AUTOPAY things you should know

[quicksilverdiecast]

1. No way to opt out (yet)

2.Blocks buyers from combined shipping(lost a sale over this yesterday)

3.ebay is not authorized to make charges without consent on my CC for item purchases, only for ebay related costs and fees.

4.Buyers are starting to blame sellers for the autopay and will not use it.

5.After a conversation with ebay about this they claim it is to deal with non paying bidders....wait think about that...they stopped buyers from leaving feedback on deadbeats and said just report them to us and we will take care of it(apparently not) so now you use it again as an excuse to enact this autopay......

6.Personally I used to buy a fair amount of items on ebay but not any more I will go elsewhere where I have control of my funding and purchases as well as easy combine shipping......keep on shooting yourself in the foot ebay...

[kensgiftshop]

When you make an offer or place a bid, you are giving Ebay authorization to charge your card, when you select it as your funding source.

[ed8108]

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@quicksilverdiecast wrote:

 I used to buy a fair amount of items on ebay but not any more I will go elsewhere where I have control of my funding and purchases as well as easy combine shipping......keep on shooting yourself in the foot ebay...

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Ebay should really be doing more to encourage, not discourage paying buyers

[ittybitnot]

1. No way to opt out (yet)

@quicksilverdiecast 

Sellers can un-enroll (opt out) of having their buyers forced into this program.  

https://www.ebay.com/bmgt/buyerrequirements

Buyer Payment Requirements

*Require buyers to provide a payment method before they place a bid.

*Require buyers to provide a payment method before they make an offer.

Click submit.

[luckythewinner]

After a conversation with ebay about this

IMHO you did not talk to anyone at eBay with any knowledge of why this was done. (And there's a good chance they don't have a very good understanding of how eBay even works)

I used to buy a fair amount of items on ebay but not any more I will go elsewhere where I have control of my funding and purchases as well as easy combine shipping

I make my buying decisions based on total cost.

[a_c_green]

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@quicksilverdiecast wrote:

1. No way to opt out (yet)

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Well, buyers cannot opt out because it is a seller preference. Sellers can opt out by un-checking the box at the bottom of their Buyer Management page:

Ref: https://www.ebay.com/bmgt/buyerrequirements 

(Incidentally, that first checkbox in the screenshot above, intended for applying the same pre-payment info requirement to auction bids, has now been quietly removed.)

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@quicksilverdiecast wrote:

3.ebay is not authorized to make charges without consent on my CC for item purchases, only for ebay related costs and fees.

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I don't think you have any authority to make that distinction in your Terms of Service with eBay, but you're welcome to try. I don't see how those would be charges "without consent" anyway, since you're making an offer on something you intend to buy if your offer is accepted, and you have the opportunity in advance to select your payment method before making the offer. I have two cards myself that I tend to flip-flop between when making offers in my buying account, so I just doublecheck before offering to be sure that it's set to the card I intend to use.

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@quicksilverdiecast wrote:

4.Buyers are starting to blame sellers for the autopay and will not use it.

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I think you're making a bit of a leap to that conclusion, but if you have supporting data, please give us a reference.

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@quicksilverdiecast wrote:

5.After a conversation with ebay about this they claim it is to deal with non paying bidders....wait think about that...they stopped buyers from leaving feedback on deadbeats and said just report them to us and we will take care of it(apparently not) so now you use it again as an excuse to enact this autopay......

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It's to deal with non-paying buyers in a Make Offer situation. (They did add a setting for non-paying bidders, as seen in the screenshot above, but seem to have withdrawn that. I never saw that in use; perhaps they never implemented it.) As for non-paying deadbeats, sellers (not buyers) have been blocked from leaving Negative feedback on buyers since May of 2008.

The way to actually impact the deadbeats is to cancel with the reason of Buyer Did Not Pay (which is available as a cancellation option once 96 hours have elapsed from the time of purchase). Deadbeats with 2 or more Unpaid slaps within the past 12 months can be blocked from your listings (except, I think, for Immediate Payment Required items) via the settings in your Buyer Management page. You can see the results of your buyer screening on your Buyer Requirements Activity Log, which will show you how many deadbeats have bounced off your filters in the past 60 days.

