What is the point of having auto-pay feature after 7 days if sellers can still cancel after 4 days w/o payment?
Summary: ajs_coins_and_alchemy questions the logic of eBay's auto-pay policy, which guarantees payment in 7 days but allows seller cancellations after 4 days. They suggest this inconsistency is problematic, especially after experiencing a non-payment cancellation themselves. Various participants discuss similar issues, with gurlcat sharing experiences of auto-pay complications and suggesting potential logical flaws in eBay's system. ten_o_nine and thriftyfiftyfifty speculate that these issues might be due to system glitches or oversight. The consensus is that eBay's policies might need revisions to eliminate contradictory functionalities.
Is mine a fringe view? Or a basic logic view? I'm sorry but this seems like a no brainer to me ...
If you're going to require payment/shipping options upfront with 7-day auto-pay ... that should immediately 100% absolutely disable that seller's ability to cancel after 4 days of non-payment, as payment is GUARANTEED by the 7th day. What is the point of auto-pay if the seller can cancel ahead of time?
I fully understand the auto-pay is an OPTION for the seller to enable, I'm just saying if that is ENABLED, then cancellation for non payment should be DISABLED.
Before anyone asks or accuses ... Yes I got hit with a non-payment cancellation, and I believe it's because the seller doesn't realize they have the auto-cancel set up after 4 days because I got whacked right at what appears to be the 96th hour after the auction ended and I don't believe this seller would have cancelled on me intentionally .... this only ever happened to me once before and was same thing, unintentional auto-cancel.
Truly stupid feature in my opinion, some sellers had auto-cancel set up years ago, and auto-pay rolled out, should have immediately disabled that function.
ETA: Experienced this as a buyer but approaching it as a seller because it is a seller's function and I truly want to know what the point is???... what's the point!?!?!?
ajs_coins_and_alchemy
OP4 days ago · Editedhttps://community.ebay.com/forum/selling-57920/topic/auto-pay-changes-1-hour-7-days-changed-to-24-hours-4-days-485327/
New post/discussion I created regarding the new changes made? 7 days dropped to 4 days?
ajs_coins_and_alchemy
OP4 days agoFirst time I've ever experienced this now...
Auto-pay used to be 1 hour or 7 days ... now I'm seeing 24 hours vs 4 days.
Also seems as if a number of sellers who didn't have auto-pay on their listings before now do, but it's not universal. So that seems weird to me. I know a bunch of sellers I buy from didn't all randomly choose to institute auto-pay at the same time ... but not every seller has it so it wasn't a mandatory roll out or a roll-out against me with my new UPI strike.
Weird???
steve_stuff
·2 weeks ago" ... auto-pay ... that should immediately 100% absolutely disable that seller's ability to cancel..."
Agreed -
You say 'believe' the seller ... so you didn't contact/ask the seller if auto cancelled or manual.
If an auto pay was cancel-able then I THINK ebay forgot about the cancel function and didn't override it.
"I got hit with a non-payment cancellation, and I believe it's because the seller doesn't realize they have the auto-cancel set up after 4 days ... 7 days"
I take it that you had to enter payment option for this purchase, so it should have been shown to seller as an auto pay.
Also told by three buyers that they could pick payment time frame - within an hour or anytime within the next seven days and one hour - did you see that option?
ajs_coins_and_alchemy
OP2 weeks agoYes i messaged them. But i didnt wait for their response before I came here to whine and complain 🤣
My payment info and payment time frame settings are already pre-set / saved. I don't manually enter payment method or select time frame before every bid. It's already automatically set to 7 day unless the seller's settings don't allow combined shipping in which it forces buyer into 1 hour payment. Looking at any active auctions from seller confirms the combined shipping / 7 day allowance so my 7 day setting was in effect.
I go back to I strongly believe this was auto-cancel function at play.
steve_stuff
·2 weeks ago"i messaged them. But i didnt wait for their response..."
Until you hear back with what they did [manually cancelled] or didn't do [was auto cancelled] it's just a guess - BUT STILL - I agree that sellers shouldn't be able to cancel and again think the programmers didn't realize they had to disable that function in these cases, or maybe even that the function existed .
ajs_coins_and_alchemy
OP2 weeks agoConfirmed by seller: Auto cancellation
Totally was a guess (educated guess though based on exact timing of cancellation at the 96th hour, most people aren't waiting around to cancel at the exact moment cancellation becomes eligible ... but also have some history buying from this seller, but dont know him much)
Yes terrible systems that contradict each other.
gurlcat
·2 weeks agoThey made Autopay so insanely complicated with "if/then"s that you basically can't use it with predictable results. I finally enabled it as a seller a few months ago, and I'm glad that it definitely cuts down on some amount of slowpoke/deadbeat frustration, but it doesn't apply to all buyers for some reason. I've sought help from Instagram and everything, and they didn't know why.
Example from today. I had auctions close this afternoon, and none of them should have had more than 1 hour to pay, but one of them just has the ole "Awaiting payment" thing, in other words 96 hours.
My only guess is this -remember when eBay was rolling it out, it was gradual for both sellers AND buyers. And I think they must not have rolled it out to all buyers. I can't see any pattern to indicate any other explanation.
Then there's bunches of other confusing/confounding factors, like whether accepted offers take the listing out of public view/purchase ability or not, whether it's 4 days or 7 days, how counter-offers change things (I remember there being something about those causing a different result than regular offers), etc etc etc.
