Ebay help - Bidder getting invoice from ebay

[KarentheUnicorn]

Hi,

Not sure if this is an issue or me not getting back to the buyer quick enough and them being impatient.

I recently sold some items on ebay and explained in the description I would combine on shipping. I have a bidder who bought 5 items.

My auctions ended yesterday but I was out of town so I did not email or contact any of my buyers since I'd rather do that at the computer instead of my phone. Plus with the bidder buying multiple items I needed time to box them up to give them an appropriate shipping amount etc. So I didn't even look yesterday when everything ended, I was going to wait till today.

So when I got in to work this morning I glanced at my email and saw the bidder had messaged me twice. The first was to get a total...and the second was this:

I see that you have billed me the shipping charges without combining those charges. That is not what you had offered in your auction pages. It says that you would combine shipping charges.

I do not appreciate when an auction offers a benefit that later is not honored.

Please advise. Thank you.

So I'm a bit frustrated, not only did the person not wait for me to respond to the first email, for some reason he is getting a bill.

I hadn't contacted him so my question is, did ebay send him some kind of invoice before I even had a chance to contact him? I have no clue if they've added or changed something to do this or if it's something I can adjust. Either way I didn't send him anything as yet so I'm a little annoyed if ebay IS sending something to my buyer without me knowing it.

I responded to him with this:

Hi,

Just so you are aware I have been out of town this weekend and have not made contact with any bidders from my auctions that ended yesterday.

I am unaware of how you would get a bill or invoice from me, the only thing I can assume is it was send by ebay; but please be aware that I have not contacted you till this email I am sending now. I planned to send info and invoices out today so I could adjust if anyone had bid on multiple items. Besides, if you have bought multiple items, I haven't even even gone through the auctions to see who has or hasn't won multiple.

I am aware that paypal and ebay make things a lot faster in some cases but they use to allow the seller at least a day or two to contact the buyer. So this is kind of frustrating since I didn't send you any message or invoice.

I will have to check the settings and find out why you were automatically contacted by ebay but please be aware that it was not sent by me.

I will be sending out the total for your auction this evening, if you have paid it I will simply refund you whatever the difference is in the price once I've boxed up the items together, etc.

Sorry for any inconvenience this has caused you but please know I do honor whatever I have written in the description and that includes any information about shipping, etc.

So anyway guys, can anyone help me and let me know if there is any kind of setting ebay has added where they contact your bidders? Is there some box I need to click to make sure this doesn't happen again?

Or is this bidder simply looking at a email from ebay stating he won an auction, pay this amount without waiting for me to actually contact him? Ebay changes things so often I'm worried that I've missed some new setting or something, etc and want to make sure it's not on my end that this happened.

[Taffeta]

Judging by the way ebay behaves these days I would imagine they sent the invoice on autopilot or the buyer requested and invoice and got one sent automatically or something. I've found ebay really weird in its notifications for a while now. I've had sellers saying they combine shipping but actually ebay saying they don't when it comes to the final invoice (which may be what they are trying to do because if you try and request an invoice for combined shipping and ebay is having a spasm it will tell the buyer the seller doesn't combine. And it genuinely doesn't matter if you have the combined shipping option ticked or not. I have encountered this as a buyer with multiple sellers all telling me they accept combined shipping, so the common denominator seems to be ebay. I would guess maybe it's that that's got them mad.

[KarentheUnicorn]

The thing that is weird is he replied and he says that paypal automatically paid...

here is the reply:

Hi Karen,

Thanks for your prompt reply to my message. I appreciate what you told me about you not being the one who initiated the billing, the way it did. And now you are going to freak when I tell you that: I NEVER INITIATED THE PAYMENT EITHER!!! they took the freedom to do everything without our consent.

I was kind of uncomfortable because I saw the money being paid to you without any interaction from my part, and charging me $25 hipping for something so small and lightweight, when you specifically said otherwise.

I can tell you one thing though: In the many many years buying all kind of stuff from eBay, this is the FIRST time I see this happening to me. So, I am going to keep an eye from now on. They do it again, and they will hear it from me. They have no right to initiate payment unless I myself want to. Greediness seems to have taken the best part of them, since they do not want to wait for the buyer to complete a transaction.

Again, thank you Karen. Please refund the portion I was billed in excess. Not your fault these people are so greedy.

Best regards,

So I don't know, it's weird again as I've never heard of an automatic payment and paypal and ebay should not be doing that if that did happened. It's one thing to authorize a payment to be made automatically, it's another to do it without the buyers knowing but I do remember ebay had changed the stuff on shipping and were getting a percentage of that as well with fees (which I think is crappy of them to do); so they would frown on combine shipping because it's cutting them out of some money - but I do agree with him that ebay seems to have gotten really greedy lately and I don't sell as much as I used to because I just don't have a lot of time to do it,  but also they're fees and how much you can actually make on an auction has been cut into by they're nonsense.

[Taffeta]

I know you can connect paypal and ebay together like it used to be (in the old days when ebay owned paypal and were less scary about their information and billing practices!) but that's just freaky and a bit terrifying. No wonder your buyer was upset! At least you can figure it out with them and refund them the difference, but wow. That's a bit scary...and definitely something people need to be aware of.

[Thunderwing]

That's just crazy!  I had no idea this sort of thing could happen. I would be calling ebay and asking them a bunch of questions. Are we all suddenly opted in for this new way of doing things?

[Skeen]

These were auctions and not BINs, right?

[tulagirl]

I think this could have to do with people who have combined their ebay and paypal accounts to make things easier to conduct business with paypal without having to log in.   I guess ebay must be automatically trying to pay for auctions on accounts where they have access to a seller's paypal account and no password is needed for them to access it.  It's just a guess. I have no idea, but it is the only thing that makes me wonder.    Sellers need to send invoices before buyers pay.  Once again if this is the case it's another fail.  If it isn't then I don't have any explanation as to why this would happen.  I did not and will not allow ebay to access my paypal.  I do this myself and by password.  Nothing is easier.  I have learned that easier usually leads to headaches and a mess.

[KarentheUnicorn]

These were auctions and not BINs, right?

Yep, just auctions no bin

Everything seems to be okay now, I've sent the item and refunded part of the shipping, etc. So hopefully everything else goes smoothly once he gets the items.