Regards,
I just went about my normal daily search for collectibles, with one exception - I chose "auction only". What I found validates my fears - that eBay is moving fast and furious towards all auctions requiring auto pay. I'm lazy, so I stopped clicking "place bid" after opening 20 listings.
The count was:
9 auctions requiring auto pay
11 auctions did no require auto pay.
All auctions were from unique sellers.
Here are a few screen shots for your viewing pleasure ...
@transamcc wrote:No, the autopay GARBAGE is back on auctions too. I have not intentionally done auction buys for years nor make offers since early 2023, but it is there on both now. BIN only or seller initiated offers now for me; saves a bunch of money on stuff I DO NOT buy.
Are you saying that no matter what Seller's auction you try to bid on they require your payment method before placing a bid? I would be interested to know if that is the case with my listings ...
@transamcc wrote:It is NOT on all auctions yet, just what appears to be many of them. Seller's settings, perhaps?? I quit auctions a long time ago due to the many days' wait times for them to end. If I am buying, I want it now and find frustration in just waiting for sellers to ship. The autopay option, regardless of the application, is an insult to honest buyers and needlessly messes up combined shipping, as well as extended hold times by EBAY on my paypal funding source when I do not win. It still can take up to a week after an offer is declined for ebay to release a hold. I use ONLY PayPal 4 online shopping
My sincere thanks for the reply and thanks for confirming you do not see it on all auctions. eBay had added the Auto-pay feature to my account when it first rolled out, I only learned that because a customer told me they refused to bid on one of my auctions because of it ... keep in mind eBay did NOT advise Sellers when that function was added to their account AND the default was that it was turned ON. I immediately turned if off. Then they turned it back ON shortly after that ... I turned it OFF again. Then they dropped it for Auctions. So your post made me wonder if they turned it ON for all Sellers regardless of their preference.
So today, and as the result of this thread and your specific post, I just checked my account and sure enough, eBay has ADDED it back to my account but it is turned OFF thankfully because I sell a lot auction style.
It is just as frustrating for honest Sellers as it is for honest Buyers.
I just checked my preferences, and indeed the "option" is there again, just like you said. Also like you, mine was not defaulted to 'on'.
But I am not consoled by that one bit, and I don't believe for one second that every buyer who wanted to bid on my auction that ended last night was able to do so with no prepay requirement.
I know my main category very well, and I know how much to expect from auctions of it when I put together a collection lot. -No, I don't know the exact dollar amount each will fetch; if I did I would make it BIN. But I know from much experience including experiments that these lots are one of those rare things that actually do tend to fetch more at auction than I could get as BIN's, and they do so in only 7 days, as opposed to weeks of waiting, marking down, sending offers, etc. The way I photograph, title and describe them, the precise ratio of clarity and mystery creates a frenzy among certain kinds of buyers. It has worked so well up to this point, that HALF of my annual income has tended to come from them, despite running only 1 or 2 per week, and despite occasional spikes in BIN profits from highly valuable individual pieces I happened to acquire cheaply (in other words, a totally unreliable income source).
What WAS reliable was running 1 or 2 of these auctions every week, Sunday to Sunday, and not only did they provide consistent weekly income of $2-400, they also got eyes on my BIN items, and they got them ALMOST FREE, because of Promoted Listings Express. Now that's over, so not only do I have to promote my auctions at PLS rates, when they draw eyes to my BIN's, a lot more of them are now "sold via promotion" because of .... F, I can't remember the stupid word, "echo" effect or something like that, I am too upset to care right now.
I KNOW that the lot that closed last night should have been one of my best in a long time, a bare minimum of $200 all by itself because it was extra large and included some very desirable pieces .... $250 wouldn't have been surprising, and $300 wouldn't have been shocking. And it was getting all the views and watcher counts that it should have, especially the final 2 days, just like normal. I remember it getting a bid for $89 a few hours before closing, and I checked to see that it had 49 watchers! 49! And I don't need to hear anything about watchers not meaning anything -they do when it comes to auctions.
Or at least ... they did.
I got busy on some other tasks and forgot about the auction, until hours later when I heard the 'CHING' sound on my phone. -Something sold, but what? Did someone accept one of those offers I sent on BIN's earlier? Did someone buy one of the new BIN's I listed in the past couple days? Then I looked at the clock, and remembered (with fearful adrenaline) that it was the time for that auction to close .... but I had not heard any 'bid' sounds for hours. Surely there were ones I just didn't hear because I was in another room, SURELY. I picked up the phone and there was the window, congratulating me on my auction selling for $89! I opened the listing to find that it had ONLY 7 BIDDERS!
There is NO effing way some would-be bidders, namely snipers, weren't prepay-walled, NO WAY. And of course, the winner did view the listing via PLS promotion, so almost $6 will come out of it, instead of the PLE $1.49-$1.99 that would have a few weeks ago.
I don't know what to do now. I am seriously panicking.
