The eBay Managed Payment Issues Plaguing Sellers

by: Vigilant Eye On eBay

Note from eBay to its sellers:

Subservient to our shareholders and fixated on our personal needs, we are totally focused on our profit margins.

Insofar as seller profits are concerned, not so much.

by: Shanna

Hey, listen, eBay has only had 5 years to develop their payment system with a company that has been up and running on Etsy for years now without the major issues eBay has. Just because they have major glitches everyday, sellers should be unconcerned. The programmers in India making $2/day are the best money can buy and they have everything under control. Nevermind that eBay said they would add 4 million sellers into Mangled Payments this past summer, but only tricked 340K to sign up, probably just another glitch.

by: pace306

If you think payouts are an issue - wait till you start getting returns with it .... payout issues will be "happy days" compared to that ....!

by: Snapped

“Hey there,” eBay. Nice of you to so condescendingly respond.

Betcha a word salad peppered newest brainstorm eBay News You Can Use bloviation you won’t see THAT particular phrase quoted in one of your street boast press releases.

It should be your new tag line though: eBay - “We’re not quite up and running for this yet.”

Seriously, there are better organized monkey poo fights than these children are able to achieve. Sincerest sympathies to any who are undefendably financially impacted by this eCom clown circus of a venue, but if you can’t find some way out of this at your earliest convenience, then you’ve nobody to complain to at this point when the water inevitably reaches to your chin.

by: aris 2

This week's payouts have been the worst so far. For the past few weeks the payouts were occurring around midnight EST for me. Every few days, it got a bit later, until this past week they were at 6am. Since we can see the date and time of the last payout and the expected date and time of the next payout, I was pretty surprised to see them actually skip a day in the middle of the week a few days ago. There it was...in plain sight: My 'next' payout was the day 'after' today!
With no payouts on the weekends (which is REALLY annoying) I actually had 3 days with no money moving at all this past week.

Are they serious?

I'm not in a position where I NEED this money to pay my bills NOW like some others, but if I were...I'd be mighty angry about this. My 'settings' for payouts say ''daily''. They don't say ''when we can get to them''.

This MP stuff is starting to leave a crappy taste in my mouth.  

by: UB

We signed up Friday night after receiving a message saying next month we will basically be forced into it and Ebay offered a $250 gift card to do it before Nov 30th. So we needed to update banking information as we had done Ebay managed payments 2 years but left ten after sales plummeted. After submitted a bank statement, it said it will be 2 business days for the documents to be reviewed. Then an hour later it shows on seller hub that We are on the list for managed payments but not yet activated. We will receive an email when we are activated. Well, I click on Payments and Ebay has us already put us in Managed payments as our sales are showing up there. I further look and see that are invoice amount is going up after we paid it to zero before we submitted our bank info. So I look at each sale and we are being deducted final value fees in ebay managed payments as well as being charged the normal final value fees to our invoice. I called and dealt with some not so good reps who after transferring me left me waiting. I called back and got a man who knew his shit and submitted to the tech team to look into this "glitch" as he said. As he was typing, he was speaking so I knew exactly what he was sending to them the tech team. he was probably the best Ebay rep I have dealt with. He explained how it shows I am not live in managed payments but the system has started to process the payments etc. So hopefully in a couple days it is fixed and the credits issued on my invoice. He said he will try to reach out if he gets alerted it has been resolved. If not I will be wasting some more time on the phone with Ebay managed payments!

by: pace306

Funny how other “money transmitters” can get it done correctly and immediately..... so it’s odd/funny/strange/theft most probably, that (as Jaime the Walmart dope says anytime someone will listen to him whine) that eBays present and future are technology based!

Incompetent money’s aka eBay employees should be ashamed to work for CA’s biggest criminal organization

by: toolguy

"Incompetent money’s aka eBay employees should be ashamed to work for CA’s biggest criminal organization "

eBay is small potatoes compared to the State of California!

Governor Newsom is the "Godfather" here in The Golden State, eBay is just bookie in the game of money. The state is the King Fish. . . . . . .

by: postbuster

"You should download your Transaction report every quarter since the report only goes back 90 days. This will ensure you don't lose any details."

Even stupid etsy has my sales report dating back to when I first started there.
Back in April, I printed out copies of those sales and some of my stats to know for sure of my progress.
It also revealed the market patterns of my specific shop (including the pandemic).

What I realized is when the Government issues a state of emergency, it also applies to wrongful business strategy such as throttling. (Not just because there was stimulus monies out there)
Coincidentally, sales slowed down in the beginning of August.

by: ebayisscrewed

Pride has no place in business.  

