Immediate payment/Best Offer

[karecoope-95]

Hi there. I am one of the sellers with Immediate Payment forced on by Ebay and now also Best Offer. I have changed the Best Offer amount more to my liking. Anyway I sold an item last night with Best Offer and they didnt pay immediately! Does this mean if I make all my listings Best Offer I'll be able to combine postage and send invoices again?

[karecoope-95]

It is for me! Its doing my head in because Ebay keeps lowering the best offer amount.

[karecoope-95]

Also, I dont know what you sell but I sell china and this stuff is taking over my house. Its starting to look like Vinnies! Have to start selling tiny little things!

[digital*ghost]

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@karecoope-95 wrote:
Hi there. I am one of the sellers with Immediate Payment forced on by Ebay and now also Best Offer. I have changed the Best Offer amount more to my liking. Anyway I sold an item last night with Best Offer and they didnt pay immediately! Does this mean if I make all my listings Best Offer I'll be able to combine postage and send invoices again?

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Only if the offer function is actually used to confirm the purchase, otherwise I'm afraid that won't work.

The buyer wouldn't have paid immediately on the best offer item as immediate payment doesn't apply when best offer itself is actually used / accepted, even if the seller has implemented the best offer feature intentionally, requires immediate payment intentionally, and even set up auto-acceptance of offers that are above their lowest price. 

This is because a buyer can't pre-authorise a payment to then be sent when an offer is accepted (by either the buyer or seller). If the buyer had simply used the BIN option rather than making an offer, they may well have been prompted to pay before the purchase could be finalised, but when an offer is accepted, it's essentially the same as confirming purchase the way BIN is, but forced immediate payment can't be applied no matter what, because an acceptance is a confirmed purchase, but payment still has to be done manually by the buyer afterwards (I hope that makes sense, I have a way of explaining things in an unnecessarily convoluted way sometimes  ). 

[karecoope-95]

Thanks for the explanation. I will have to re-read it several times before it sinks in! Ive never used Best Offer before now. They are really pushing it - like were not making money fast enough for their liking.

[digital*ghost · Accepted solution]

I can sometimes figure out a more succinct and / or effective way to explain it, several hours later... sometimes my attempts to clarify makes things worse

But if it helps, there is no checkout process attached to the make an offer feature. If a buyer sends you an offer, and you accept it, there's no way for eBay to force the buyer to checkout at that point, but the sale itself is still made.

If you have best offer on an item but the buyer still just uses Buy It Now at full price, immediate payment can be forced.

[karecoope-95]

Now I understand that. Thank you!

[swapwaregames]

I have pay immediately to stop people buying my items and then not deciding to pay for many days, some don't even pay at all. But if you have best offer on all your items Immediate Payment cannot be used, Any best offers don't utilize immediate payment.cheers

[brerrabbit585]

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@shoppingbag* wrote:

Just an added thought. You only have Paypal as payment and no other options. Could this have something to do with it? For instance, I have three options, so obviously someone picking up, or sending a money order could not pay immediately. I don't know how it worked out that I had one or two that said she had to pay straight away.  I also wonder if it has anything to do with people buying via their phones, which often seems to cause problems. I may be way off the track here, but who knows??

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Having different payment options doesn't stop ebay forcing immediate payment against a seller's will.  I've always offered bank deposit as well as paypal but all my buyers are still forced to pay immediately if they use paypal.  Ebay themselves said a year ago that they're rolling out immediate payment to ALL sellers.  I wasn't one of the first to get it but I've had it a few months and it caused a lot of confusion for some buyers.

The only way to not pay immediately is to select bank deposit when they go through checkout.  One of my buyers did that thinking it'd mean she could request an invoice and then pay by paypal, but once she'd ticked bank deposit I wasn't able to issue an invoice or let her know how to pay using paypal. 

I have the odd person request an invoice when they use the cart but they're few and far between.  I have no idea how many see the link to request an invoice but I suspect most would pay immediately anyway.  Before immediate payment was foisted on me about three-quarters of my buyers never asked for an invoice but just paid immediately.

I'll probably remove bank deposit because it's rare that anyone uses it now, and all it does is enable non-payers to select it in checkout if they have no intention of paying and just want to mess me around.

[lyndal1838]

In the last few weeks I have found that if a buyer uses the Cart so they can request a combined postage invoice ebay very promptly tells them that "this seller does not allow combined postage" even when they expressly say they do.

Another favourite is "ebay does not allow combined postage when a seller has Immediate Payment selected".   Too bad if the seller has no idea that they have had immediate payment foisted on them.

Just a bit more money for ebay at the expense of both buyers and sellers.