We’re testing changes to auction sales that’ll help you easily go from sold to paid

[seller_update@ebay]

Changes are coming to auctions

As part of our continuing effort to ensure timely payments for our sellers, we'll be testing changes over the next few months that are designed to streamline your selling experience, ensure you get paid without delay, and minimize the hassle of re-listing.

What you need to know

Buyers on select auctions will be required to set up a preferred payment method and shipping address before they can place a bid. After winning an auction, we’ll let them know they have one hour to adjust their order or payment details as needed, otherwise we’ll automatically process their order using their preferred payment method. No action is required from the seller.

These changes aim to improve the auction process on eBay by providing buyers with the ability to decide how they want to pay, while also ensuring that sellers receive payment for their sales. The goal is to foster a more efficient and dependable experience for the entire eBay community.

Next steps

Keep an eye out for these improvements which we’ve already begun rolling out.

Please ensure that all questions and comments remain on topic. Any off topic posts will be moved to the appropriate board, so they can be answered by Community Members.

Please allow us 24-72 hours to provide an answer to your question.

[revenue-collector]

"Well, I don't know what the percentage breakdown actually is Re: manual sniping vs. sniping services (I suspect a lot of bidders don't even know that such services exist), but I would agree that they're going to have to scramble and reprogram heavily if this hindrance becomes standard practice."

True we don't know the exact breakdown, but what I can state based on the last 25 years of buying and selling on eBay, especially in the collectibles categories: in my experience, those that are the most serious about their collections (as opposed to beginners, generalists, etc.), and thus are more likely to spend higher dollar amounts on scarcer items, use sniping services. They do not sit there and manually snipe. 

[a_c_green]

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@revenue-collector wrote:

True we don't know the exact breakdown, but what I can state based on the last 25 years of buying and selling on eBay, especially in the collectibles categories: in my experience, those that are the most serious about their collections (as opposed to beginners, generalists, etc.), and thus are more likely to spend higher dollar amounts on scarcer items, use sniping services. They do not sit there and manually snipe. 

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Just out of curiosity (as I think we're both on the same page anyway), how can you tell the difference between a manual snipe and that of a sniping service? I mean, you won't see me in your auction until the final seconds of bidding, but I'm doing my bid manually.

[revenue-collector]

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that I had metrics, but rather that anecdotally from discussions over the years in various forums, at regional and national shows and events, having collaborative discussions with other specialists, that was my takeaway.

[a_c_green]

seller_update@ebay : We're now less than six hours from the close of this discussion group on Seller Update questions, and yet as of this moment, no one under the seller_update@ebay alias is even logged in here.

Please, let's spend our final hours (*cough* 🙂) having some actual dialogue, as both this thread and the EU GPSR thread have had a lot of questions and discussion posts in which it would be very helpful to have your side of things. Thanks!

[jrbuck99]

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@buyselljack2016 wrote:

OPT OUT .........................

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I don't see anything in that announcement that would indicate this is an optional feature for sellers, unless "select auctions" is some sort of code phrase meaning sellers are actually in control.  If it is optional, I'd absolutely opt out, although it would certainly be more seller friendly to make it an "opt in" feature for sellers who frequently have to deal with non-paying bidders.

Personally, although it's a PITA when it happens, and I wish eBay imposed more serious consequences on those bidders, I haven't found non-paying bidders to be a major problem.  I've been selling on eBay for 25 years and have experienced only 48 NPBs out of 3,593 sales transactions, about a 1.3% NPB rate.  Most of those were in earlier years.  In fact, it's been just over a year since my last one.  Of course, that fellow faced no consequences whatsoever, since eBay has taken a "hands off" approach to NPBs in recent years, leaving it up to sellers to simply cancel and relist.

[revenue-collector]

I wonder if it's more problematic in certain categories. I see sellers complaining about NPB all the time, but I've never had a problem with it. In 25 years I've probably had a total number of NPB in the single digits. Then again, I always took a more laissez faire attitude to payment. If a buyer wanted a week or two to pay for a group of items, it never bothered me, so I never pushed. Ultimately they came through. Now that eBay nags buyers incessently and autocancels orders after a period, it's been a hands-off process for me.

As a buyer, if I am planning to bid on numerous items from the same seller over an N-day period, I proactively message them and let them know, e.g., "I realize that eBay will immediately start sending payment reminder emails the day after a listing ends, and that they may prompt you to cancel any wins at some point, but I wanted to let you know that I am planning to bid on several items between now and END_DATE, and plan to pay for them all at the same time. Please let me know if you have any concerns or requests."

