New Ebay Requirement For Payment Method Before Making An Offer

Now I should forewarn you that you will be asked you ebay account password to access your account settings. So have that handy to not slow you down. Also be prepared for the "the world is ending" level emails (as in more than one) from ebay advising you that certain account settings were changed.

If you need help finding you way in settings, just post and I will provide a roadmap.

I hit the auto-pay wall again, but this time it went a bit differently.

Before I clicked on the final make offer button, I had already opened a second tab and navigated to my payments options in my setting. I clicked the make offer and immediately went back to the payments tab. However when I clicked on that tab, unlike my test a minute or so prior, I was hit with the verify ebay password before I was allowed to the page I wanted. I did the password verification, got the page and then completed removing the auto-pay option. Depending on how fast the system runs with an auto-accepted offer, one may still have the item processed as an auto-pay.

As I see more of these pay walls, I will continue to experiment. My next try will be to unenroll from auto-pay before I make the final submit offer click.

What was different this time was the offer was automatically accepted and the system showed the payment as "processing" for several hours before I guess it timed out. As usual I did finally get an invoice to pay in my cart, and paid it. Interestingly just to see if there would be a reaction, I chose a different PayPal payment account.

From the latest ebay update:

"Can I still help my buyers who request combined shipping?

We know some of our buyers like to request combined shipping when they make offers on multiple items from the same seller. We are working on developing the right solution that addresses combined shipping without resulting in unpaid items."

That's a great update Eye, and hopefully it will be soon and workable. For the time being, I've made my last offer unless it's a higher ticket item where the postage is insignificant.

From the new Dall Update:


"Can I still offer combined shipping for multiple items purchased by the same buyer?
We are aware of potential challenges with combined shipments that this may cause and are actively working to address this. In the meantime, you can send buyers a refund for any excess shipping charges, if needed."

So convenient and the same thing they said months ago. How many buyers have been scared off?

Even after the work-a-round I described earlier, I must still ask the sellers to refund money as they find that they cannot do a combine shipping invoice. Thus I must ask before even buying if they are willing to issue refunds. Most say yes, a couple indicated they did no know how to issue refund but included money (cash) back to me in the shipment. Likewise, many, many sellers do not understand how to turn off the instant payment requirement.

This idea to stop non-payments on make offers and buy it nows is one of the latest major headaches ebay has self-created.

They could easily fix it by starting a clock and any other BIN purchases from the same seller within say 2 hours or any auctions within say 24 hours could be combined.

(I say easily, but I don't know how difficult the coding or extra memory requirements would be)

The inability to combine shipping for International sales when using ebay's shipping program has practically killed my oversea sales.

It is an extremely messy system to deal with!