Well, this is news to me---Trusted Buyer Program

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

So, I'm one of those sellers who activated auto payment on buyer offers in my Preferences. The way it works is, the buyer must designate a payment method before making the offer, and if I accept the offer, ebay automatically bills that payment method, so that I get paid "immediately" (or very close to it). No need to wait for payment. 

This has been working fine. Receive offer, accept offer, get paid, ship.

Until my most recent offer. I accepted the offer, and......nothing. Listing went into my "Awaiting Payment" section in "Orders".

It's only been two days, and I know buyers have four days, so....OK, I can wait the four days, and if I'm still unpaid, buyer gets Unpaid Item Strike and I relist. No big deal.

BUT.....

Why wasn't there an immediate payment?

An ebay glitch, perhaps?

Apparently, not a glitch.

What Customer Service told me is : Just as some sellers are TRS, some buyers are "Trusted Buyers". "Trusted Buyers" are NOT required to provide the payment method before they make an offer (regardless of my selected preference). Trusted buyers have the four days to pay, period.

However, as far as I can tell, unlike TRS sellers, Trusted Buyers are not publicly identified as such. 

The CS could not tell me anything more about the TB program, and could not find it in the Help pages, but promised to do further investigation and email me when she finds something. If I hear from her, I will post here. 

In the meantime, is anyone familiar with the Trusted Buyer program? @valueaddedresource ?

[fbusoni]

"Regardless of anyone's opinions on whether or not sellers should use them, I would hope we can all agree at least in principal that if eBay provides options for specific settings, along with policy pages, on page messaging, and even answers from eBay employees explicitly saying those settings will apply to all buyers if a seller turns them on, that is in fact how it should work without exception."

To what degree do you think this sort of snafu is the result of faulty coding / ongoing computer programming / artificial intelligence?  

We've seen recently some posts here (the one about "sponsored listings" from "wastingtime" if I have the name right) that eBay cannot even get its html straight sometimes.

I've also wondered at times about just how seamless is eBay's internal coordination and communication.  

They have what I imagine is a massive infrastructure and there is at least a chance that one server farm (on its tech side)  does not always know what its counterpart, say on the policy page side, is doing or has done. 

(Thank heaven eBay's server farm that manages payouts to sellers, which from my experience has worked flawlessly, is separate from everything else.) 

Would welcome your thoughts.  

[valueaddedresource]

@fbusoni it's certainly possible the root cause could be faulty coding, programming error, AI or some other technical issue.

eBay is operating on almost 30 years of tech debt that seems to be held together by bandaids, baling wire, and used bubble gum (and that's when it's working 😂). Given that sad state of affairs, anytime users run into strange or anomalous experiences where things are't working as they should, Occam's razor usually points to the likelihood of it being a technical issue.

But I've seen many examples of eBay running undisclosed testing or just straight up not following their own policies when it benefits them to do so and many have also experienced having multiple support agents give wildly different and conflicting information, so truthfully it's pretty much impossible to really know what's going on - and that's the bigger problem, isn't it?

As far as eBay's internal coordination and communication, if you look up the definition of Silo Mentality in Merriam-Webster, I'm pretty sure there's a picture of the eBay logo.

At the end of the day of course none of us really knows because we don't work for eBay and don't have access to the information. As the video I posted earlier in this thread from eBay Open last year said - it all comes down to trust...and if eBay wants sellers to trust them, a good place to start would be to have highly trained, knowledgeable customer service reps who are empowered to give direct, honest answers or even *gasp* admit if they don't know the answer, instead of making up stories just to try to get you off the phone or live chat.

[fbusoni]

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@valueaddedresource wrote:

@fbusoni it's certainly possible the root cause could be faulty coding, programming error, AI or some other technical issue.

eBay is operating on almost 30 years of tech debt that seems to be held together by bandaids, baling wire, and used bubble gum (and that's when it's working 😂). Given that sad state of affairs, anytime users run into strange or anomalous experiences where things are't working as they should, Occam's razor usually points to the likelihood of it being a technical issue.

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Someone needs to tell Occam that eBay has dulled into razor into mashed potatoes. 🙂

[farmalljr]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

@ekmadonna  And that's your choice. Others will no doubt make the same choice. Others won't. 

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Remember a couple things here:

1 Every buyer that refuses to participate, most likely lowers what your item will bring at auction, since you have cut out bidders. That's if the item sells at all. 

2 If you demand immediate payment, it's not wrong if a buyer demands immediate shipment. If you think it's ok to want to be paid on the spot, it's ok for the buyer to demand the seller get off their duff and ship the item just as fast. It's a two way street. Buyers are not here to pander to sellers. 

