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ebay overstepping boundaries
When did ebay assume the authority to automatically take money from a buyers paypal account without the buyer's consent for an auction that was won? Normally an auction that is won requires the buyer to "pay now" which requires the buyer to log into paypay and submit confirmation. Are we now allowing ebay to simply take our funds without confirmation?
3 comments
fdhughens
OP3 years agoI just now did a test make offer and I see the small sentence at the bottom of the page before the "make offer" button that says ebay will automatically take payment. I obviously neglected to read that sentence. Heavy Sigh...
woodland_gnome
·3 years agoToo many "winners" are not paying for items they commit to buy through Best Offers being accepted and auctions they win. About a year and a half ago (when there was a sudden explosion of scammers using Best Offer to get around the immediate payment requirements of most BINs) eBay started experimenting with requiring pre-authorization of payment (yes, you did "consent" and "confirm" when you supplied the payment information and made the bid/offer). More and more buyers were added to the guinea pig group as time went on, and it seems like it's a permanent thing now. Sellers could opt out of having their listings subject to the pre-auth requirement (it makes discounts for combined shipping difficult) but once a buyer was assigned to the group required to pre-authorize to make an offer, s/he was in it for good, no opting out except by not making offers to sellers who hadn't opted out.
It seems that eBay started a new but similar experiment on bidding about a week or so ago. I would expect that it will follow pretty much the same course as the Best Offer experiment: sellers can opt out (the option to do so is already available in their Buyer Requirements page) but bidders can't. Of course there will be other problems to solve different from Best Offers (bidders who insist on making multiple bids instead of just bidding their maximum bid the first time will likely have multiple pre-auth holds on their funding account; snipers and snipe services will have to adjust their procedures to include possible but not certain pre-authorization flow).
fdhughens
OP3 years agoThank you for taking the time to respond. Your explanation is reasonable although I don't particularly like it. I'm sure I consented in the deep recesses of 30 pages of the "you agree to" rule changes that seem to come around every year or so. As far as I am concerned, ebay lost its way years ago. I loved the auction aspect and now it is just another retail segment. The search isn't worth a flip as it once way but I'm sure it generates massive amounts of revenue similar to store "point of sale items." I've already started to use Amazon more and more. Well, enough whining, thank you for the detailed explanation, it makes sense. Have a good week, dan...