eBay announced that, beginning in February, its PayPal unit will offer eBay PowerSellers extended protection under the existing Seller Protection Policy. Along with this and a slew of announcements made on January 29, 2008, eBay has raised the eligibility requirements of its PowerSeller program.

With the extended protection, PayPal will no longer require that PowerSellers ship to confirmed addresses for items sold on eBay. Every address in the PayPal system will be considered a confirmed address for PowerSellers. There will no longer be an annual $5,000 limit on seller protection for PowerSellers, and the Unpaid Item Protection Program that refunds feature fees to PowerSellers in the event of an unpaid item will become a permanent benefit of the PowerSeller program.

In addition, seller protection will be extended to cover transactions with buyers in additional international markets. However, for Items Not Received claims, sellers must conform to the requirement that they have trackable online proof of delivery from an approved shipper, which can be expensive for international shipments (https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/gen/ua/policy_spp-outside).

PayPal's Jeff Clementz said the company is working with the Post Office, "which is often the cheapest carrier for tracking related items, to see if they can build out their proof-of-delivery system to make it a better global system." Clementz said PayPal is also working with Pitney Bowes and its newly acquired Clear Path unit, which he said helps with a cheaper global tracking system.

eBay's January 29th announcement had stated the program would begin "starting in February." When one seller reported getting conflicting dates as to when the extended protection would go into effect, an AuctionBytes inquiry netted the following response from a PayPal spokesperson: "We'll be introducing expanded seller protection this quarter."