It seems on top of the chaos of the authenticity group, ebay has decided that watches of 10k should be funded through escrow.com, an outside company. The authenticity group had claimed this program would not be mandatory however it seems that the buyer is directed there and the seller has no choice but to join once the buyer has paid through escrow.com.
Here's what took me a week to figure out and sadly ebay customer service either has never heard of escrow.com or will tell you to call them with questions.
A first time buyer must go through a few phases once they join.
1. setting up the account and funding the transaction.
2. buyer must verify after funding via photo id.
3. As a seller if you want your money you must start an account with the email you used to open your ebay account. Once you and the buyer have been verified, the watch with show in your paid items and you go through the same process of shipping the watch to ebay authenticity as usual and they ship it to the buyer.
The good - return period is reduced to 7 days and no returns are allowed after ( So they say). Returns are also advertised as being paid by the customer (also tbd).
The bad - ebay has not informed customer service on this process, payout takes about 2-3 weeks. Ship to authenticity (1-2 days), Authenticity (2 days), Authenticity shipping (2-3 days), review period (7 days). Plus the time to set up accounts. Also escrow.com does not verify info on weekends.
Our experience was the item was purchased on the 10th and funded and approved on the 16th.
Also the payment comes through escrow.com and not ebay so likely extra tax docs and you have to pay $10 to have the funds wired. They will send you a check for free (3-5 days)
So there it is. Normal escrow.com transactions cost $165 plus a percentage of the total. For now ebay is eating this cost but I am sure there is a rate hike or benefit reduction on the horizon.
Good Luck. I'll update more once the transaction goes through.
