Reduce unpaid items when sending offers to buyers

[seller_update@ebay]

In recent months, we’ve made improvements to reduce unpaid item cases for Buy It Now and Best Offer sales, which has led to an increase in successful payments. Based on your feedback, we’re extending these improvements to seller-initiated offers. When potential buyers are interested in your offer, they’ll be taken directly to checkout and, in order to accept the offer and secure the item, they’ll need to successfully complete payment. 

What you need to know

• This change to seller-initiated offers will help reduce unpaid item incidents by requiring buyers to pay for the item in order to accept your offer.
• If a buyer abandons the checkout page, the item will still be available to other potential buyers
  

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. 

[mam98031]

@ittybitnot 

Good call out.  It was removed with no update to sellers at all.

[somanypostcards]

---

@mam98031 wrote:

@ittybitnot 

Good call out.  It was removed with no update to sellers at all.

---

And it was initially added and turned ON with no update to sellers at all.  If eBay does eventually add this as an option to bid, hopefully sellers can turn it OFF and buyers can see if an auction (or offer) requires payment information and resulting immediate payment.

[ittybitnot]

hopefully sellers can turn it OFF

@somanypostcards 

It no longer exists (nothing to turn off) , that is why I am asking.  

[ittybitnot]

 that is an important distinction,

@mam98031 

In light of the recent process  (referenced in post #11) where Buyer Generated Offers were automatically turned into Seller Generated Offers when the seller "accepted" a buyer offer, the distinction is murky at best.  

[mr_lincoln]

I noticed last week on my Buyer requirements page they dropped the choice to require or not require Auto-pay functionality for Buyers interested in placing bids on AUCTIONS.  Here is what the Update says:

What other steps is eBay taking to reduce unpaid items?

We're actively testing solutions that require buyers to provide payment information before they submit bids to reduce unpaid items in Auctions.

I sell a lot Auction style and turned Auto-pay OFF for a number of reasons, these are specific to what I sell and may not apply to others and what they sell:

-The number of Unpaid items I get is fairly low and most items will sell on the next auction cycle or two anyway or the Second Chance offer feature

-Some Buyers message me before or after bidding that they would like or need a little more time to pay if they win or actually won an auction.  My UPI cancellation is set to Manual because I have no issue working with my customers, per the eBay credo, it "enhances the buying experience" ... 

-I only had one Buyer contact me about having to provide payment info before bidding (they did not bid because of that) and that was the result of eBay adding Auto-pay to my account, not telling me and the default of course was ON.  I immediately turned it off.

They have removed the choice to turn it on or off for Auctions and I suspect that is because of their Update announcement above and the changes they made, meaning they are NOT giving Sellers the option to turn it OFF for the Auction flow.  Here's the Before and Now look on the Buyer Requirements page.

PROS AND CONS

I am not a fan of having the control of that function taken out of my hands.  I certainly did not or would not have voted for that.

This may or may not negatively affect my Auction sales.  I know repeat Buyers will contact me if it's an issue but new Buyers may not bid because of it.  I may never know if they don't contact me.

Beginning in January this year I started keeping track of Auction sales, BIN sales and Sent Offer sales.

This month 58% of my sales have been from Auctions with about 8 days left in the month.  January auction sales were 38%.

I can see requiring a payment method eliminating the following:

-Unpaid items

-Bid retractions

-Shill bidders who use two accounts to run a price up then retract bids to win at a lower price

In looking at UPIs compared to retracted bids on what I sell I would say I get about a half dozen or so UPIs per year and fewer bids retracted.

If anyone knows where there is more definition to this or where we can voice our opinion directly that would be great.

[gator08041971]

I'm just going to toss this out here, and while I may not have the same stakes in this issue like many of you, my thinking is this:

If you are doing say free shipping, this then really isn't an issue at all, correct?

Quantity discounts wouldn't be an issue here either, since those only apply to items in a single listing, right?

Now.

I agree that sellers should have the option to control this behavior.  That is, if they wish to run their listings without this feature enabled, let them.  But I guess what I'm saying is, there are ways around the problem to a degree.  No?  Even if its not ideal.

Just was tossing it out there is all.  Don't mind me.

[mr_lincoln]

@gator08041971 

The topic is Unpaid items, nothing to do with shipping.  But thank you for posting.

[gator08041971]

No offense, but it does.

The problem revolves around combining orders in order to save the buyer shipping costs no?  If the buyer has to pay for each item individually from different listings by the same seller because payment is required immediately, your position is that they cannot save on shipping within that system and it renders shipping discounts useless.

If you had free shipping offered on those listings, this then becomes moot.  Granted you might still feel as though you have the upper hand as a seller, but from the buyer perspective they won't care as much, as for them the free shipping gives them good feels anyway.

