Prioritizing payment source with managed payments

[themastershands-nm]

I've been selling on eBay since sometime around 2012. I was forced into managed payments back about February. With no more money going to my Paypal account I had to scramble for a way to pay for my eBay fees. I got a credit card from the bank where my managed payments go and set it up to pay all my eBay fees since it was obvious to me that I cannot always count on having money available to pay my monthly store bill. It worked perfectly for a few months.

Then one day I woke up and tried to ship the item that sold overnight and found I could not because I did not have any money available to pay for the shipping label. Ebay oh so kindly offered to charge my now defunct Paypal account, but since there is no money in it there is in effect, no Paypal account. When I use it, I now use it only for personal items and it is set up to come from my personal checking, not my business account and I don't want to start mixing business and personal funds. So, with no way to pay for my shipping labels, I could not ship. It took me 3 days to get enough money in my pending payments to pay for the shipping labels. Since I missed my shipping deadline, I got a black mark that counts against my seller status.

When I dug into why I had sold an item overnight and did not have pending funds for my shipping labels I found that eBay had, without warning me, changed my monthly store payment from my credit card to my pending payments and was now taking ALL my pending payments up to the monthly store amount. Any difference between my pending payments and that bill was, if positive, available for me to use for shipping labels. If negative, the difference was charged to my credit card. Furthermore, I discovered that eBay decided that it was in their best interests to utilize my pending payments first and that henceforth they would always take their monthly store payment from my pending payments regardless of which payment method I wanted them to use.

This means that every single month, if I am unlucky enough to sell a low value item the day they charge me for my store, I will not be able to ship that item in a timely manner. This means that every single month, I run the very real risk of getting another black mark for not shipping on time.

Of course, I do have options. I can choose weekly payouts (or whatever they are) instead of daily payouts. But in reality, that does nothing. I'm a small seller and while I average an item a day, there is no guarantee that the items sold that week will leave me enough profit to pay for my monthly store fee and their shipping. Also, should I be billed right after I got my weekly payment, I will still have the same problem. Only a single item or two sold, not enough money for both the shipping labels and my store fee.

My other option is to stop next day shipping. Of course if I do that and stay with daily payouts, I still won't have any pending or available money to pay my shipping labels, so, again, I will have to change to weekly payouts. And I hate to change my handling time. I can almost always ship the next day. I arrange my schedule in such a way that I have time almost every morning to get my items packaged before I have to go to work. Sometime during the day, I get them to the post office or a drop box and all is good. They are out of my tiny apartment and out of my hair. It works for me. It works for my customers  and I would think it works for eBay.

But apparently not. Because it seems like eBay's payment source prioritization scheme is designed to prevent small sellers like me from succeeding. It seems like it is directly targeted at sellers with low sales volume and low sales amounts. Every month it's a roll of the dice whether or not I'll get another black mark for not being able to meet my shipping obligations because eBay charged my pending payments instead of the credit card I got specifically for those charges.

And ultimately it comes down to a decision I have to make. Do I change my 1 day handling time to 3 days-the average length of time it takes to get enough money in my account to pay for the labels- and change my daily payouts to weekly ones? Will that solve the problem? I doubt it. I think it will just make it happen once or twice a year instead of three or four times.

I wish eBay would allow it's customers (meaning it's sellers, not the buyers, since they are selling the opportunity to sell items and without the sellers, eBay would have no buyers) to choose how THEY want to pay for the services they chosen. If eBay can charge a credit card for the difference on a monthly basis, they can just as easily charge for the whole amount on a monthly basis. All it takes is a willingness to cater to their customers needs instead of their own desires.

EBAY, ALLOW US TO CHOOSE CREDIT/DEBIT CARD AS OUR EVERYDAY PAYMENT CHOICE INSTEAD OF PENDING PAYMENTS!

Thank you.

[itscalledapostingid]

Just select "Pay with pending payouts" when purchasing shipping labels on ebay.

(It's above and to the left of the Purchase Shipping Label button.)

As for using your Paypal to pay for other things just have your Paypal's backup funding source set to your Managed Payments bank account.

[kare-bearb]

Oh my!  That was too long to read.

Simply set up your credit card as you back up payment method.

That way, if your pending funds aren't sufficient, your cc will be charged.

https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/fees-credits-invoices/fees-selling-costs-charged?id=5297#section2

[mam98031]

You are NOT the only seller that is being onboarded to MP.  We all are.  You are actually at the tail end of this as Ebay has been onboarding large numbers of sellers each month for over a year now.  They are about 80% complete now.

You didn't have to scramble to find a way to pay your Ebay fees.  You could have transferred a little money into your PP account to cover the fees or do as you did and get a CC to pay them with.  That was only necessary for a couple of months before they started running all our fees through MP.

You have two funding option on the shipping labels created in Ebay.  One is to be funded by MP, the other is PP.  If you chose MP, then as long as there are enough PENDING funds in your MP, you can print shipping labels, even if it puts your MP account into a negative AVAILABLE balance.  Or you can choose PP and you have THREE different options in PP, it all will depend on how you have your preferences set up on PP.  You can have the cost of the shipping label come out of your funds in PP, or you can have them pull from your attached checking account or you can have them charged to a credit card.  I have mine charged to a CC that I earn bonus cash on.

You really need to read the emails that Ebay sends out.  They sent an email out notifying all of us that they were going to start taking the store fees from MP.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Payment-Resources/How-does-the-updated-eBay-payments-experience-work-f...

"...there is no guarantee that the items sold that week will leave me enough profit to pay for my monthly store fee and their shipping."  Your "profit" has nothing to do with it.  It would be how much you have in your MP account.  That isn't "profit".  Profit comes from after subtracting ALL your costs and Ebay doesn't have access to all of that nor would your MP account pay bills directly to your vendors for the products you sell, packaging materials or anything else that is part of your costs of sale.

Weekly Payouts is likely a very good choice for you.  Payouts happen every Tuesday.

The following links are very informative and easy to read. Lots of great information in these articles that contain information you should be aware of. After you read them you will likely have questions. Come on back and ask whatever you need to.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Payments-Resources/How-does-the-updated-eBay-payments-experience-work-...

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Payments-Resources/Have-questions-about-payments-Check-out-this-post-f...

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Payments-Resources/Infographic-How-payouts-work-when-eBay-manages-paym...

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Payment-Resources/Changes-to-the-eBay-invoicing-process/ba-p/32004201

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Payment-Resources/Know-your-options-to-pay-eBay-fees-and-selling-costs...