter I had an eBay account and paid for my purchases through PayPal with a Canadian credit card for delivery to my temporary U.S. address. This worked fine.

This year I ordered an item on eBay and to my embarrassment PayPal refused to honour payment because my delivery address differed from my credit card billing address. I contacted both eBay and PayPal and apparently a new policy with PayPal is that if the member’s delivery address and credit card/banking address are not both in the U.S., eBay purchases either cannot be paid for through PayPal or must be delivered to a Canadian address.

I have no idea why this policy was put in place, but as a result I will no longer be buying through eBay/PayPal and wonder how many thousands of Canadian Snowbirds this will affect. How much business will eBay/PayPal lose? Are you aware of any logic behind this policy?

Dennis Larratt
Salome, AZ

Response:
We also encountered this issue, and it was within Canada, not even a cross-border transaction! We know that online identity theft is becoming more prevalent. By matching the delivery address with the credit card billing address, the incidence of fraudulent purchases made with stolen credit cards is reduced significantly, if not entirely. So we try not to get upset when there is a safety measure involved. If you are a serious “eBayer” you may want to try getting “VERIFIED” with a U.S. bank account for the purchases you make during your winter in Arizona. The payments for purchases will then be withdrawn from your U.S. bank account and your Canadian credit card billing address becomes a non-issue. We love eBay too, so don’t give up on them.

Good Luck!