Payment needing to go twice?

[jrdco49]

I have bought an item today from a wonderful seller and when he confirmed my offer, he said he needed payment although my bank app says i have already paid the amount due on ebay. Is this a common problem? What am i able to do to fix this?

[jrdco49]

I provided payment details prior to completely sending my offer to the seller. What do I do in this situation? I will try to respond to this throughout the day, i will be busy over the next few hours though

[a_c_green]

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@jrdco49 wrote:

that sounds word for word what was sent to me yesterday. i’m currently unable to access chats with the seller because ebay needs “more information” about me. i think this is because of my accounts brand new status. 

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I'll know it when I see it if you can post that message.

In my case, though, my buying account has been around forever and I pay via credit card, so I don't think too much (if any) pre-approval gymnastics have to happen; the full amount due is known immediately, for example, so I'm not sure if this would be affected by how new your account is.

Oh, and just to re-iterate: on the few occasions where this happened to me, this problem went away by itself, later that same day if I remember right. If you can see the payment going out from your bank account, that's all that is required of you.

[jrdco49]

i’m currently on mobile so sending a screenshot or anything of the likes doesn’t seem to work. I can give an example though. I open the app, go to notifications to respond to the seller, and when i click the notification I’ve received, i get a pop-up with big lettering like a header saying “Almost There!” with the subsequent subheading being “Before you send a message, we need a little more information about you.” where i am redirected to my account, perfectly normal, on a webpage. I was messaging the seller yesterday without issue. I bought the item yesterday around 4 PM EST and my bank will likely finalize payment by tomorrow morning. I paid via debit card and the total shown to me before i sent the offer was the exact total that is pending in my bank app currently

[ittybitnot]

@jrdco49 

How many hours or days has the payment been listed as PENDING in your bank account?  

Have you talked to anyone at your bank to determine why they have not PAID it?   From the sound of things it appears to be an "authorization hold" for the full amount of your offer placed by eBay.  When this scheme of making buyers fork over a payment source in order to bid first started it was worse, and what is happening to you sounds partially reflective of that old drama.   I thought they had fixed the problem, but apparently not all the way.  You need to make a call to your bank first to see why the $96 is still just sitting there. 

During that beginning time eBay proclaimed that they did not utilize authorization holds.  We saw too many screen shots that proved otherwise, however.  The said holds remained in place, even if the offer was declined, and when the payment came through so it appeared the buyer paid twice!   So, as an example,  if your 96$ offer was declined, you would not have enough money to increase your offer to $100 since the original $96 was still on hold and not available to you (and during that phase of the program was not released for days or even a week later).  

What I am thinking is that since there was not enough for the actual payment (another $96 in addition to the hold) it may be what is causing this issue.  Contact your bank and let us know what they say. 

Though just a feeling, I think eBay has gone back to using authorization holds as opposed to just pinging the payment source for $1.00 to see if it is a valid card.  In the more recent past, some buyers would use a debit card that did not have enough money, which would allow them to combine multiple accepted offers from the same seller, and request a total so save on shipping.  Otherwise, putting up a payment source prior to making an offer disallows combining items for one shipping cost which costs the seller more and the buyer more. 

[wastingtime101]

Thank you @ittybitnot. You clarified that much better than my attempt upthread. I agree that's what appears to be happening here, hopefully @jrdco49 can get more info from their bank.

[jrdco49]

i’d say it’s been pending for roughly 21 hours as of right now which isn’t abnormal for my bank. i will make a transaction and it will pend overnight and sometimes the next night before it’s posted and confirmed. haven’t said anything to anyone at my bank but i likely will if this isn’t resolved in the next 24 hours

[jrdco49]

do yall think i should contact my bank about this matter or wait it out?

[wastingtime101]

You have 4 days from the time the offer was accepted to submit payment. Nothing wrong with waiting 24 hours to see if the payment clears. If it doesn't then you should contact your bank as suggested by ittybitnot.

[ittybitnot]

You have 4 days from the time the offer was accepted to submit payment.