The more demanding you are of buyers, the more demanding they are going to be of sellers. eBay has already changed the rules that an item is not "sold" until paid for. So the whine from sellers about unpaid offers is no longer a valid complaint. Sellers that can't wait a couple of days for an auction to be paid for, need to reassess their financial problems. Unless you choose daily payouts, eBay is not paying you for up to a week anyway. So how is a buyer who takes two days to pay you, hurting you anymore than eBay is? You have bigger problems eBay is not going to solve if you live hand to mouth all the time. 

Again, too many sellers here are aggressive divas that think they should come first. Their wants are somehow more important than what buyers want. I get wanting to be paid. That's understandable. But the issue is few of the transaction overall, end up unpaid. 1 of 100 or more transactions end up unpaid and sellers lose their minds. 

It's unbelievable to me how many sellers here think they are MORE important than buyers. It's like these fools have not figured out, there are WAY more people with something to sell, then there are buyer with money in their hands to buy it. And these same sellers think nothing of tossing up obstacles to put off buyers because of their own egos. Then they come running here complaining because their sales are dead, or eBay is "blocking" them in search. The fools do no realize, it's their own fault buyers leave or they are just not buying from THEM. 

[farmalljr]

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@chapeau-noir wrote:

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

@ekmadonna  And that's your choice. Others will no doubt make the same choice. Others won't. 

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Agree! If I make an offer and it's accepted, I expect to have it paid from the payment method I have on file. I won't have my fee fees hurt because I'm asked to pony up. 

This site...it just baffles me. No other site I've sold on (probably nine or ten by now) allows buyers to drag sellers for days before maybe payment, then has buyers crying and wailing because WAAAAHHHH! They have to pay for something they bid or offered on?

ETA: Tried to reduce the snark.

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Sellers are free to list items with buy it now and no offers. That's the way a seller can stop all the waiting for payment. The whines and complaints about waiting for payment are nothing but whiney conjecture. eBay has had the option for YEARS, and no wait is required.

Oh, wait, sellers still have to wait to be paid don't they. eBay takes a week+ to actually pay sellers. 

What about the wait buyers have when lazy sellers will not ship same day/next day? How about eBay implementing a policy that all sellers have to ship no later than next day? How about eBay implement a policy that all sellers must have auto returns? No approval needed? Sellers are REAL good at making demands for themselves, why can't buyers have demands too? Honestly, I hope eBay implements policies like those. Sellers make lots of demands and buyers have a right to make more demands too. 

If you get paid right now, I want you to ship right now. You took the time to accept the offer, you got the time to ship it out. 

[valueaddedresource]

@farmalljr respectfully, this isn't the thread to debate about whether sellers should use the immediate pay options and how that might impact the buying experience, prices eventually realized or any of the other issues that can and have been discussed at length in other posts on the general topic of autopay - there are existing community threads where those conversations can and should be continued.

As I said above, whatever your opinion on the use of these features, we should all be in agreement that they should work as eBay describes them and sellers should be provided with accurate information about what happened in situations where they don't work as described or their chosen settings and policies are seemingly ignored or circumvented.

[farmalljr]

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@valueaddedresource wrote:

@farmalljr respectfully, this isn't the thread to debate about whether sellers should use the immediate pay options and how that might impact the buying experience, prices eventually realized or any of the other issues that can and have been discussed at length in other posts on the general topic of autopay - there are existing community threads where those conversations can and should be continued.

As I said above, whatever your opinion on the use of these features, we should all be in agreement that they should work as eBay describes them and sellers should be provided with accurate information about what happened in situations where they don't work as described or their chosen settings and policies are seemingly ignored or circumvented.

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My reply was not to you. Who asked you to moderate the thread?

My replies are directly to the posters who have posted comments. Start your own thread if you want to only talk about technical issues. Pretty sure they have a sub forum for that too. This discussion has delved into other subjects, by other posters than just myself. Go wag your finger at someone who cares what you think. 

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@farmalljr 

With all due respect, I think this thread has started to go off course. This thread is about the "Trusted Buyer" program (if such a thing even exists) and not about whether using Immediate Payment for offers is a good strategy or not. As @valueaddedresource has made very clear, if there is a "Trusted Buyer" program which allows such buyers perks sellers have not even been told about, well, what other perks are they allowed? Other questions are raised as well, including questions of trust in the platform, if there is such a program but it is a stealth program of some sort. I would like to stay focused on the "trusted Buyer" matter.

