News

I have been asked to appear on the panel for the next Geelong Chamber of Commerce Q&A event, providing advice for small businesses wishing to leverage the power of online advertising and sales.

The Q&A sessions are a Geelong Chamber of Commerce initiative that provide advice on a range of topics of interest to local businesses, and take place in the form of a panel of experts that the audience can ask questions of.

This month's Q&A has the topic of 'How to grow you business online' and you don't have to be a chamber member to come along.

Read more on the Geelong Chamber of Commerce website or in the invitation pdf file.

Many of our clients run small businesses or startups in the Geelong area. If this is you, you may be interested in these training grants currently available for Gordon TAFE's 'Enterprising Futures' program.

The small business grants provided by the City of Greater Geelong are to undertake business training, skills building and business development. The grants fund half the costs to participate in one of two Enterprising Futures training and business support programs, either 'Explore Your Business Idea' or 'Focus on Your Business'.

This is your opportunity to benefit from expert small business support and training at half the usual cost.

For more information and eligibility please see the flyer below.

Download the Enterprising Futures flyer.

Ebay has dropped its proposal to move to a PayPal only system in this country, causing a collective sigh of relief amongst concerned Australians.

The backflip follows a conference help last week by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) on the company's plans to only accept PayPal on the site.

Ebay had argued that its Paypal system of online payments is more secure than other methods, and would reduce fraud.

Personally, while it seems most of the arguments at the ACCC conference were concerned with the extra fees that Paypal incurs, I think their basic premise is also unreasonable.

I don't know anyone who's ever managed to get a refund from Paypal, yet my list of friends who have had grievances with them is as long as my arm. While none of us have experienced any security breaches like hacking or theft, a total of eight inluding myself have experienced fraud and none of us have been covered by Paypal.

The reason many of us chose to pay using Paypal at all is because of the claims on the Ebay website that you are 'covered' if your product doesn't arrive. Despite these guarantees, in the last eighteen months none of us were able to get a refund from Paypal when products did not arrive from a clearly dodgy seller. This sours not just our experience of Paypal but the whole of Ebay.

So when Paypal doesn't deliver on the only reason people want to use it anyway, it's fair enough that the public react when Ebay suggested they were making it the only available payment option. Let's just be glad that people power has won in this case!