Nochex might have responded forcefully to its being banned by eBay as an approved payment handler but it hasn't been quite so thorough in getting out the news that it's now back on the approved list.
As we reported this morning, CEO Martin Greenbank had issued an open letter laying into eBay big time about its lack of consultation with Nochex (and its customers) and wondered, "what the EU Competition Commission will make of this move".
But, when the company then discovered that the status quo had apparently been restored (again without notice or notification) and, perhaps embarrassed by Greenbank's outburst, it made no similar attempt to alert the media to this rather inconvenient fact. We only found out by spotting a story that The Register carried. Nice one Reggies!
So, we started making phone calls to Nochex people this evening, starting with its PR consultant. We had to leave a voice-mail there but Nochex marketing manager Rob Harrison did pick up a little before 10pm.
This call confirmed that eBay was indeed accepting Nochex payments again but didn't manage to draw Rob into saying anything even vaguely controversial.
He wouldn't agree with us that the whole thing had been a cock-up by eBay (or Nochex), was unable to confirm that Martin Greenbank's open letter had scared eBay into backtracking and didn't really want to say anything more on the subject. He did admit, though, that no press release about the latest news had been sent out and that none was planned.
Half an hour or so later, PR person Penny Haywood responded to our voice-mail with a call. She reckoned that the big problem for Nochex was eBay's ineptitude (our word, not hers) which meant that there was little or no direct communication with the company by eBay.
The news about being back in eBay's good books, Penny said, wasn't necessarily what it seemed. It was possibility, she thought, that eBay had responded to cries of anguish from sellers whose systems had to be reworked without prior warning to take account of Nochex' banning.
But, she said, there were noises coming out of eBay suggesting that this was merely a reprieve and that, perhaps sometime in August, Nochex would be banned again - in a more orderly fashion (well, hopefully) but banned nonetheless.
Alternatively, there is the possibility that Nochex will be able to continue for longer with eBay. But Nochex, Penny reckons, isn't counting on that. That's because, as we inferred at the outset of our earlier story, eBay's acquisition of PayPal back in 2002 did kind of suggests that it wants to keep as much of the money-handling in-house as possible, to earn a further slice of cake.
Feel like commenting about this latest turn of events? We'd welcome your doing so in the HEXUS.community.
HEXUS.links
HEXUS.community - discussion thread about this article
HEXUS.headline - Nochex open letter disses eBay and bans
HEXUS.community - discussion thread about Nochex reaction to banning
The Register - eBay restores Nochex
Guardian Unlimited - eBay bans Google Checkout
The Register - eBay buys PayPal
Associated Press - EBay Buys PayPal in $1.3B Stock Deal
Nochex - home page
