So confusing and stressful!

[bookholm-3]

Hi all, 

I'm fairly new to Ebay and was told I could get good deals on the items I need to furnish my apartment in Germany. However when I tried to pay for the items I needed  (I used "Buy now' feature) Ebay for some reason would not process the payment (not sure why...card works fine on other sites.) Since this is my only card I decided to purchase my items from a website I was more familiar with and that I knew would take my card. 

However I did not realize that, despite not permitting me to pay or even complete the order form fully Ebay still comitted me to pay. I did not realize until days later that I still have items Ebay/the seller expect me to pay for that I have no means to pay for. I have emailed the sellers explaining my mistake and begging them (in English and German) to retract the sale but have heard nothing.

What can I do? I am DEFINITELY not the kind of person who would just order something as a joke and fully intended to buy the items at the time but Ebay refused to take my money! Also now that I have the items from elsewhere I cannot now afford to spend double and get them twice. Do I just need to take the hit and be permanently banned from Ebay? Maybe not such a bad thing given my difficulties with the website but it bugs me that I would be punished or banned (or inconvenience the seller) for an honest mistake/being new to the site.

Thanks!

[jeannicho22]

You may consider contacting eBay and seeing if they will work with you in getting these non-payments taken care of.  Some of your sellers may not be sympathetic because they've heard every excuse in the book.  Sounds to me like you really aren't at fault.

[disneyshopper]

Your location states you are located in the USA, and registered on ebay.com, the USA site, but you are furnishing your apartment in Germany?

What was the reason for not accepting your card?  Is your Paypal account registered in Germany?  I'm trying to find a reason for your card not being accepted.

[mudshark61369 · Accepted solution]

@bookholm-3,

Like disneyshopper I'm going to focus on why you were not able to pay. There may be a couple of reasons for that.

1) You haven't used your account in over a year, and according to your feedback and you've only made one purchase over a year ago.  Because of that ebay's new buyer restrictions may have been applied. The restrictions can be applied because of the quantity and/or price of the items you tried to buy.  (link below) Accounts that have been dormant, then suddenly see a major change in buying habits coupled with an address change  may have caused ebay's security to be triggered.

When you contact ebay, you may need to ask a rep about your location change. Also if you were trying to buy on the ebay.de (German site) your registered country may have kept you from buying from the seller if they do not ship to the U.S..

https://www.ebay.com/help/buying/buying-limits-restrictions/buying-limits-restrictions?id=4012

2) Did you change your address on ebay/PayPal and does it match the address your card is registered to?  You may have to change your country of registry as well. If the seller you bought from only accepts payments in Euros you may need to contact your card issuer to make sure payments are made in that currency, also to let them know you have moved and to authorize purchases made in Europe.

3) Were you paying through PayPal, or by entering your card info to a third party authorization site?  Some of what was written in  #2 may apply if it was a 3rd party site.

You will have to contact eBay if the seller opens an unpaid item dispute. Though if the seller has not done that by now, they may have cancelled the sale(s).  They may have blocked you from buying any items from them in the future. 

When you click on the Buy It Now (BIN) or Confirm bid buttons on ebay, you enter into a contract to buy those items.  Backing out of sales is not something you want to do. If you recently relocated to Germany, you should have discussed changes with your financial institution and card provider in advance.

[bookholm-3]

I just moved to Germany to live for a few years. My card is a USA credit card with a USA billing addressed to my permanent US address but now with a shipping address in Germany. I think this *might* have been what caused German Ebay to not take the card but honestly I have no idea why. No such problems with Amazon, IKEA, Etsy, etc. I tried multiple times to fill out the purchase form and it simply would not let me continue. I even tried using my PayPal account but no dice. I assumed that I simply could not use German Ebay until I got a German credit card (no easy feat) and decided to purchase items from another site that I had used before. I had no idea I had even technically "purchased" the items until a couple days ago. 

It sucks because I don't want the seller to be inconvenienced or punished by fees but I just moved to a new country and can't afford to buy these expensive items twice even if I could get Ebay to accept a payment somehow.

It sucks too because there is no Ebay customer support in Germany and I have not been able to get in touch with the seller (tried German and English.) I feel like this issue could be easily resolved if I could just talk to someone and explain. Like I said I genuinely wanted to purchase the items but was unable to somehow because of the site.