New Ebay Requirement For Payment Method Before Making An Offer

Just saw this tonight for the first time, and searched around our site before making the post. Attempted to make an offer on an appropriate ebay lot, and saw this image pop up on my screen.




If you don't provide eBay with a payment method, they prevent you from making the offer. The problem with this is many lots I want to offer on are cheap- $3-$10 lots all from the same seller that I would want to combine for shipping. If you provide this information, you will be immediately charged for the transaction upon the seller accepting your offer, without the seller being required to combine shipping.

Among the dumbest things eBay has done in a never-ending stream of dumb things. Might require some creativity with sellers, like making a single lot out of all the lots you want to offer on. We'll see.


edited for cleaner title

Yes I have seen this before. You are correct the seller would not have to combine shipping. If the seller wants to combine shipping he can set it up on Ebay's check out.

I have noticed that a few sellers on ebay has made a starting price cheap. Then over charge you in shipping to make up for the low starting pprice. Then will not combine shipping on multiple items you have won. This has pickup just in thE past 6 months. I personally have experience this on more than one occasion. You request combine shipping and they ignore your request. They do not say they will combine shipping the the description. In this way they have not violated ebay lrules. Nor have they misrepresented their listing. We as buyers just take it for granted they would combine shipping.

I on more than one occasion have bought stamps and the shipping was more than I won the lot for. I have to pay more attention in bidding. I have to make sure what their shipping requirements and cost is before I bid.

It is also deceptive about the shipping to the buyer in ways. Just as the lots that show a number of the same stamp. The title and picture make you think you are biding on the whole lot. Then when you read the description it plainly says. You are bidding on only one of the stamps pictured. Then they will randomly pick one out for you. It is not misrepresenting what they have to sell. You just have to read the so called fine print.

Is this deceptive yes. Is it proper to treat you buyer like this no. Is it against ebay rules to sell that this no. It is up to us buyers to read the discrimination more carefully. So any way to make a buck with out braking the rules. That is the rule of thumb today not only on ebay but generally everywhere.

It is stuff like this that causes me to NOT buy on eBay the way I used to.

I haven't seen this on UK ebay, but, assuming that the seller isn't trying to gouge you on postage, there is the facility (or there is here) under the "Send refund" heading, to give a postage discount after the fact. I occasionally use this where a buyer hasn't read my description properly and has paid separately for items without awaiting an invoice. ebay then refunds its fee element of your postage discount.

Yup, seems rather boneheaded to me...

Here is a quote from a post from yesterday on the eBay help forums:




Apparently, this was an attempt by eBay to lower the number of times a buyer accepts/negotiates a best offer and then does not pay, i.e., it gives the seller some assurance that the buyer will follow through properly.

Not well thought out, or well implemented.

John

Perhaps it was attempt by eBay to lower the average cost of a transaction. In my opinion the average cost of a transaction is a metric which is fairly high on eBay's cost saving radar. If I was responsible for the cost analysis of the 'make offer' process, reducing the overall number of number of offers would be a consideration.

Over the last decade, the eBay annual reports have indicated an vision which makes eBay more like Amazon (which is owning eBay in the online marketplace). So we have seen eBay evolve away from its original 'sell your used stuff with an online auction' to more of a 'sell your new, UPC coded stuff with a Buy It Now'. Although I think it is possible to make an offer on Amazon, they certainly do not have a button and automated process that promotes the process. Amazon does not even have a button of link that easily allows you to contact a seller.
Don

GeoffHa if only I could trust sellers I don't know to provide the postage refund.

Don- while this may be a way for eBay to reduce the cost of transactions, ironically it costs the sellers more money in paypal fees, which may prevent them from wanting to provide a postage discount. Every one of these transactions attracts the minimum paypal fees vs. only a single paypal fee if lots are combined under one invoice.

Hi shermae,
Understood and agreed with your point about increasing seller costs.

I thnk that eBay's primary concern is their shareholders/stock price and shareholders/Wall Street cares about profit/loss. Buyers and sellers are a means to that end and to be competitive with the likes of Amazon I think that eBay will continue the trend towards emulating them. Supporting 'haggling' is an additional cost per transaction that I would not be too surprised if eBay eventually makes it go away. And one approach in making it go away is to slowly make it less convenient/more costly to use over time.

eBay has already transitioned to Buy It Now and away from Auctions; last I looked Buy It Now represented 90% of their listings. And they have already transitioned to emphasizing the 'ITEM SPECIFICS' and the inclusion of UPC codes by 'rewarding' a much higher search ranking for those listings that use them. It seems to me that eBay has become less 'philatelic hobby friendly' as each year passes. Even HS appears to me to be quite 'cost per transaction' aware. I saw in another stamp forum a recent tread which mentioned that a collector was made an offer on 25 cent stamp. No platform will ever be profitable trying to support that kind of business model. Cost per transaction, while certainly a dry, boring type of business issue for most of us, is something that looms large in these kinds of companies. Cost per transaction includes just not their cost of the typical fixed costs like servers, software, building, power, etc, but more importantly things like support, mediating transactional disputes, and dealing with additional features like 'make an offer'.
Don

shermae - it's a tually better for me these days since ebay severed. its automatic link to Paypal. Then I'd grit my teeth and do a Paypal refund, knowing that I was losing something on Paypal fees. Now ebay's making an allowance for that. Whether or not you make the refund is down to your personal morals!

This is like the push for free shipping. The issue with stamps is that the shipping cost is then built into the price and if you buy 10 items from the seller who makes only one package, the free shipping pushed by eBay costs the buyers and rewards the sellers. I think eBay would be happy to see all of the low priced stamps just disappear from their site altogether. Until then eBay wants to decrease the non-payments as well as the time between "buying" and "paying." For sellers, this new feature insures they will get paid for the item when "purchased" and done so immediately.

Now there is no reason if making multiple offers to reduce your later offers to take out the postage costs.

As for buy it now, when I know I am going to make multiple purchases, I first ask the seller if they will adjust the shipping and refund the overcharge. I have yet to find a seller say, "no" both foreign and domestic.

As a seller, I refund duplicate shipping charges for multiple orders whether the buyer asks for it or not. It's just a few bucks and may incentivize the buyer to keep coming back to look for more stuff to buy.

Actually this is not an eBay dumb idea.

It is a feature that eBay has offered sellers and it is the seller who chooses this option, not eBay.

For a while one could buy buy it nows and not pay until you had several in your cart for one seller. Then sellers had the option to demand immediate payment for buy it now and so choose to do so. This is a speed up of that method, again set by the seller, not eBay. Frankly if a seller tries to hide behind eBay without admitting they are the ones who set the requirement, I choose not to deal with them. Luckily, those sellers usually have items which can be gotten from other sellers.

At least you can still combine negotiated make offers after there are several in your cart from one seller. If that was to change I would be quite unhappy.

Interestingly something I've noticed is that if I get a buyer who wins multiple auctions that all have a set shipping cost, even if I combine shipping at the end, Ebay will still charge me their percentage based on the original cost of each item PLUS each item's original shipping cost. Don't you just love ebay

The words that come to mind cannot be written here (well they can but then it would upset the moderators).

On another topic, I understand these little guys are well fed in San Jose:







Edited for Smilie and italics.

It would be easy for them to set it up so that that automatic charge didn't take place for 1 or 2 hours to allow continued shopping and the combine any multiple purchases from one seller.