What, no posts about the new immediate payment requirement for accepted offers???

[gurlcat]

Just saw a video about it by Rockstar Flipper on Youtube. He showed the screen that a buyer now gets when they want to make an offer, asks what payment method they want to have (immediately) charged if the seller accepts.  Apparently it's in Beta so it won't happen with all offers.  The thing that really surprises me is this: if they could figure out a way to take immediate payments for offers sent in this direction, why haven't they done it in the other direction (where a watcher-buyer accepts an offer made by the seller, but then gets days to pay)?  If anything that should be the easier one, since the approval is made by the party who will pay, in real time, so why can't THAT trigger an automatic payment screen?  
Anyway, hopefully the buyer-to-seller offer  immediate payment is just the first and the other will follow, and just in itself it is incredible news, honestly I am kind of in shock, and I don't know how (or why) ebay apparently kept it secret until launching, but it's the biggest seller advantage change I've ever seen, that's for sure.  

[techdude10]

I am posting all over, and will continue to do so. I am highly p*ssed off.

There is SO MUCH wrong with this new scheme. I am reluctant to write it all out. However, I am furious, so it will be quite easy.

First of all, where was the communication on this? None WHATSOEVER. This is very wrong and unprofessional on Ebay's part. You NEVER institute a program where you automatically charge people's payment methods without proper communication. Never. eBay is asking for a lawsuit. Period.

I am a buyer and a seller. I often find products on ebay to resell cheaply, so I purchase items and then resell. No worries there. I often make best offers and then I group all my purchases and pay immediately, or I send messages to my seller, letting them know EXACTLY when I will send payment. Then I keep my word. I always pay.

I first noticed it the other day. I made an offer and the seller accepted, and then a few moments later, I see the item in my paid items list. At first I was like "huh, I must have been sleepy when I paid, because I don't remember checking this out."

Then I forgot about it. Then it happened again, and I was like wait, I KNOW FOR SURE I didn't check this out yet, since I am grouping this purchase with another best offer I am waiting for a reply on from the same seller. That's when I go check my order details, and sure enough, eBay tells me that they "AUTOMATICALLY charged my payment method for this purchase."

What? How dare they do this? I DID NOT GIVE PERMISSION FOR THIS!

The indignation I feel now cannot be quenched.

The reasons that this new facade of a scheme is so wrong are numerous. But the few that come to mind are:

1. Unauthorized purchases - leading to an increase in payment disputes = Bad for sellers/good for ebay.

2. Unauthorized purchases - buyer simply not ready to pay = Turn off for Buyers/Bad for sellers.

3. Automatic charge to card issues - I use a debit card and pay directly from my funds in my account = Overdraft potential or what if I needed that funds to buy food for my child, and ebay just charges it automatically and I was waiting to get paid TOMORROW.

4. Sometimes you need to cancel a purchase BEFORE paying - Payment automatically charged = more work needed to refund buyer, instead of a simple cancellation.

5. Increase in returns - Buyer made offer and is automatically charged. But since buyer feels forced into transaction, they will be more likely to want to return item = bad for sellers.

This is just how psychology works. A buyer has to feel that THEY are the person who is in charge of a transaction. Ebay wants to force a buyer to pay just because they sent an offer? Who the *#@% does eBay think they are?

"I" make my purchases. I dont need ebay's help. Is eBay silly or just stupid?

There are NUMEROUS ways this could be bad.

Further, I agreed to a best offer. I also agreed to pay within the STIPULATED timeframe eBay sets, which is around 48 hours. This is why they have a NON-PAYMENT strike and marks against a non-payer, but buyers who pay should NOT be punished.

I think instead of forcing or underhandedly charging people's payment methods, how about enforcing RULES YOU ALREADY HAVE, you know, by punishing people with NON-PAYMENT strikes.

That might get people to pay when they win an item or accept an offer. No need to punish people by forcing buyers to pay.

How can this NOT lead to a decrease in buyer sales once they realize what's happening? It took me just two transactions to realize that this backwards approach is wrong and unethical.

My last point is I truly wonder what criteria are the test buyers taken from? How are they selected for this sham of a scheme? Why am I being punished for following the rules and paying within the given time frame?

This is wrong. However, if ebay wants to carry on this sill, stupid scheme, give the sellers and BUYERS an option to OPT OUT. I do not want ebay automatically charging my card for anything. Who would?

Sure, some sellers would see this as a good thing for them, but it really isnt. I am a seller, and I NEVER want a buyer who is purchasing from me, charged without their knowledge and EXPRESS PERMISSION, regardless if they are a deadbeat and never pay or not.