It's worked fine thus far.

Of course eBay throwing a monkey wrench into the works with this preauthorized payment nonsense and the inability to group items for shipment may throw the entire buyer-seller dynamic out the window in certain categories. Some sellers are very reluctant to handle combined shipping via refunding back, as based on history you don't know if eBay is keeping any of the fees.

[a_c_green]

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@jrbuck99 wrote:
I don't see anything in that announcement that would indicate this is an optional feature for sellers, unless "select auctions" is some sort of code phrase meaning sellers are actually in control.  If it is optional, I'd absolutely opt out, although it would certainly be more seller friendly to make it an "opt in" feature for sellers who frequently have to deal with non-paying bidders.

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@jrbuck99 : This is presumably referring to a couple of optional settings on your Buyer Requirements page here:

Auction bid and Make Offer payment info requirement settings

That second checkbox above, about requiring buyers to provide payment info before making an offer, is an extension of the existing Immediate Payment Required setting on Fixed Price listings. Scammers would sometimes use Make Offer as a workaround to avoid the IPR setting, then lure the seller down a rabbit hole of scam strategies if the offer was accepted.

The first checkbox above is the relevant one for auction bidding. If left unchecked, it does not appear that last-second sniping will be hampered by a demand for payment info before accepting the bid.

[jrbuck99]

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@revenue-collector wrote:

I wonder if it's more problematic in certain categories.

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I suspect that's probably true.  Almost all of the items I list fall into the Collectibles category, and most are fairly inexpensive, so I expect most bidders on those items actually do want them and pay in a reasonable amount of time.  Then again, that last NPB I had was for an item under $2, by a long-time eBay member with a high F/B score who simply never responded to my reminder message (or any of the messages I assume eBay sent him), even though I waited a week to send it.  In any event, this ill-conceived "solution" to NPBs, to me, creates far worse problems than it solves.

[vintagecraze50]

EXCELLENT!!!!

[jrbuck99]

@a_c_green; Thanks for that.  I can't say that I've ever seen that set of Buyer rules before, although I've long used the Block settings and Blocked buyers list. Is this a new addition to the Buyer Management page that eBay quietly created to support this NPB change?  As it happens, all three of those boxes were checked by default on my page, although I'm not aware that it's had any impact on potential bidders.  I quickly unchecked all of them.  (I don't include "Make an Offer" in my listings, anyway.)  Also, as a bidder/buyer, I've never run across an auction where I was required to supply a payment method up front, so perhaps it isn't widely used yet.

[a_c_green]

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@jrbuck99 wrote:

@a_c_green; Thanks for that.  I can't say that I've ever seen that set of Buyer rules before, although I've long used the Block settings and Blocked buyers list. Is this a new addition to the Buyer Management page that eBay quietly created to support this NPB change?

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Yes, those two settings (for auction bids and for Make Offers) have been there for a few months now. The Make Offer setting has been there consistently; the auction bids option was there initially, then quietly withdrawn for a while following a bit of kerfuffle over how it was supposed to operate (neither the Customer Service reps nor the Community contacts here knew anything about it, and apparently could not get any further details from within the company either), but it has now reappeared in conjunction with this Seller Update. 

Exactly how long that section has been there is unclear, as it was never formally announced anywhere that I'm aware of. Someone (not me) just discovered it one day and posted about it.

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@jrbuck99 wrote:

Also, as a bidder/buyer, I've never run across an auction where I was required to supply a payment method up front, so perhaps it isn't widely used yet.

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I have not encountered that as a bidder myself, no, although I understand others have. (These settings were present in all seller accounts, but not all bidders/buyers were immediately subject to those settings; only a small group were brought in for starters.) It looks like everyone is now into the Make Offer pre-payment requirements, and I've been used to confirming my funding source in my buying account (i.e. for Make Offer) for a while now. I have not yet encountered the new bidding roadblock for auctions myself yet.

[a_c_green]

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@a_c_green wrote:

seller_update@ebay : We're now less than six hours from the close of this discussion group on Seller Update questions, and yet as of this moment, no one under the seller_update@ebay alias is even logged in here.

Please, let's spend our final hours (*cough* 🙂) having some actual dialogue, as both this thread and the EU GPSR thread have had a lot of questions and discussion posts in which it would be very helpful to have your side of things. Thanks!

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Well, that's disappointing. Here we are at the end of the last day of discussion about the Seller Update, and there has been zero participation by seller_update@ebay for the entire day. Not a single post? This could have been handled much more professionally.