[toomuchstuffagain35]

Not so much autopay as a combined shipping thing, but autopay also comes into play here  - why the h-ll can't ebay manage to wrap their teeny brains around the concept of even IF the items in the cart are on SALE or giving some other discount OR have FS, they block the buyer from requesting a total (aka combined shipping on some carts)?

WTH does one have to do with the other?

If a buyer has 10 sale items in their cart and I, the seller (ie OWNER of the goods) are happy to ALSO give them combined shipping, why do you stop me from doing that?

[ebooksdiva]

@ittybitnot @a_c_green 

eBay has removed the buyer requirement that requires buyers to provide a payment method before placing a bid. Its no longer in my buyer requirements.

[toomuchstuffagain35]

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@ed8108 wrote:

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@quicksilverdiecast wrote:

 I used to buy a fair amount of items on ebay but not any more I will go elsewhere where I have control of my funding and purchases as well as easy combine shipping......keep on shooting yourself in the foot ebay...

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Ebay should really be doing more to encourage, not discourage paying buyers

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Especially in light of them having fewer such every day that goes by.

[ittybitnot]

eBay has removed the buyer requirement that requires buyers to provide a payment method before placing a bid.

@ebooksdiva 

Amazing!  Wonder when that happened?  Thanks for the information.  Perhaps it actually DID do more to run off paying buyers than previously thought.  "Added" and "removed" without notice is interesting. 

[a_c_green]

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@ittybitnot wrote:

eBay has removed the buyer requirement that requires buyers to provide a payment method before placing a bid.

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Well, yes, I did mention that it had been "quietly removed" in my post above. I probably should have made a new screenshot, rather than pull one from my image files.

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@ittybitnot wrote:

Amazing!  Wonder when that happened?  Thanks for the information.  Perhaps it actually DID do more to run off paying buyers than previously thought.  "Added" and "removed" without notice is interesting. 

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They do not announce any additions or removals before they occur, and they're reluctant to discuss them even afterwards as well.

I would just point out here that it's the auction pre-bidding info requirement that has been removed. I don't know if that was ever implemented in the first place. I un-checked mine as soon as I saw it, as I did not want any last-second snipers in my auctions to be unexpectedly blocked from bidding in the final seconds. I explained my reasoning more than once in eBay comments. (One recent survey actually asked me why I had disabled it, so I explained why in full.)

eBay never explained in any detail how it was supposed to work, and I think it had been put into our Buyer Management page in anticipation of a new enhancement that was never implemented.

The pre-payment info checkbox for Make Offers remains in effect.

[toomuchstuffagain35]

And their "fixes" have just made things worse.

[ittybitnot]

 and I think it had been put into our Buyer Management page in anticipation of a new enhancement that was never implemented.

@a_c_green 

Both of the requirements were put in place in "anticipation".  They were in place, as I understand it for almost a year before the implication of same started showing up.  The default to YES did nothing really UNTIL eBay forced the BUYER IDs to participate.  It was done as a "rollout", and after a year eBay announced that all buyer IDs were then enrolled in the Make an Offer component (so long as the seller retained the said preference).  The enrollment of Buyer IDs in the bidding component was ongoing, but really ramped up after all Buyer IDs were forced into the offer component was completed. 

(The "make an offer" scenario has been going through some changes now as well, and does not appear to be "auto-billing" buyers for accepted offers anymore in many instances, and is NOT dependent on the buyer preference as originally thought.  This "new" version that has been rolling out now for over a month, does not appear to do much for the "non-paying" buyer problem, for the requirement to pay is removed, but the listing will often remain active  (or not) until someone comes along and pays as seemingly a consolation to sellers  who had non-payers for accepted offers.  Of course with no announcement or information from tagged "blues", this has caused a lot of unnecessary drama as well for both buyers and sellers alike, not to mention lost sales.) 

Buyer IDs were enrolled in a similar fashion in order to BID as well, by eBay  I had two IDs  that were required to put up a payment source in order to bid (could not proceed unless I succumbed).  In light of the new information given by @ebooksdiva  I will do some checking with those IDs  to see if I am still required to participate in that "New smoother checkout" that is supposed to be good for me nonsense in order to bid.  

[toomuchstuffagain35]

If it's anything like previous ill thought out enhancements, even if they roll it back we'll find those who got dumped into it will remain in it.