Checkout should be handled the same way it always has been. You accept an offer, you get a fair amount of time to pay. Any seller who thinks this is not right is unethical and does not care about their buyer.

The raw implications for buyers, especially THIS TIME OF THE YEAR is simply just rank stupidity.

This will surely end in a lawsuit or a major consumer complaint. There are small-time buyers and sellers like myself, and then there are major purchasers who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a day. Go ahead and charge them without their permission. I dare you. Ebay will be contending with some serious banks and it will be the self-same sellers who will suffer.

Essentially, eBay is allowing the window to be opened for **bleep**-off buyers to open payment disputes left and right and claim "unauthorized or unknown purchase".

And in this case, they would be RIGHT.

You never charge someone's card without their consent and permission.

NEVER.

[gurlcat]

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@techdude10 wrote:

I first noticed it the other day. I made an offer and the seller accepted, and then a few moments later, I see the item in my paid items list. At first I was like "huh, I must have been sleepy when I paid, because I don't remember checking this out."

Then I forgot about it. Then it happened again, and I was like wait, I KNOW FOR SURE I didn't check this out yet, since I am grouping this purchase with another best offer I am waiting for a reply on from the same seller. That's when I go check my order details, and sure enough, eBay tells me that they "AUTOMATICALLY charged my payment method for this purchase."

What? How dare they do this? I DID NOT GIVE PERMISSION FOR THIS!

So you never got that popup (screenshot at the bottom of my original post ^) where you had to authorize the automatic payment if the seller accepted your offer?  If that's true then I would agree it's atrocious and will definitely cause problems for buyers who are used to having time to pay, suddenly having to pay automatically without any kind of notice.  However, that would be SO atrocious that I have difficulty believing it happened to you, the way you describe, and I have not (yet) seen any other buyer claiming it happened to them.  I'm not saying you lied, just that you must have authorized it without realizing it, like quickly clicked a 'yes' on the screen or something.  I know I do that when I'm in a hurry and there seem to be a silly number of things I have to click to activate something.  But one thing your story does raise the question of is, does the buyer have to approve auto-payment for EACH offer, or just the first one they make, and then the software just uses the same payment method for all subsequent offers?   That would be problematic if a buyer wants to change which card/bank account they use, at some point after the first one.

5. Increase in returns - Buyer made offer and is automatically charged. But since buyer feels forced into transaction, they will be more likely to want to return item = bad for sellers.

Sorry but that is just silly.  Nobody "forces" buyers to make an offer, so simply changing how fast they pay is not forcing a transaction upon them.  The (righteous) fact is that if a buyer makes an offer, it is a binding contract to pay the amount they are offering if the seller accepts, same as when a person makes an auction bid; if they win they have to pay whatever the winning bid was, up to their proxy bid. 

I agree the consequences for buyer non-payment should be harsher, but I like this immediate payment thing even better.  I shouldn't even have to think about whether a deadbeat is getting punished for screwing me over; I should be PAID, period.  And by the way, cruise over to the buyer forum, or for that matter Facebook and Reddit --you will see buyers angry about having their buyer privileges tightened or removed completely, after too many non-payment strikes.  Is it good for Ebay to have these bitter situations, with people who then have a retaliatory motive to bad-mouth Ebay all over social media?  No, it's bad, it's ugly.  Eliminating a timeframe to pay will automatically eliminate non-payment as an issue, so buyers won't have anything to feel "wronged" by.  It will simply turn accepted offers into Buy It Now transactions, while still giving the buyer the ability to haggle for a lower price.  Win, meet Win. 


"You accept an offer, you get a fair amount of time to pay. Any seller who thinks this is not right is unethical and does not care about their buyer."  
Oh please.  We're not talking about kidney transplants or safe drinking water; we're talking about sunglasses and ceramic figurines.  I am the tree-hugginest, welfare-advocatingest, most far-Left bleeding heart liberal I know, but I'm sorry, no, I do not have room in my heart to care about whether someone thinks it's "fair" to have to pay immediately, for stuff they don't need. 

 If anything, the wrong has been all this time where the SELLER has been forced to wait up to 5 days for payment, with the item taking up shelf space that new inventory could occupy (ha just imagine Walmart or Target doing that), and with their hands tied as far as being able to sell the item to anyone else, since Ebay put a padlock on it, on behalf of this slowbeat offer-maker .  That's the THANKS a seller gets for generously accepting a lesser amount for their item, the thanks of waiting and not knowing when (or even if) the item will be paid and they can ship the item.  Maybe YOU write to the seller to indicate when you will pay, but that makes you a rarity, because in my experience slow payers almost never communicate anything; presumably they are embarrassed to admit they don't have the money yet, but the radio silence just adds insult to injury. 

