Reduce unpaid items when sending offers to buyers

[seller_update@ebay]

In recent months, we’ve made improvements to reduce unpaid item cases for Buy It Now and Best Offer sales, which has led to an increase in successful payments. Based on your feedback, we’re extending these improvements to seller-initiated offers. When potential buyers are interested in your offer, they’ll be taken directly to checkout and, in order to accept the offer and secure the item, they’ll need to successfully complete payment. 

What you need to know

• This change to seller-initiated offers will help reduce unpaid item incidents by requiring buyers to pay for the item in order to accept your offer.
• If a buyer abandons the checkout page, the item will still be available to other potential buyers
  

Please ensure that all questions and comments remain on topic. Any off topic posts will be moved to the appropriate board, so they can be answered by Community Members. 

Please allow us 24-72 hours to provide an answer to your question. 

[gottagoon]

I agree with the others on here this TOTALLY STINKS  what ebay is FORCING on sellers once again.  WHY can't ebay let the seller decide how each of us wants to handle our payments and what works for us. 

I get a lot of customers that buy multiple items.  By doing this, ebay takes a payment fee plus the percentage off of each auction instead of just 1 payment fee.  That is bad enough on its own but the really problem for me it the waste of my time.  Which then I have to go back into each auction and refund the extra postage paid etc.  Which is a HUGE waste of my time.

Which I agree too, with the other person about calling ebay and getting no where.  I just a few weeks ago got the last things like this stopped as I FINALLY talked to a person that stuck with it and in his talking to other ebay people helped me to get it turned off of my listings for immediate payment.  I passed the fix onto other ebay seller friends as they had called for months and months and could never get help to resolve the immediate payment either.  It makes me sick now to see again that ebay is going about it in a different way but is going to force this on sellers again.  IS there ANYWAY WE CAN OPT OUT OF THIS????

[shipscript]

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@powell-memorabilia wrote:  
Strange.  I definitely still have the option available to me.  It works on both the app and laptop.

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@powell-memorabilia  

There were two settings, one for offers and one for bids.  eBay has removed the one for bids, and that is the one that is described as missing.  Are you still seeing two settings, or only the one that remains for offers?

[powell-memorabilia]

Just the second 

 

[steady2304]

seller_update@ebay 

As a seller this new policy is not something I am happy with at all. If I, as a seller choose not to require immediate payment for my Best Offer listings that should apply to any Best Offer listings no matter whether they are buyer or seller initiated. 

I encourage buyers to make multiple purchases to take advantage of combined shipping discounts.

Why should a buyer, if accepting my Best Offer sent to them, have to forgo combined shipping if they accept a Best Offer initiated by me but not have to if they initiate the Best Offer contact?

Sellers should have the option as to how this should work, those that want it fine, but for those that don't there should be a way to opt out just as there is with Immediate payment required on BIN listings..

Why does eBay think they know better than me what is best for my listings?

[shipscript]

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seller_update@ebay wrote:

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@shipscript wrote:
...With buyer initiated offers, we have seen that Autopay also prevented them from using some buying options, like "pay in four" as they were required to set up a payment method ahead of the offer.  ...

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@shipscript We are continuing to explore many scenarios when it comes to buyer initiated offer and combined shipping. We thank you for all of your insight on this!

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seller_update@ebay 

I do hope the team will be looking into the limited payment options of buyer-initiated offers. We see too many reports on the forums of buyers unable to use various PayPal credit vehicles (particularly for pricier items). Example:

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Ask-a-Mentor/Payments-paypal-credit/m-p/34306218 

Buyers also use these credit techniques on combined checkout, which now brings the same issue into seller-initiated offers by splitting their purchases into individual checkouts. PayPal says: "Individual items that are less than $99.00 qualify for special financing when combined for a total of $99.00 or more in a single transaction".