To be polite, I will respond briefly to your post: 1. My handling time is one business day, and if the item is paid early enough in the day, I generally ship same day. 2. For years I've had immediate payment on my fixed price listings. I have not found it to be a problem. Occasionally, buyers ask for more time to pay, or for me to delay shipping, and I generally agree to their request. 3. New buyers coming on to the platform will not even know there was a time when auctions and offers allowed  four  days (and , at one time, longer) for payment. They will accept this as the norm. 4. I do not see immediate payment as an onerous demand. It is the norm in retail. I have sold a number of items with the new immediate payment on offers, and have had no complaints from my buyers. 5. Experience has taught me that people with strong views on an issue---especially negative views---are more likely to post their views. For example, several posters here always note they will never use promoted listings. Should I deduce from that fact that very few sellers use them? No. In fact, many sellers use them (happily or not). 6. As a seller, I determine my risk threshold. You believe using immediate payment on offers is very risky, that I will lose many sales as a result of that choice. I believe the risk of lost sales is minimal, and , as I've already said, if a buyer contacts me to remove it so he can purchase multiple items, I am happy to accommodate such a request, which further minimizes the risk. Some potential buyers---such as you---will simply not buy, and will likely make no such request. I accept that. Sellers make these decisions all the time. The seller who chooses to use ebay's AI for descriptions runs the risk of losing buyers who don't like AI. That is the seller's choice. The seller who uses only one or two photos in the interest of rapidly increasing his quantity of listings, rather than quality, makes such a choice. There are plenty more examples. If you, as a seller, choose not to set up immediate payment for offers (or, for that matter, not to use best offer at all), that is your choice. I choose to use it, and you are free not to purchase from me as a consequence. I will muddle through somehow.

[broto_64]

I think way too much thought has gone into this, I doubt very seriously ebay is that ... How should I say it, "intelligent?"

More than likely the OP forgot to check the box on this one.

The ebay rep obviously didn't know the answer, made up something about "trusted buyer" programs because didn't want the seller to know how truly baffled they were... You know, tell the seller anything to get them off the phone before the timer runs out and the rep catches a defect for "not solving the problem in a timely manner."

And maybe not but I don't think it runs as deep as the conspiracy theories being entertained here.
In fact I don't think it runs deep at all, more like a very shallow and simple explanation to it all.
The trick of course will be finding out exactly what the culprit is, but again I doubt it's very involved.

[broto_64]

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@farmalljr wrote:

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

@farmalljr  @a_c_green 

As @a_c_green  states, it is a very fast and easy thing to do. And then you have an hour to change your mind about the ship to address and whether you want to use another payment method. (If you are OK with what you've chosen, I think you can just confirm that and no need to wait for the hour to end.)

Maybe ebay has a short video somewhere demonstrating this. 

I think the main problem remains the issue of wanting to bid and buy multiple auctions from the same seller. I think you can send a message to the seller at the same time you choose your payment method, but there's no requirement that the seller respond if you ask for combined shipping or whatever. 

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Don't care.

There are limits to what hoops some buyers are going to be willing to jump through to spend money. Sellers should be making it easier, not more difficult for buyers to buy their things. I am not willing to put my card info out to make a bid.

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Then don't bid, Ebay is still by far one of the most reasonable auction houses around.

Most have you read through a set of policies and make sure you understand them because if you run afoul of any of them they will ban you and yes you are forbidden from bidding on their auctions, end of story.
These auction houses don't care about your threats of leaving and not returning. Go right ahead, it reduces competition so winning bids are lower and some might think sellers wouldn't like that but the fact is that sellers are guaranteed payment so long there is at least one bid.

Sellers pay fees to sell, buyers pay fees when they win (like 15% plus tax but again read through all of the auction terms because it can change). Yes sir, there is one auction house I bid on, your bids are binding... You can't retract them, you can lower it up to the sales point amount but not below and you can neither retract nor cancel a bid. If there is really a problem you can call them and maybe they will allow a retraction one time (but twice they will ban you). These people are not playing games, you definitely pre-register a card, without it no bidding and again they don't care.

When you win, you MUST arrange to pick up your item(s) on a certain day and if you fail to show the item(s) go back to becoming property of the auction house AND you get a stern warning (two of these and you're out as well). No games, no muss, no fuss.
That's not all, in fact that's not even half of it but it should be enough to give a general idea of what most auction houses are like. Very strict, almost military like, you do as they say or no dice and they don't care.

Ebay is a soft plushy teddy bear in comparison, all watered down and pacified for the masses (oh boy I can think of some far more proper terms there). We can only wish they'd become a bit stricter as far as forcing payment out of people who bid on an auction, why bid if you have no intent of paying, on that note if you fully intend to pay then please register the card you intend to pay with before bidding (why, because thanks to those who play games we can't have anything nice in this world).

[a_c_green]

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@valueaddedresource wrote:

As far as eBay's internal coordination and communication, if you look up the definition of Silo Mentality in Merriam-Webster, I'm pretty sure there's a picture of the eBay logo.

