In US that means routing number and account number. Having these two enables anybody to push or pull any amount of money (or at least try to pull, based on availability). Its crazy, companies promise that they will not pull more than asked, but sometimes coding error causes big problems, the one I remember etsy pulling thousands instead of 10s, because of a decimal point error, so pulling like 1486 instead of 14.86.
This information is on the bottom of every paper check. While it is probably not advisable to broadcast and post up everywhere, it is not supposed to be a secret.
Right, its security by deterrence. Besides its not like you can anonymously drain someones bank account, someone claims fraud on your 10,000$ charge you're getting a phone call from your bank.
True, yes, it will be sorted out if it is unauthorized, but if it is like in 1000 or around, most of the major banks will simply overdraft of active, and leave the customer to notice, find & call bank to sort it out. In real case of etsy, where etsy was pushing/paying money to sellers through direct deposit (& employers too), they mistakenly emptied accounts, and most of the accounts went into over draft, I believe a couple years ago.
Most of the employers', companies' direct deposit forms/agreements say they can pull money back they paid by mistake.
In contrast in India, now banks ask cheque holders to login into net banking and submit the cheque info if they write a cheque over certain big amount. One leaf of cheque allows only one withdrawal, when presented in original, and if signature matches exactly, and if account has sufficient money; whereas in US, routinely companies convert paper cheque to electronic payments.
He probably means ACH access which can also be used for withdrawals instead of just deposits. Its not like writing and accepting a check or money order, which is generally only one-way. While there are some limits on this for "direct deposit" (can not withdraw more than was deposited, and there's a 5 day limit, so its functionally equivalent to bouncing a check but without the legal penalties), not all access to set to strictly "direct deposit". I don't know what eBay is doing but its possible to get authorization for both "direct deposits" and "withdrawals". ACH withdrawal is useful for things like Coinbase or PayPal where you want to pay electronically and trust is too low to risk credit card chargebacks.
They were uncomfortable giving ebay the ability to wire their money into their checking account out of fear that ebay would then later take money directly from their bank account, not even considering that if ebay did anything fraudulent their banks and the federal government (assuming they are American) would have their backs in reclaiming the money.
I can sympathize. I'd rather not fight that legal fight in the first place if I can avoid it. Plus I'm not a lawyer, and the Terms of Service are a thousand pages long. Am I entitled to small claims court or did I sign away that right and have to go to their arbitration firm? I'm not sure if the agreements I clicked through could say "I forfeit my right to any money and every dispute will be decided solely by eBay, Inc." and if it does I haven't read the thousands of pages of case law necessary to know in which situations that's invalid and I do still have some rights.
I'd rather just not play ball. Especially given that eBay harassed people who inconvenienced their business with bloody pig masks, live cockroaches, and death threats against the spouse[0].
I think you're being incredibly dismissive and a little condescending for no reason about his concerns, I'm sure they "considered" that while yes there is legal recourse if eBay were to take money out they weren't supposed to, the process isn't a 100% guarantee by any means, and you're still out that money while it's being investigated/resolved. Not everyone is in the privileged position of being able to float a couple thousand dollars while an issue like this is being resolved.
I get that there are external costs for providing things like cutting a check, or sending to paypal.
If that's the case, then let me agree to paying 1% or so to send via another method. I'm only asking for that option.
I don't allow any organization to reach into my bank accounts using an ACH. Simply put - I work in IT, and know that these systems have errors, and the errors are almost always in their favor. And I'm on the hook for a whole bunch of sadness waiting for them to "finish their investigation 8 weeks from now".
However, the biggest problem isn't that they demand this, but they demanded this *after* I had 5 sales go through.
The existence of a means of recourse doesn't undermine the point that they don't want eBay to have that power over their finances in the first place. Would you want your landlord to have unrestricted access (but for the law) to your finances? How about your neighbour?
By means of analogy: the utility of Android's fine-grain app permissions system is not rendered obsolete by data-protection laws.
It's especially galling as eBay could, presumably, just offer to wire the money over after enough time had passed that the buyer can't complain that the item didn't arrive as described. (This would cut out PayPal and card-transaction fees, which is presumably the whole point.) They choose not to offer this.