Automatic payment on offers not always working

[hphepic2]

About 4/10 offers I receive that say the buyer will be automatically charged when I accept the offer the payment isn’t instant. Is there a current glitch for this?

[gurlcat]

Holy smoke.  Yeah sounds like either something is wrong with the platform or buyers are figuring out some kind of hacks for this. 

[mam98031]

---

@ajs_coins_and_alchemy wrote:

I was under the impression that EBay did insure sufficient "funds" (credit) on the credit card. I was of the belief that upon an offer being made, a "hold" is placed on the card for that amount, similar to car rentals and hotels. Upon acceptance they execute the payment/charge or after 24hrs release it. I've only experienced the pre-authorized offer once myself as a buyer and I didn't actually check my credit card... I should have but I didn't. I'm tempted to go make another offer just to find out if this is the case LOL.

---

@ajs_coins_and_alchemy 

That is my understanding too, however the actual term is the CCC puts the amount as Pending when they authorize the payment.  That is why what the other poster describes I've never heard of and if what they say has any facts to it, then all payments on Ebay are at risk.  It would make no sense that Ebay would ping a payment source for authorization on all transactions except Make an offer or Auctions.  But I'm willing to do more research on this later today and see what I can find out.

I will share whatever I find.

[mam98031]

@hphepic2 

Have you checked your site preferences for Buyer Requirements to make sure the last two boxes that require immediate payment on Auctions and Make an Offer are selected?

[ajs_coins_and_alchemy]

👍 If I make a pre-authorized offer I'll check my CC and report back as well. Most of my buying is auctions though so unlikely.

[hphepic2]

Yes I had two offers today with the instant payment, one instantly went through and one is still unpaid. It’s definitely an eBay  system issue  

[microshnik]

Observations from a buyer with recent (bad) experience:

1. When your pre-authorized offer payment method is PayPal, there is no hold placed; I cannot speak for bare credit cards.
2. If the seller counter-offers and it's the buyer who accepts, the pre-authorized charge does not go through.  While that makes low-balling sound like a hack to wrest back control, it seems that even a manual payment won't go through thereafter, as I've now found out the hard way (how I got here while I waiting for a seller response).
3. Yes, dear sellers, requiring immediate payment on accepted offers absolutely is hurting your sales.  I won't play that game again, and I doubt I'm alone.

Cheers!

[hphepic2]

Doubtful,  I’ve been selling on other platforms that have immediate payment since their inception and sales are great. Actually name me another platform where this isn’t the norm, I’ll wait. I’ll take a missed sale here and there in place of people holding my items for ransom until they feel like paying or never paying any day of the week. 

[mam98031]

---

@hphepic2 wrote:

Yes I had two offers today with the instant payment, one instantly went through and one is still unpaid. It’s definitely an eBay  system issue  

---

I have had the payment lag by a few minutes and I've had one buyer that payment never arrived.

[gurlcat]

---

@hphepic2 wrote:

Doubtful,  I’ve been selling on other platforms that have immediate payment since their inception and sales are great. Actually name me another platform where this isn’t the norm, I’ll wait. I’ll take a missed sale here and there in place of people holding my items for ransom until they feel like paying or never paying any day of the week. 

---

I agree 100% with your last statement which is why I was so happy to see Ebay rolling this out.  However .... Ebay is not other platforms.  Just like every other feature that intrepid upstart sites used for years before Ebay even tried to implement it, when they finally do try it's like your grandma trying to pay her bills online for the first time, lol.  I mean, you're the OP here, you're the one saying you're having numerous cases of this feature not working like it's supposed to.  I'm not saying that means nobody should ever use it, but it appears it is not yet ready for someone like me to try it.  The whole reason I don't allow buyer-sent offers is the "ransom" thing, so I'd rather not invite a whole hairy mess where I can't tell if it's buyers determined to make me wait for payment or the system rejecting their willingness to happily pay immediately.  I spend enough time worrying about what's in buyer's heads already, ha.  

[vintagecraze50]

Oh thanks so much for sharing that. It’s good to know that if you want to you can set that buyer payment preference.

[vintagecraze50]

I just got opted into this this week and it defaults to my credit card and God knows I do not need to put anything else on credit right now. Can you change that to Pay Pal where I have my debit card?

[rfmtm]

Before you make an offer, it asks whether you want to change to another source other than the default.  You can also change the default here:

https://ppcapp.ebay.com/myppc/wallet/list

[toomuchstuffagain35]

BUT there's a host of ways to pay you can't use.

Like PayPal Credit, Apple Pay etc etc.

If I ever get this again I'll message the seller to send ME an offer. If they don't want to do that I'll move on to someone else who will.

[wastingtime101]

---

@hphepic2 wrote:

About 4/10 offers I receive that say the buyer will be automatically charged when I accept the offer the payment isn’t instant. Is there a current glitch for this?

---

From my observation, it says "immediate payment" upon acceptance of an offer, but many sellers are taking that too literally. Accepting the offer does trigger an automatic payment process, but since that process is not instantaneous, it can take anywhere from a couple min or up to an hour for the payment to show on the seller's end.

Even with regular purchases, sometimes buyers message me that they bought something and it doesn't show up on my orders page until half an hour later. It's the nature of payment processing and the many steps involved that sometimes you don't see it right away (and other times you do).

So don't take immediate to mean instantaneous. Automatic is a more accurate word than immediate in this situation.

That said, @ma-647837 is correct about some buyers taking advantage of loopholes in the system, using payment methods they know will fail so they can process payment manually after the fact. Here's a post from a month ago where one buyer explained how they're managing this: link

[gurlcat]

Later in the thread they clarified they were talking about items remaining unpaid for days, up to and including cancellation.  There was some confusion about whether they meant this or that kind of offer, and this or that version of "cleared", but upon clarification it sounds like they are fully familiar with these differences, they accept a lot of offers on a regular basis, and a significant portion of the offers that stated pre-authorized payment are not actually paid and ready to ship anytime soon after the acceptance.  One or two other commenters said they're seeing the same thing.