[go-bad-chicken]

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seller_update@ebay wrote:

In recent months, we’ve made improvements to reduce unpaid item cases for Buy It Now and Best Offer sales, which has led to an increase in successful payments. Based on your feedback, we’re extending these improvements to seller-initiated offers. When potential buyers are interested in your offer, they’ll be taken directly to checkout and, in order to accept the offer and secure the item, they’ll need to successfully complete payment. 

What you need to know

• This change to seller-initiated offers will help reduce unpaid item incidents by requiring buyers to pay for the item in order to accept your offer.
• If a buyer abandons the checkout page, the item will still be available to other potential buyers
  

Please ensure that all questions and comments remain on topic. Any off topic posts will be moved to the appropriate board, so they can be answered by Community Members. 

Please allow us 24-72 hours to provide an answer to your question. 

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seller_update@ebay 

Will this also apply to foreign buyers?

Will this apply to listings that are utilizing eBay's International Shipping Program EIS?

And if so will that buyer also be paying for not only their shipping costs AND in the case of European buyers any VAT  that EIS may be collecting at the time that they the buyer accepts an offer?

I'm asking so that I have a better understanding of what my buyers are presented with.

See the screenshot below as an example.

I assume that this is what a UK buyer would see for my shipping options. 2 shipping options provided and fulfilled directly by me and 1 shipping option via EIS. And in the case of EIS eBay would be collecting taxes at that time.?

[docnik]

I agree with all others that have posted here.  My offer success rate has dropped dramatically since you started requiring buyers to pay for each item and not combine offers.  Not to mention, you charge the seller per transaction fees which you don't refund when the buyer request his combined shipping refund.  This is one of the biggest complaints I receive from buyers - asking why they can't combine all the offers I sent them and will I refund them shipping.

I use to send hundreds of offers a week and now I send very few.  I have tried the "coupon" option telling buyers to use the coupon in place of the offers, but not 1 buyer has utilized the coupon.  I have seen my offer rate drop 40% month over month because of this.  Buyers who receive multiple offers don't want to pay shipping on each item.  Surely, you can come up with a fix for this.  If you are going to provide a setting that lets me decide if a buyer has to pay immediately, then you should honor that setting and not force my buyers to pay for each item individually.  I thought at one point I read that you were going to provide a "accept multiple offers from seller" button for buyers that receive more than 1 offer.  Both of these options would make sending offers better and result in sales and not complaints from buyers unable to combine the offers.   Please come up with a better solution to unpaid items.  I do not have a large number of them.   I think the easiest thing is to honor the setting the seller makes.  If I choose to allow combining and not immediate payment, then let my buyers accept offers without immediate payment.

[tacticalbox]

It's also worth noting that spendable funds do not work with the new pre-select payment requirements. 

[jaybird333]

I too want to OPT OUT of this new "feature".  I send offers out all the time (about 100 daily) and sell multiple items to the same customer over the course of a day or 2 and I need to send ONE invoice for them to pay of with combined shipping when they are done.  Please don't tell me this isn't an option.    I am not in such forced program yet...but I need to be pro-active when my switch it flipped.   Thank you much!    Becky from Richfield

[seller_update@ebay]

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@go-bad-chicken wrote:

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seller_update@ebay wrote:

In recent months, we’ve made improvements to reduce unpaid item cases for Buy It Now and Best Offer sales, which has led to an increase in successful payments. Based on your feedback, we’re extending these improvements to seller-initiated offers. When potential buyers are interested in your offer, they’ll be taken directly to checkout and, in order to accept the offer and secure the item, they’ll need to successfully complete payment. 

What you need to know

• This change to seller-initiated offers will help reduce unpaid item incidents by requiring buyers to pay for the item in order to accept your offer.
• If a buyer abandons the checkout page, the item will still be available to other potential buyers
  

Please ensure that all questions and comments remain on topic. Any off topic posts will be moved to the appropriate board, so they can be answered by Community Members. 

Please allow us 24-72 hours to provide an answer to your question. 

