PayPal Gets Free Advertising On Bonanza Sellers Listings

Crazy at it may seem, sellers at Bonanza were forced to give up prime real estate on their product listings without an ounce of choice in the matter.

Bonanza decided on their own without any consideration to how their sellers may feel about adding a badge on their listings to simply add a badge but even worse, there is a link to learn more about using Paypal on Bonanza.

Here is what it looks like. You can click the graphic to enlarge the screenshot we took:

Here is the link to the learn more part of the PayPal banner - http://www.bonanza.com/site_help/offers/pp_buyer_protection?layout=false&title=Paypal+Buyer+Protection

In the infomation provided at the above link, Bonanza is USING PayPal's buyer protection in an attempt to instill buyer trust BUT they are diverting trust from all Bonanza sellers, especially those who do not accept PayPal with the following statement:

Purchases made with PayPal as the payment method. Purchases made through Google Checkout or with a money order or other payment method won't be covered.

Nothing like using the sellers listings to promote PayPal for free and then throw a large majority of sellers (some who have paid Bonanza memberships) under the bus.

If Bonanza was truly interested in buyer trust, they would market the Bonanza name broadly - TV, radio, newspaper, magazines and etc so that buyers know that it is not interested in being a fly by night site.

Instead, they are running on the coat tails of PayPal's buyer protection program.

Why doesn't Bonanza do the same thing with Google Checkout? They too have a buyer protection program. Why make one payment service sound so much better over the other when they both provid excellent buyer protection? It can be found here: http://checkout.google.com/support/?hl=en

It makes us think that they are getting some kind of kickback for advertising PayPal. We can't think of any reason Bonanza would give up such a highly visible space on sellers listings and risk angering sellers doing so without something inticing them to do so.

Here is what Bonanza sellers had to say about the PayPal badge:

http://www.bonanza.com/forums/1/topics/140746

http://www.bonanza.com/forums/1/topics/140753

At some point along the way, Bonanza made that huge badge an option and sellers were eventually able to turn the thing off.