When you say "A buyer has to feel that THEY are the person who is in charge of a transaction. Ebay wants to force a buyer to pay just because they sent an offer?" --it sure sounds like you think offers shouldn't be taken seriously, and yet when a buyer makes an offer, the seller has to choose an OFFICIAL answer, 'yes' or 'no' --there is no "yes but only if you pay by such-n-such time" --Ebay has always been the arbiter of what is "fair" in this regard, whether the seller thinks it's fair or not.  Jeez, if we were to put all buyers "in charge" of everything to make them "feel" like they want to feel, they would be able to put an item they "might" want on hold for their exclusive right to decide later, for 30 days....6 months.....a year.......and still have the option of not buying, with no repercussions to them.   But with the amount of control buyers have already, how sellers HAVE to choose a simple yes/no binary for accepting an offer, then the buyer's offer should dag well be serious also, not just a "feeling out the situation" kind of thing.    However, if a buyer wants to, they can WRITE an offer via private message, and the seller can write back, they can both wheel and deal like at a garage sale, the seller can revise the price for them,  so it's not like there isn't a way to gauge the seller's amount of wiggle room without committing to payment. 

What is so baffling to me is that you are also a seller, yet you don't seem at all bothered by the fact that you might have to wait days for payment.  And I know there ARE sellers who definitely don't mind waiting; I've seen them say so many times.  But they tend to sell in high volumes so there is always a steady revenue stream, and no need to even think about stuff like bank overdrafts.  It sounds like you live on the edge to some extent, and I'm not saying that in a judge-y way; I'm saying it because I do too, as a single mom just barely getting by with about one sale/day or so average, so the speed of each sale's payment definitely matters.  My only guess is that you sell on an even smaller scale than I, have a smaller number of offer histories to reference, therefore a smaller number of slow payers and deadbeat non-payers in your memory, to be sick of.  If so, believe me, there will be rude slow/non payers that cause you actual stress, and you will eventually get sick of it, unless this payment change becomes system-wide, then you will be spared the frustration. 

Your beef with the change seems to be more about buying, and what's especially telling is how you bring up the crisis of feeding your kids, a crisis any responsible parent should keep in mind when considering whether to buy stuff they don't need on Ebay, let alone pledging to buy with money they don't even have yet, using a system that is unique to Ebay.   I mean can you think of ANY other place (BAM retail store, garage sale, thrift store, other online resale venue) where you can have an item held hostage for you for up to 5 days, just by clicking something claiming you "will" buy it, WITHOUT ANY FORM OF DEPOSIT OR COLLATERAL? 

In my view this system has always been an unethical way for Ebay to take advantage of a market that no other venues are willing to, that is, the market of COMPULSIVE SHOPPERS, people who cannot control their urge to find deals and make deals (like make offers), just to get the rush of succeeding, "beating" everyone else from getting the deal since the item becomes locked as "theirs," even if they don't have the money yet, even if they have kids to feed.  Jeez.  It is Ebay being predatory not just to sellers, but to buyers with problems, so changing it to automatic payment will simply eliminate ALLLLL these personal issues, make it concrete and IMpersonal, like at every other venue.   

The problem you foresee of returns increasing from buyers upset that they were automatically charged, I suspect that will indeed happen, but only for a short adjustment period, while all the buyers learn of the change on an individual basis, and then adjust their behavior accordingly (namely, not send offers for stuff they can't afford yet, just accept the fact that someone else might buy the item before that time, and do whatever self-soothing techniques they need to deal with this fact, LOL).  "Who the *&^$#% does Ebay think they are?"  Well it looks like they are smack dab in the middle of an identity crisis, considering the change is in beta mode, and we don't yet know if it will become a system-wide change.  I for one hope they are growing up, finally maturing into a venue that is as fair to sellers as to buyers.  You seem to want them to remain like a seedy payday lender, not only catering disproportionately to buyers over sellers, but to the WORST kind of buyers, the kind who hurt themselves just as much as others, from lacking sound judgement and self-control.  

[studebaker-packard]

I am right there with you and highly upset and agree EBAY will be sued over this.  They sent me a message telling me I agreed to it.  I was never even asked to agree to it.  Next thing I know they are taking money from my debit card account.  It was rolled out totally wrong with deceptive communication.

[kh-leslie]

Hi everyone,

Due to the age of this thread, it has been closed to further replies. Please feel free to start a new thread HERE if you wish to continue to discuss this topic.

Thank you for understanding.