Automatic Auction Payments, As a Buyer How to opt out ??? Ebay is Killing Sellers & Buyers

[fg-militaria]

I have been using eBay as a buyer and seller now for over 10-12 years. Ebay for me was at its peak back between 2017&2019. It was safe the experience was good, paypal worked great and the fee % was at least realistic. At this point I am feed up. I have sold over 2,500 items on Ebay, over my account and in selling for other people! I have probably spent somewhere in the realm of $150,000 dollars on ebay buying items over the past decade(across multiple different business accounts) and at this point I am FEED up. 

I was forced into auto paying for purchases on Best Offer about 3 months ago. Today I tried to bid on an item, it said I was FORCED to have auto pay set up for Auctions now & I'm annoyed. I as a buyer and seller don't agree with it.... where to start, 1st it does not allow combined orders this means if im buying 5-10 items from a seller I might be paying an extra 50-100 dollars UP FRONT in shipping, praying the seller gives it back. Additionally those funds are now held up on my card, meaning if I need that 50 bucks for other business expensive I have to wait 5 or 6 days for the refund to process even if I get it, that's a scam. 2nd as a buyer for multiple business sometimes the funds are not available for immediately paid, it is nice to be able to wait 2-7 days to make a payment. Most seller are fine with it if you message them and they get paid either way usually they dont care. Most business buy on margin especially if you have high expenses or large volumes of inventory 10s to 100s of thousands of dollars into product. 3rd, now if there is some issue with the auction you are going to be forced to auto pay and then go through the stupid and painful process to get a refund again tying up funds for WEEKS.... there are DOZENS of other issues with this not to mention it is moral and literally wrong, forcing people to "pre pay" for an auction before it even is won is a scam. ( I have heard horror stories where people made offers and the offer was declined but yet their funds were held by their bank or CC for over a week) DISGUSTING 

SO WHY does this hurts sellers? Well ebay just killed impulse buying, ebay has now put a pay wall in front of every buyer out there, when they put in an offer or even a bid they have to think twice about it, not being able to combine invoice also makes buyers think twice about making deals, they are way less likely to buy 2 or 3 items at once. Is it nice to be basically auto paid the second you take an offer 100%, but due to ebay policies ( aka sales tax charging on the whole order introduced in 2019-2020)/ managed payment and many more dumb and franking terrible business moves by ebay.) you end up losing in the long run. Fine your 5 orders get paid quickly but when you used to have 25 orders in the same amount of time who the heck cares. I would WAY rather have 25 orders and 3 people never pay me then have 5 orders and I get paid 100% of the time. All ebay is doing over the last 10 years is putting a nail in their own coffin, policy after policy - they are ruining the buying & ruining the selling experience for ALL ebay members. Even if you're a seller who feels this is better in the long run all you are doing is giving ebay more and more control of your business. On this account i used to get in 2017-2019 I would say 10-15 sales a week, I had 2-3 offers DAILY & used to have interactions and communications with buyers DAILY. Now I barely get 3-4 sales every week and half, almost 0 questions, and maybe handle 4 or 5 offers A MONTH. Essentially my overall traffic and interact with my customer base is down over 100%-200% from just 3 or 4 years ago. My sales have declined now on ebay now for 4 or 5 years straight. This year I believe will be my worst year EVER since I started my journey on ebay. ALL thanks to ebay team of honestly incompetent people who put in new rules and policies who hurt EVERYONE- buyers, sellers, collectors, business people & honestly everyone. ( can we talk about how ebay now doesn't make your new listings visible for 24 hours also?? are you kidding me) !! Ive had great time on ebay and as a young college student the money I was able to make at the time was second to none. At this point for every one positive thing ebay has done they have done 15 things that hurt everyone. Im honestly saddened and disgusted at this point! 

My question, is there a way to get around this policy for auctions as a buyer? Can you put in your CC info and then delete it ?? If so are they still able to charge your card ?? Has anyone found a way around this ? 

Sorry for the rant but I feel many out there are feeling the same way and I hope to get an answer to my question & maybe here how other feel who have been put in a similar situation! Ebay is just priming themselves for a bigger competitor to come long and eat up their market share. I am SHOCKed this hasn't happened already but I don't honestly think it would be all that hard to do. Their complacent and greed driven attitude has slowly eroded their business and that is going to get them sooner or later. It all constructive criticism at the end of the day but when you know it falls on deaf ears what are you going to do. EBAY doesn't CARE about me and they most certainly DONT care about you, never forget that! 

[avastcosmicarena]

This is a horrible policy. PayPal Credit is currently doing a promotional offer that allows 0% APR for 12-24 months, and I wanted to take advantage of it, but then was hit with an automatic payment unexpectedly, immediately charging me and not allowing me to take advantage of the PayPal Credit promotional offer that I wanted to use. This is a horrible policy for buyers and needs to change.

[ljl203]

I just was 'forced' into it and now sweating and praying the seller will refund me.  This is a terrible change and was not presented well. Really could stop me from buying on Ebay.

[mojo7]

I just found out about it tonight and this will be my last auction. Taking choice away from me as a buyer is a deal killer.

[hollyd7770]

In regards to the Auto Pay on AUCTIONS only, the payment does not go through for 3 days, giving time to purchase more than 1 item from a seller and have them send an invoice. I never let it go the 3 days before I pay as you can pay before that 3 days is up and it cancels the Auto Pay for that order.