new to bidding

Question

Is every item available for bid?

gosimus · Answer

@sheday_3 < Is every item available for bid? > Some listings will require you to provide authorization to automatically charge your payment source if you win. This is a feature that eBay opted sellers into when the feature was begun. It's possible for the seller to turn it off, but some sellers don't even know that eBay turned it on. So be aware that you might encounter the auto-payment requirement and be ready to decide what you'll do. There was an item, just yesterday, that I wanted to bid on. I knew about the auto-pay but this was my first experience with it. To select PayPal as the payment method, I would have had to let them link my PayPal account to my eBay account. I didn't want to do that, so I "xed out" and the seller lost a sale. Or instead of PayPal I could have selected a credit card, or venmo whatever that is, but I didn't want to. I could have let them link my PayPal to eBay for that one purchase, if I had won, and then turned right around and unlinked it again, and I might still do that, but probably not. I'm thinking about it. I'll try to find the same item somewhere else first.

eburtonlab · Answer

@sheday_3

On eBay, some items are listed as auctions that can be bid on, but many are fixed price listings with only a "buy it now" price. Some items may have an option to make an offer. Some items may combine all the options, at least initially. Typically, in most categories, once a valid bid has been made, the options for "buy it now" and "best offer" go away, and the high bidder at the end of the auction is the winner.