In brief: I am a far too prolific cent auction bidder on low-value items, and about every six months I seem to almost randomly have this issue.
Basically, I just flat cannot pay for an item no matter what method I use.
(Alright, the only two options I have are PayPal and card, but neither work.)
Everything fails in a slightly different way depending on the way I go about it.
Debit card
1st failure type: Nope
In this situation, card option selected, click "Confirm and Pay"—back to the same screen, now with a big red box "Your payment didn't go through. Please check the card info and billing address or select a different payment option."
This is the same card information that causes absolutely no issues with the hundreds of other items I've bought. But fine, I re-enter it anyway—nope. Exact same message. It just will not accept my details. Unfortunately I don't have any other cards to test, but like I said, this isn't an issue 99.99% of the time so I think it's safe to say it's not the card.
2nd failure type: Sneaky
Everything appears to go fine, but checking on the order details immediately it will say "Payment being processed". In Purchases, it says "Your payment is pending." After a few minutes the order details will say "This order was not successful. Order cost has not been included in the total amount." And of course the items will move back up to the unpaid section.
I believe this second type happens only after trying to pay with PayPal and it greying out, but I recall it also happening when going through checkout with other items that don't have this issue.
PayPal
If the item is grouped with others that don't have this issue, I can select PayPal as the payment method, log in, it basically appears to go through fine. However, then when I click on order details it says "This order was not successful. Order cost has not been included in the total amount. The seller hasn't received payment for this order yet."
If I try to pay for the item or items with this issue on their own I can select PayPal, log in, everything appears to be normal until it goes back to the checkout page... and PayPal is totally greyed out/uncheckable. "Unfortunately, you can't pay with this option. Please select a different payment option."
"Maybe it's the seller--"
Yeah, that's what eBay and PayPal have suggested after I've spent god knows how long convincing them I'm not an idiot that hasn't exhausted every last option on my end.
Problem: this has happened with multiple sellers that I've bought many items from previously with no issue. In fact, right now one of the items with this issue is from a seller where every single other item in the invoice went through fine, and I've even bought more things from them since.
What the hell is going on?
Obviously I don't know. As someone just familiar enough with web dev to guess, but not knowledgeable enough to know how or even if I could investigate, I think there has to be some kind of very obscure code conflict going on behind the scenes. Like the equivalent of one lone bracket breaking everything.
Unfortunately none of the people you can get to through the help sections of eBay and PayPal are remotely prepared for that sort of thing, and don't seem willing or able to pass me to someone that would be.
What am I going to do?
Well, fortunately none of the items are things I was desparate for, though they were good bargains. Two of them are from a seller I'd call a bit dodgy, but it's less "outright scam" and more "chinese seller I suspect is selling low value items on cent auctions to build positive feedback to sell higher priced items". I asked if I could send payment directly through PayPal and gave them my email, they said they would send a request but haven't. No unpaid item case even though it's been weeks. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The other's from a reputable seller I've received many things from. More recent so I only just asked them the same thing about direct payment, hoping they'll actually respond and send the request.
Why did I write this?
Like I said, it's a rare but recurrent issue. Every other time I've just had the items go unpaid, after contacting eBay and PayPal and getting no help whatsoever. I'm writing this so this time it's on the record, and if someone else has the same problem they know what's going on.
