Okay to try to condense a nearly year-long story, eBay already started implementing this for auctions several months ago (I think even before all buyers were rolled into it for offers, in fact I'm still not sure if everyone is). Anyway in both cases they DID NOT give sellers any kind of heads up about it, let alone tell us that it was something we could control in our preferences, and YES they auto-defaulted both of them to be turned ON. The only way any sellers knew about it was by word of mouth, namely here in the Community and probably other online forums about eBay.
Then ..... in January (I think), I'm not sure why but they stopped doing it with auctions, to everyone's relief. The seller option regarding auctions also disappeared in Preferences, seeming to solidify the sense that the bad experiment was over. But THEN, just within the past couple weeks, these posts by buyers getting the popups when they try to bid started posting here (with screenshots to prove it). And sure enough, the auction preference item came back. -All who checked theirs found that it was still 'off' if that's what we had it set at before, so at least there's that, but it looks like the roll-in is happening again for buyers, on any auctions they try to bid on where the seller doesn't know they're set to 'on' (or they want it 'on'). And now you know about it so yes it's a good idea to turn it off, if decent bids are more important than getting paid on day 1.
By the way, that last sentence you wrote -that IS how it works. The term "prepay" really isn't accurate; sometimes I and others use it because it's quicker to type than "pre-authorization" LOL. But that's really what it is -people aren't having to actually pay for bids while the auction is running, only the winner's pre-authorized payment method is charged, at the end. Now that may sound okay to you ... it did to me at first, in fact I was glad because I don't like slow payers or especially dead beats who never pay. The trouble is, it is a BIG turn off to a lot of buyers for a lot of reasons, and YES you are right -it's inconceivable that someone trying to enter a snipe bid in the final few seconds could do so when there's a thing making them entering a card number ... and yeah never mind sniper bots. I use a bot myself and I dread how hard it's going to be winning auctions if it stops working.
But anyway, what this last post ^ (#88) I wrote was about was ..... I don't even believe the software is honoring my Preference to NOT require pre-auth. I don't think I have EVER had an auction get zero bids in the final 3 hours like it did this past Sunday. And like I said, this should have been an extra hot one, for costume jewelry people (you just have to take my word on that, ha). I mean, it was truly devastating to see that closing amount, and have to put that huge and valuable lot in the mailbox for such little money. If auctions are going to be like that now, I really don't know what I'm going to do .... just a huge re-think I guess.
B
Regards,
