Ebay Withing Holding Funds Until Orders Are Received

Anyone having a problem with ebay placing funds on hold until order are physically received ? I have done business with them for years and now all of a sudden they are placing my funds on hold until the orders are delivered. I talked with them and they are supposedly doing this across the entire platform. I was told that if the post office takes 30 days to deliver then I have to wait to get paid until then.

I believe the accounting term for that is "the float".

The buyer pays ebay, who holds the funds due you until the item is delivered to the buyer (still not sure how they confirm delivery since not all shipments are tracked and not all buyers leave feedback). Do that on every sale and they're floating several hundred thousand dollars which they deposit and on which interest is accrued. ebay keeps the interest earned on those funds.
Big volume means big profits on those short "floats".

Also known as "running their company on your money".

This happened in the UK several months ago, although it was largely superseded by the requirement to use ebay's "Simple Delivery", which basically removed the scope for stamping your own packages in the postbox. As thus carries tracking, funds are available when the tracking shows delivery. Either way - money on deposit or a cut of post office receipts - ebay wins.

It also allows ebay to have access to money when items are lost, stolen, subject to fraud and the like such that ebay need not work to claw back funds from sellers when said sellers have already taken money which is not theirs due to the lack of a complete transaction including returns.

There are shady folks as both sellers and buyers from with ebay has a right and duty to protect themselves from for both business and shareholder interest.

Bam! Give that player a big fat cookie!

Just think of the interest they are raking in when we are talking millions of dollars in float. Enough to buy not just one big cookie but the whole bakery !!

I purchase plenty of lower value sets and singles on ebay and even in 2025 lots of sellers still ship w/o any tracking at all (old school plain white envelope with actual postage stamps, not even " ebay standard envelope"). I'm wondering how this affects them. Recently purchased a non-philatelic item and seller shipped it without tracking but later asked me to leave feedback "in order for them to receive payment". I haven't received such a request from a philatelic seller. My guess would be the category of stamps (at least below a certain value) are exempt from this new rule. I wonder what other categories are. My experience is ebay tends to have different rules per sales category.

ebay (USA) Help Article, "Payments on hold"




It is probably obvious, but you agree to these potential holds by listing an item, as part of the terms of service.

John

As one that only buy stamps on ebay. I can see why ebay may hold funds. In most cases the stamps are pictured and described properly. Then you run across those that are not most mis identifying the stamp to the higher value one. They are cases where the misidentified stamp is if the higher value but not often. Then we have USPS that loses, delivery to wrong address, damage or on occasion still the stamps. So I can see with holding funds till item is delivered and checked. The seller will get there stamps back or the money. It is it may not be as quick as they wish. Anything going wrong the buyer is holding the bag if stamp is not as described.

After talking to 4 people at ebay I come to the conclusion that all they can do is parrot back policy from their crib sheets.
They are stating that all items must me shipped with tracking and then funds are released after receipt. I have a lot of clients who buy 30.00 items and want them shipped without tracking as its a lot cheaper. I will have to raise my shipping charges to accommodate ebay I guess and then lose clients in the process.
ebay has standard envelopes for items under 20.00 but their tracking is not linked to the USPs system either.
I will keep this post open and let you know the feedback I get when I raise my shipping rates. thanks

ebay has absolutely no problem clawing back funds when it feels like it, so a long "float" and release of funds only on delivery is a big, unnecessary, and seller-unfriendly move with no corresponding benefit to buyers.

I have not seen any communications about a change in payout practices (and I haven't seen any evidence of it in my own sales).

The ebay "standard envelope", flawed though it may be, meets ebay's tracking requirements. I somewhat reluctantly use it when I can (since the alternative is to have absolutely no defense against claims of nonreceipt). the price (in addition to not being able to use stamps) is the endless series of questions from buyers wondering why the ebay tracking claims delivery when the item isn't in their mailbox. If only ebay would actually be transparent about its system...

I would very much like to see an increase in the $20 maximum item value (since they will take up to 3 items with total value of $50 in one envelope, why not a single item up to $50?). I start using ground advantage at $49.99 so that would close what is currently a problematic gap in those $20-$50 items.

Not when the seller has withdrawn the money and ceases to sell under that ID.

Also there is a new fraud being done on ebay with false tracking number packages being sent in lieu of the actual expensive item. The false delivery produces nothing for the buyer and fully protects the fraudulent seller who claims porch pirate. So far ebay seem to have no way to defeat this and tells the buyer, tough luck item delivered.

Like everywhere the good people must be punished due to the bad people who skate by.

Here is a current ebay seller scam. Sellers list items they do not have using info from major retailers such as Walmart and Home Depot. Buyers make the purchase, and the sellers use stolen gift cards to make the purchase at the retailers' sites. Buyers receive the goods that the sellers paid nothing for shipped directly from the retailers.

Paperhistory I agree with you with the ebay standard envelope. It only shows when it gets the clients post office and not their home which may take 2-3 days longer. I wish they would increase the maximum to 50.00 and that would solve a lot of problems.
I don't mind using ground advantage for items in the 30.00 to 50.00 range except that the customer will complain about the increase shipping cost to over 4.00
I guess there is no happy medium when working with ebay. I have considered going over the HipStamp but don't have any experience with their platform. Can anyone sight any pros or cons with Hipstamp vs ebay ?

I'll put it this way. One of my ebay accounts is mirrored to hipstamp. I've sold 3765 items through that ebay account so far in 2025. I have sold 72 on hipstamp. (the comparison isn't quite fair, since the store only mirrors buy it nows, not auctions, but you get the idea).

re the standard envelope, I am now dealing with an item where I mailed it on the 9th. ebay tracking shows out for delivery on the 11th, out for delivery and then delivered on the 12th. The buyer has already filed a nonreceived claim since it wasn't his mailbox. So I can "win" the nonreceived claim and piss the customer off, or I can refund the seller anyway and try to file an insurance claim (where ebay requires you to take and submit screenshots of certain things in its own @W%ing system). Great choices. (option 3 is to do nothing and see if the buyer gets his item in the next day or two, which is highly likely). Root problem here is that ebay allows a non-receipt claim to be filed immediately. In this seller's opinion, there should be an absolute bar on non-received claims for at least 30 days after shipment; to do anything else puts us in the position of guaranteeing the postal service's function.

Hmm, I've sold maybe 60 listings on ebay, and even when I mark the order as shipped on a Monday afternoon, I get paid the next day even though the order was mailed on a Tuesday. Granted, am just selling off duplicates with low values so rarely is a sale over $20. I always imagined that ebay had some sort of algorithm that kind of determined if they thought you were legit or not based on activity, ship time, feedback and so forth and held payment or released it based on something internal there. (Freely admit I have no idea if that's how they work; that just seemed logical.)