---

seller_update@ebay 

Will this also apply to foreign buyers?

Will this apply to listings that are utilizing eBay's International Shipping Program EIS?

And if so will that buyer also be paying for not only their shipping costs AND in the case of European buyers any VAT  that EIS may be collecting at the time that they the buyer accepts an offer?

I'm asking so that I have a better understanding of what my buyers are presented with.

See the screenshot below as an example.

I assume that this is what a UK buyer would see for my shipping options. 2 shipping options provided and fulfilled directly by me and 1 shipping option via EIS. And in the case of EIS eBay would be collecting taxes at that time.?

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Hi @go-bad-chicken  currently these changes to seller-initiated offers will only apply on our eBay.com site for US buyers. However, we plan to expand these changes to other markets in the future.

[gator08041971]

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seller_update@ebay wrote: currently these changes to seller-initiated offers will only apply on our eBay.com site for US buyers. However, we plan to expand these changes to other markets in the future.

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Please tell me you are paying attention to what the sellers have to say about this on the US site?  I'm all for ways to reduce non-payment for purchase/bid winners, but at the same time, restricting honest paying customers from having the option to bundle items from a seller is going to hurt more than you are fixing.

There needs to be an option for the seller to tailor these "protections" so they can make their listings fit their customer needs the most.  Not a one size for all setting.

I may not be as needful of this option, but it does affect my ability to make offers on listings with multiple quantities.  Meaning as it is now, I cannot make automated offers because those offers do not account for quantity, nor can the buyer counter offer or change the quantity.  As a result, I have had to remove auto sending offers on quantity listings.

Sellers that don't use the payment requirement option can still have the cancel after X days option.  But it would at least be helpful to the honest buyers that are looking to buy multiple items from multiple listings. That is what is hurt by this change.

[ittybitnot]

@go-bad-chicken 

At least YOU got an answer!!!!  

[gurlcat]

Just to affirm what they said, yesterday I had an EIS buyer accept my seller offer for an item but didn't pay until hours later.  

[gurlcat]

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@things-and-other-stuff wrote:

Thank you seller_update@ebay  At first glance, the only workaround I can think of is to only provide partial refunds to buyers on any excess shipping paid, but I would still have to manually go in and make multiple refunds whenever this happens (often) as well as combat the often glitchy combined orders in shipping to combine multiple orders for single shipments.

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Replying to you and also @gottagoon  -not to ignore the various problems with this change, but as for the time needed to issue multiple partial refunds (for shipping overages after combining multiple items), I'm not sure why you think it is necessary to do it that way.  Even before any of these changes began, whenever I've had someone buy mulitple of my items separately without asking me to combine (happens occasionally; I guess they're just on a shopping spree and don't realize they got multiple things from the same seller, or maybe they DO realize and just trust me to do the right thing, which I do) .... I just refund the total overage amount out of ONE of the items they purchased.  

So say a buyer purchases 4 items from you, and for simplicity sake lets say all 4 items were $20 + $5 (item + shipping).  But combining them would require a shipping label of only $8.  Therefore they have overpaid $12 for shipping.  Sure, you CAN go in and refund $3 to all 4 of the purchases one-by-one, but you don't have to do it that way.  You can just refund $12 from one of the items.  Be sure to write in the provided message box: "Refund of shipping overage for combining 4 items" so they know the reason for the refund.  

BTW if those 4 items happened to be in different categories with different FVF charges, take advantage of that!  In other words, issue the refund from the item with the highest FVF!  

[gurlcat]

seller_update@ebay Is this change to seller-initiated offers an all-at-once (sitewide) change or a gradual rollout,  and if it's sitewide has it already occurred?  I ask because a buyer accepted my offer about 20 minutes ago, and it is still unpaid.  

Since the buyer's shipping address is not visible on the Order page until after they pay, I cannot be certain that they are not an EIS buyer, but their profile says United States.