Its all perspective.  But sure, dismiss it because you think I'm not thinking along the same line that's fine by me.

Good luck.

[tacticalbox]

mr_lincoln To say this has nothing to do with shipping is foolish. For the love of god please don't add worthless noise to this conversation.  Lord knows how unbelievably hard it is to get anyone from ebay to understand us already. One comment like that and we're back to square one. If you don't understand the connection between this and shipping, then leave. Clearly it doesn't effect you. Goodbye.

[things-and-other-stuff]

Though not ideal for all of my items, for most, raising the base price a little and offering free shipping would offer a partial way around the problem @gator08041971 in that it would solve the issue of multiple refunds ... but eBay is still going to be taking that extra 30 (to now 40) cent per-order fee on every individual order--even currently when you refund shipping and they pro-rate your fees back to you on your refund, they keep that little per-order fee that they charge on every individual order. They add up. They'll add up exponentially now.

Preview

[go-bad-chicken]

---

@gator08041971 wrote:

No offense, but it does.

If you had free shipping offered on those listings, this then becomes moot.  Granted you might still feel as though you have the upper hand as a seller, but from the buyer perspective they won't care as much, as for them the free shipping gives them good feels anyway.

Its all perspective.  But sure, dismiss it because you think I'm not thinking along the same line that's fine by me.

Good luck.

---

"but from the buyer perspective they won't care as much, as for them the free shipping gives them good feels anyway."

By no means does Free Shipping give all buyers "good feels". It's most definitely is not the solution to this problem. In fact it makes it even worse. Free shipping cost 46% of Americans MORE MONEY! That's because that 46% live in states where sales tax is not applied to the shipping portion of a transaction.

What needs to happen here is for eBay to....

1 - Give sellers the ability to control their own offer settings, so that they can best service their customer base.

2 - eBay needs to financially partner with sellers in this endeavor and do something along the lines of charging all seller's the $0.40 fee for the first transaction with any given buyer and $0.00 for every subsequent purchase made by the same buyer within a 48 to 72 hour window. This solves most of the problems that seller's who predominantly sell multiple items to the same buyer and are then combined for shipping. 

[powell-memorabilia]

---

@ittybitnot wrote:

hopefully sellers can turn it OFF

@somanypostcards 

It no longer exists (nothing to turn off) , that is why I am asking.  

---

You are are referring to the option for payment method required before a buyer initiates an offer?  If so, I show that option as active.  I can toggle it on and off.

 

[go-bad-chicken]

---

@powell-memorabilia wrote:

---

@ittybitnot wrote:

hopefully sellers can turn it OFF

@somanypostcards 

It no longer exists (nothing to turn off) , that is why I am asking.  

---

You are are referring to the option for payment method required before a buyer initiates an offer?  If so, I show that option as active.  I can toggle it on and off.

 

---

@powell-memorabilia 

Thats correct.

What is no longer there and what others were referring to was the toggle that required buyer's to provide payment information prior to making a bid on auctions. That button is no longer there

[powell-memorabilia]

---

@go-bad-chicken wrote:

---

@powell-memorabilia wrote:

---

@ittybitnot wrote:

hopefully sellers can turn it OFF

@somanypostcards 

It no longer exists (nothing to turn off) , that is why I am asking.  

---

You are are referring to the option for payment method required before a buyer initiates an offer?  If so, I show that option as active.  I can toggle it on and off.

 

---

@powell-memorabilia 

Thats correct.

What is no longer there and what others were referring to was the toggle that required buyer's to provide payment information prior to making a bid on auctions. That button is no longer there

---

Strange.  I definitely still

have the option available to me.  It works on both the app and laptop.

[gator08041971]

What needs to happen here is for eBay to....

1 - Give sellers the ability to control their own offer settings, so that they can best service their customer base.

2 - eBay needs to financially partner with sellers in this endeavor and do something along the lines of charging all seller's the $0.40 fee for the first transaction with any given buyer and $0.00 for every subsequent purchase made by the same buyer within a 48 to 72 hour window. This solves most of the problems that seller's who predominantly sell multiple items to the same buyer and are then combined for shipping. 

Not saying it was a fix.  But I agree that we the sellers should have more flexibility here, so I'm on your side.  lol

I have to add a furthering to this mess.

I did a test of the "Best Offer" situation.   Ugh.

While the automated Best Offer seems to work like I expected, what I didn't expect was the Offer to not include ANY options for quantity.   So if you are sending a buyer a Best Offer on a listing with a quantity of items, they are unable to input a quantity at that price at all.  Nor would they qualify for a quantity discount.  What a pain in the **bleep**.   They can still specify a quantity if they make an offer themselves though.

While its not directly related to this thread's discussion, its another in a line of things we have no control over.  And that makes the option worthless for a quantity driven listing.