New escrow payment option for high value watches

[ebay_watches_team]

As part of our ongoing focus on creating the best watches experience, starting the week of April 20, 2021, you will see an optional payment via escrow through our partner Escrow.com for luxury watch listings priced at $10,000 and up. Escrow can give you greater confidence when you sell high-value items by confirming your buyer’s identity.  

Escrow services are customary for many high-value purchases, such as home sales and business acquisitions. Both sellers and buyers of luxury items have asked us to incorporate an escrow payment option to facilitate wire transfers for high-value transactions on eBay. If you list watches priced at $10,000 or more, we recommend that you register with Escrow.com. Learn how to create and use an escrow account on Escrow.com 

In addition, eBay covers any processing fees for escrow services so buyers won’t pay any additional fees. 

What happens when a buyer chooses the escrow payment option 

Escrow transactions differ from other sales in a few important ways: 

• Either wire transfer or ACH electronic check can be used to fund an escrow transaction. 
• When a buyer selects the escrow payment option for your luxury listing at checkout, eBay will redirect the buyer to Escrow.com. Following checkout completion, you will be notified by Escrow.com and eBay to create or log in to your Escrow.com account. 
• The return policy for escrow transactions includes a 7-day inspection period. Your return policy will be overridden, even if you offer no returns, to the 7-day return option if the buyer chooses escrow.  
• Payment will be held in escrow until the buyer has received and accepted the item, or the 7-day inspection period from the delivery date expires. 

Learn more about the benefits of selling and buying with escrow, and see the full Seller News Announcement here. 

We are excited to bring this payment option to the watches community! 

Your eBay Watches Team 

[majestic_watches]

How is a seller protected, if a buyer chooses to return a watch, even when we don’t offer returns, and it’s not the condition we sent it as, or they send back a fake watch. I think forcing sellers to accept returns is absurd.

[ebay_watches_team]

Hi majestic_watches,

That's a very valid concern! Since escrow is an option for watches over $10,000, non-customized watch returns would be processed through eBay's Authenticity Guarantee to ensure that the item being returned is the exact watch that you sent, in the same original condition. 

You can read more about eBay's Authenticity Guarantee here.

We hope this helps!

Your eBay Watches Team

[theloyalskeptic]

Dear 'eBAy Watches Team';

So I understand you have a 'NEW PARTNER' with Escrow.com for ensuring a 'Good Experience' for buyers of high-end luxury watches. That's terrific. I'm very happy for you. 

Since I get a pretty good gut feeling that many in the 'luxury watch Dept.' at eBay don't really partake much in the world of 'Sports Trading Cards' (I could be totally wrong here!)...let's say we ask the management to 

LEAVE US OUT OF THIS 'partnership' with Escrow.com....Whataya Say..?? The 'Terms' we would be FORCED TO ACCEPT due to YOUR partnership are about as comaptible as OIL and WATER for us over here selling cards. 

Perhaps ASKING some of the LONG-TIME SELLERS in EACH category who THEY think would be a SUITABLE 'PARTNER for eBay' when it comes to HIGH TICKET ITEMS would yield better responses from folks than this one, and the countless other similar complaints you are no doubt receiving as I write this.

Please, consider all the various ramifications before patting each other on the back about some 'GREAT PARTNERSHIP' that's been struck; especially if it's going to be sold to us as some kind of 'beneficial thing'. 

Thanks.

TLS

[ebay_watches_team]

Hi TLS,

Thank you for your feedback! At the moment, escrow is a fully optional payment method for buyers of watches that cost $10k and above. It is not an available option on trading cards. With watches, escrow instills additional trust when dealing with the high price-points, so that both buyers and sellers can feel at ease throughout the transaction process. 

eBay is fulling covering any processing fees for escrow services, so sellers' final value fees will remain the same. 

We hope this helps clarify some concerns with this payment option!

Your eBay Watches Team

[watchcollectororg]

This is crazy.  I’m going to send my $15k watch to someone and they drop it on the floor.  Now they don’t want it.  Now I have to spend $50 to test it again and make sure it’s ok.  If it’s not, then what? 

Also, I have a credit union and I can’t accept wires and direct deposits like that.  So once they gave my money I need to open up a checking out at a bank? No way.  

This is on top of sending it to an authentication service.  If it’s authenticated then that’s the end of it.  They bought the watch.  No returns.  And now you force a 7 delay in payment on top of the delay for the authentication?

how long until we actually know if we made a sale and get paid, or get our now contaminated items back?

And you make it sound like sellers wanted this.  What seller in their right mind would want to be exposed to this kind of risk?

ebay should have never forced this on their sellers. It should have been optional.  If a buyer only wants to pay through escrow fine, that limits them.

Complete fail.

Now I have to delist my watch because I can’t get paid, and don’t want my museum grade collection of items sticky fingered and sent back.  

[watchcollectororg]

No you don’t guarantee that. They put a sticker on it.  If the watch comes back to them with the tamper proof sticker on it, they ship it.  

You have no idea if they scratched it, or they dropped it.  Got water in it, scratched your box, or did a million other things. 

I just got a Rolex back from service and dropped it.  Now it goes back for service.  It’s 6 months and $1000 plus parts.  

Now you just exposed us to this risk.  

Your authenticators are also very lax.  I bought a watch that was supposed to be in excellent condition and came with scratches all over that you could see in the thumbnails, because they used eBay’s AI tool to delete all the imperfections I would have wanted to see before passing on it.  

Luckily the seller had a return policy otherwise the authentication service would have dumped that crap on me and say it’s authentic.  

[watchcollectororg]

escrow is a fully optional payment method for buyers of watches that cost $10k and above. 

 Fully optional for BUYERS.  

IT IS MANDATORY FOR SELLERS.  

AS IS A 7 DAY RETURN PERIOD.