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Just for yucks, I did exactly that: 

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/silo 

There is no eBay logo there 😉, but there is a rather funny example about Sony under definition 3:

"Examples of silos in blue-chip firms abound: Sony once had two separate divisions working on creating the same electrical plug without anyone realizing it."

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@broto_64 Just to be clear, the only box I needed to check was in my "Preferences" and it was checked at the time of the sale. And it is checked now. For what it's worth, I asked the CS rep if I perhaps there was something I had not done or done wrong, but she indicated that everything was in place and the buyer should have gone through auto pay. She was mystified. I suggested that it might be an ebay glitch, but she had nothing to indicate that. She consulted with someone else and came up with the Trusted Buyer response. 

Am I skeptical about that? Yes. But that's what I was told.

Am I worried about this transaction? No. If the buyer ultimately doesn't pay within the 4 days, there will be (or at least, there should be) an auto-cancel from ebay and an auto relist of my listing. No big deal. If I hear back from the buyer, or he actually pays, I will ask him directly about the Trusted Buyer program. 

This thread is here largely because I try to keep up with developments at ebay, and I thought perhaps I had missed something. But it seems no one here has heard of the "Trusted Buyer" program, so I'm hoping the Community Team will respond and clarify things. If nothing else, it is obvious from some of the posts here that we have some people on this thread who would sign up for the program if they could. 

[valueaddedresource]

@broto_64 not sure what you mean about OP forgetting to check the box on this one - it isn't a listing specific setting, the box is either checked for all transactions or none and @my-cottage-books-and-antiques clearly explained the setting was correctly working for all other offers.

I wouldn't call any of this a conspiracy theory, but rather rational, logical questions prompted by information directly provided to a seller by an actual eBay employee.

Of course we all know to take information from CS with a big grain of salt, but that in and of itself is a big problem if sellers can't trust info provided directly by a representative speaking on behalf of the company.

If a Trusted Buyer Program is a completely made up fantasy that doesn't really exist, it was made up by someone speaking with the authority of eBay behind them and that deserves a correction and honestly an apology from eBay to the OP if true.

If some form of internal special exemption for some buyers really does exist (whether it's specifically called Trusted Buyer or not), then eBay owes sellers an explanation and some transparency around what the criteria is and how eBay is ensuring those buyers don't abuse the system.

As you said, none of that is actually very complicated or involved..it just requires honesty and transparency from eBay to clear up the confusion that has been 100% caused by their employee.

[broto_64]

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@valueaddedresource wrote:

@broto_64 not sure what you mean about OP forgetting to check the box on this one - it isn't a listing specific setting, the box is either checked for all transactions or none and @my-cottage-books-and-antiques clearly explained the setting was correctly working for all other offers.

I wouldn't call any of this a conspiracy theory, but rather rational, logical questions prompted by information directly provided to a seller by an actual eBay employee.

Of course we all know to take information from CS with a big grain of salt, but that in and of itself is a big problem if sellers can't trust info provided directly by a representative speaking on behalf of the company.

If a Trusted Buyer Program is a completely made up fantasy that doesn't really exist, it was made up by someone speaking with the authority of eBay behind them and that deserves a correction and honestly an apology from eBay to the OP if true.

If some form of internal special exemption for some buyers really does exist (whether it's specifically called Trusted Buyer or not), then eBay owes sellers an explanation and some transparency around what the criteria is and how eBay is ensuring those buyers don't abuse the system.

As you said, none of that is actually very complicated or involved..it just requires honesty and transparency from eBay to clear up the confusion that has been 100% caused by their employee.

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Yeah again, it's nowhere near that deep. Their CSR is not an ebay employee. They're not going to apologize, they're not going to correct their ways, if anything it's only going to get worse.  Stop overthinking this, maybe lightning struck a tornado in Kansas, I don't know but it doesn't matter because it just is what it is.

[valueaddedresource]

@broto_64 seriously? When you contact a company's officially designated support channels, that person is representing that company and they are responsible for providing accurate information in the name of that company (regardless of whether they are a W2 employee, a contractor etc.) - their job is to speak on behalf of eBay and that's what started this entire conversation.

I agree with you, it's really not that deep - a representative speaking on behalf of eBay provided some very explicit and direct information to @my-cottage-books-and-antiques stating the reason the payment settings were not properly applied to a transaction was that the buyer is part of a Trusted Buyer program that exempts them from the payment settings.

We're not overthinking it. All anyone is trying to do here is get confirmation of that information from the eBay employees here in the community - again as you say, simple enough....all they have to do is respond to the multiple times they have been tagged here.