@wastingtime101 
@jrdco49 

This was an autopay situation. The seller should already have payment and it should say "ready to ship".  I think it is eBay playing with authorization holds on an account that does not have $96 X 2 ($192)

Found an interesting article about this that explains it well: 

. During the authorization hold, a specified value is reserved from the cardholder’s available balance, making those funds inaccessible for use.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/authorization-only.asp

The reason why I asked @jrdco49  to call the bank is to determine if it was actually an authorization hold.  They will say "pending" on a bank account when viewed on line.  For example, if I go up the street to my neighborhood grocery and use my card,  by the time I get home I will see a "pending" charge for that amount.  When the store owner "batches out" at the end of the day, all I will see is the charge as normal.  

If you read the article, it is indeed the merchant (in this case eBay) that controls the duration of the hold, and it could be they want to get paid BEFORE releasing the authorization.   Problem with that is they can't since there isn't enough money in the account to do BOTH.  

[jrdco49]

are you saying that i should contact my bank today and ask them what is going on with the charge?

[jrdco49]

just called the bank. they said my money is on its way to being posted. will check back tomorrow if this issue persists though as they’ve never taken more than 48 hours to process a transaction

[jrdco49]

I feel that I should just generally give an update here as now I am able to see everything as intended by ebay (I was on mobile and the formatting was slightly different than what I'm seeing now). I made an offer to the seller which took $96.41 out of my bank account and the seller accepted my payment. I now get left with ebay telling me "You've committed to buy this item. Please go to checkout and pay." I have already paid and I called my bank asking if they know if I'm on any sort of hold or if my payment is still actually pending and the person on the other end of the line said something along the lines of "everything points to your payment being processed currently, you should be good to go." So I'm currently anxiously awaiting a notification that my payment has posted to my banking app and the seller has started the shipping process of my item.

[jrdco49]

Exact message is "Hi jrdco49,
Thanks for your business! I am ready to ship the following item: (ITEM NAME AND PRICE)
Unfortunately, I can't ship the above until I've received a payment. Can you please let me know when I can expect a payment?
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Thanks!"

[a_c_green]

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@jrdco49 wrote:

Exact message is "Hi jrdco49,
Thanks for your business! I am ready to ship the following item: (ITEM NAME AND PRICE)
Unfortunately, I can't ship the above until I've received a payment. Can you please let me know when I can expect a payment?
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Thanks!"

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Yes! That's the exact message I received from multiple sellers, although the most recent one I received was way back on January 18th of this year, so I thought they had that problem fixed. Apparently not.

Now that you have posted the original wording, I was able to find the posting I was looking for earlier, which turned out to be over in the Technical Issues group and not the Buying group. No one ever replied to it. 🙄

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Report-eBay-Technical-Issues/Getting-demand-message-for-accepted-Offer... 

[wastingtime101]

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@a_c_green wrote:

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@jrdco49 wrote:

Exact message is "Hi jrdco49,
Thanks for your business! I am ready to ship the following item: (ITEM NAME AND PRICE)
Unfortunately, I can't ship the above until I've received a payment. Can you please let me know when I can expect a payment?
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Thanks!"

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Yes! That's the exact message I received from multiple sellers, although the most recent one I received was way back on January 18th of this year, so I thought they had that problem fixed. Apparently not.

Now that you have posted the original wording, I was able to find the posting I was looking for earlier, which turned out to be over in the Technical Issues group and not the Buying group. No one ever replied to it. 🙄

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Report-eBay-Technical-Issues/Getting-demand-message-for-accepted-Offer... 

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What's up with these messages devon@ebay kyle@ebay elizabeth@ebay ? Several buyers are reporting receiving the same odd message that appears to be system-generated, but gives the appearance the seller sent it.

Found another from 2022:

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Ask-a-Mentor/Do-these-messages-come-from-Ebay-or-the-seller/td-p/33395...

From 2017:

https://mlparena.com/index.php?topic=384675.0

From 2023:

https://www.beckett.com/forums/thread-1623765-post-2751334.html

I found a lot more through Google but I'm not going to link them all.