And we've run experiments to try to iron on some things for certain, and got no consistent results. Basically it's a hot mess.
ajs_coins_and_alchemy
OP2 weeks agoThis is one LOOOOOOONGG experiment then. 🤣
Time to iron out those wrinkles before they set in and become permanent.
gurlcat
·2 weeks agoSoooo generous of you to think of it as an experiment. It's more like an abandoned construction zone. And it's far from the only example. The site is a Walking Dead'scape of old features that still sort-of work, half-finished transitions, policies that were ludicrous to even consider and not actually enforced, etc.
ajs_coins_and_alchemy
OP2 weeks agoWow .... eBay is like my highways ... a bunch of long ongoing / abandoned / never ending construction zones (Chicago suburbs).
thriftyfiftyfifty
·2 weeks agoNot the first time I've personally heard this and thought it would have been fixed by now...wonder if the "Manual" Cancellation capability is the culprit?
gurlcat
·2 weeks ago@thriftyfiftyfifty Well Kyle didn't say he'd get it fixed, but did say he'd return to clarify the process. But did he even do that? {Magic 8 Ball says "Very doubtful"}
ten_o_nine
·2 weeks agoThe short answer to "what's the point?" is that there is no point. It is a glitch caused by eBay developers for sure.
ajs_coins_and_alchemy
OP2 weeks ago · EditedThinking back to it, I believe I recall the auto-pay was rolled out with it enabled for everyone and sellers had to opt out ... so I kind of understand that they may not have wanted to override previous policies, but that's IMO the problem that it rolled out enabled and had to be opted out of manually.
Either way, the devs should have set it up where it's one or the other (or neither enabled) but not allowing sellers to enable both functions (auto-pay / auto-cancel) at once. (ETA ... disable auto-cancel ... but also disable ability to manually cancel too)
ten_o_nine
·2 weeks agoETA ... disable auto-cancel ... but also disable ability to manually cancel too
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Sounds like a missed requirement.
ten_o_nine
·2 weeks agoBut to be fair to developers, it 'the BA's at eBay.
krazzykats
·2 weeks ago · EditedTo be able to combine items won within 7 days, not as a payment due date.
ajs_coins_and_alchemy
OP2 weeks ago@krazzykats
I don't understand your response ... If you are allowing to combine items won within 7 days, then allow those 7 days to pay, plain and simple. It's nonsensical to "allow 7 days to combine" if payment is "due within 4 days". Those two policies then contradict.
gurlcat
·2 weeks agoDid you have current bids on any of their current auctions? If not, maybe it changes to 4-day, since there's no evidence of you "still shopping" the seller's items?
ajs_coins_and_alchemy
OP2 weeks agoNo active bids (snipe software ... and even so, some people.manually snipe) ... but highly extremely dubtful on your theory because again, defeats the concept of 7 days. Who is to say I wouldnt bid on an auction on day 5. It is 7 days, not 7 days to shop (but 4 if we dont believe you are shopping)
gurlcat
·2 weeks agoGood point, though I wouldn't call my idea a theory so much as a quasi-logical wild guess. My actual theory is that many supposed "auto" functions on eBay are just buggy AF.
Now here's the part I shouldn't say at all, ha: your buying strategy is why I turned combined shipping off, to avoid the 7-day thing completely. 🤣 I haaaate waiting for payment, and in this case it's extra irritating because even if a buyer sincerely does intend and hope to win more auctions (rather than just claiming to, to stall paying as long as possible), there's no guarantee that they WILL win. And if they don't, then I'd have been made to wait a whole WEEK for nothing!
On the other hand, if I knew ahead of time that a winner wanted to win more of my stuff in the next week, like if they wrote to ask if I'd combine shipping, I'd be like "Tell you what, go ahead and pay for this, I'll ship it tomorrow, and if you win any more later, I'll give you free shipping on that/those.
ajs_coins_and_alchemy
OP2 weeks agoIs your "I haaaaaaate waiting for payment" psychological or about actual cash flow? Do you have payouts set daily? Weekly? Unless you're paying out daily I just don't see much if any effect ... unless you use ebay funds to directly shop.
Oh and boy did that just get me thinking and fuming again about free vs charged shipping. Not advice or argument against you ... just a rant. Guy i buy from who had free shipping for longest time just switched to charged shipping. "I cant afford free shipping anymore!!!". Boy is that guy a dumby. I always buy multiple items from him. I now pay less for his items because he deducts me a heck of a lot of shipping fees. 🤪 If he had still had shipping included he would make more money on multi-item orders. Also free shipping encourages buyers more, charged shipping just irritates and demotivates buyers ... means less money for seller.
I digress.
gurlcat
·2 weeks ago · EditedIs your "I haaaaaaate waiting for payment" psychological or about actual cash flow?
Both. I'm a generally impatient person, like a child basically. Also living hand-to-mouth, now more than ever.
Do you have payouts set daily? Weekly? I don't have payments "set"; I just withdraw whenever funds change from processing to available. Maybe that's what "daily" means, IDK.
Unless you're paying out daily I just don't see much if any effect ... unless you use ebay funds to directly shop. I do use available funds to purchase inventory usually. But even if someone had weekly payments, the 7-day "shopping" buyer payment delay would add a week to the seller's weekly payout, would it not?
EDIT: These^ questions/answers are really only half the picture though. It's not just that I hate to wait; in my experience the more time that goes by, the higher the chances that the buyer is not going to pay at all. It's extremely rare for the buyer to pay on the last day.
Before I switched to autopay, if someone hadn't paid after 48 hours, I'd send them a message, "Congratulations on your win! Do you still intend to buy this?" -and sometimes that would prompt them to reply "Sorry, I changed my mind" or something like that, so I'd cancel and start over. If I hadn't asked, I'd have had to wait twice as long for that start-over.