Ebay allowed Wall Street Bully Carl Ichan to force them into separating from Pay Pal.   This decision was all about shareholders and the market, but like most decisions made in this fashion, only the short term matters.  

Love or hate Pay Pal, they are the best at what they do.  Accuracy, timeliness, and reporting they are second to none.   Ebay switching to Ayden was like taking a step back to a 1999 payment processing system.   It just makes no sense.   Enter Ebay's pride and there is your answer.   Instead of working out a deal with Pay Pal, they got their ego hurt and couldn't pull up their big boy pants.  

The biggest issue -  the long term effects.  Sales will continue to plummet as sellers do not have instant access to funds to rebuy on the site.    Ebay's largest buyer pool is its sellers.    When sellers get paid instantly, they have money to spend right back on eBay.   Sense of urgency . . .   Make them wait several days and that sale is gone.  

I have said it for years, long gone are the days of ebay trying to make money of their core competency - facilitating a transaction.   They have messed that up so badly, they are looking to make money off of every other aspect of the site.   Returns, Labels, Search, Payment Floats, etc.   Mismanagement and loss of focus has done them in.  

by: CanBrit

What I'm finding that is rather confusing is the payouts schedule when several orders are placed the same day.

I had a payment that showed it was going to be sent to the bank on Friday, however another order came in and the payment date was changed to Monday. Is this how it's going to go? Will a new order always keep changing the deposit date?  

by: MainelyVintage

Got our notice that we need to sign up, yay (not).

Any recommendations for (silver scrap and other) coin sales? Heritage Auctions?

by: smallstuff

Thanks for the heads up about the transaction report.  I wasn't sure what purpose the report would serve, but just to be safe I requested a transaction report back to the Jan 1, 2020.  What I got was an accurate report back to the day I made my first sale under Managed Payments.  So, it does not include anything before MP, which is OK.  I've been keeping my own spreadsheet of sales to see if anything unusual happens on the fees, but so far my calculations and eBay's actual fees agree to the penny.  And, in my case I save a little on most transactions compared to the old fee system.  The only time it is more expensive with MP is when a high sales tax is involved.

by: cfrphoto

No one at eBay seems to have looked at seller needs. The payout email discloses the net amount that will appear in the checking account. It contains a link labeled "Payout details" that opens the Payouts summary page that displays some payout data but fails to expose the gross amount and deducted fees. Each payout line links to a "Payouts detail page that displays the gross amount, deducted fee and net amount for each transaction included in the payout. However, the Payout detail page lacks totals when multiple orders are posted in the payout making it necessary to add gross amounts and deducted fees when reconciling eBay payments with the checking account ledger. If gross amounts and deducted fees are not posted to the accounting system, it may not be possible to correctly report profit and loss or file taxes. How dumb is that?

Sales tax is even worse. eBay collected sales tax amounts are posted in the Orders report which can go back only 90 days when downloaded. A minimum of five downloads are required every year to capture an entire year of eBay orders data. Is this not dumber yet?

Fortunately, SixBIt captures orders data including sales tax and enough payments data to make it possible to reconstruct gross payments, deducted fees and net amounts posted to the checking account if the amounts are not posted to the accounting system for each payout. However, eBay collected sales tax data was incomplete in 2019 and payouts and Managed Payments fee data was not fully reported through the eBay API until the summer of 2020.

For what it is worth, eBay still fails to comply with reporting to seller requirements imposed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts or the State of Washington. And, eBay has no way to track reporting to sellers who must file out-of-state sales tax returns in addition to their home state.

by: Lightning

I'm not seeing any difficulties getting info.  You can download a report from MP that has your gross, net, fees, International fees, buyer name, buyer username, what you spent on shipping labels, etc.  It doesn't have sales tax, but I'm no longer involved in sales tax, theoretically.  EBay handles it.  In the event I have to know about it (oops), I download each month's activity from File Manager which has Sales tax collected in a couple of fields, plus all that other stuff.  

There seems to be more than enough info to go around.  Sure, you have to stay ahead of it, like not wait until day 91 to download your info.  And if it takes 5 or even 6(!) downloads during the YEAR, wow, they take about 2 minutes to load.  I can't think of 1 piece of information that someone would need that isn't available in the reports.  Maybe the problem is it doesn't bolt up to 3rd party software, and that causes a disconnect.

by: cillianred

I can get the information I need without a Transaction report, but just out of curiosity, I created a report that went back to when I entered Managed Payments in July of this year. That's MORE than 90 days, yet the report contained everything from July to now. So that 90 limit seems to no longer be true.  

by: Mamak

I have 2 returns which I provided partial refunds and eBay is still holding the full amounts for some unknown reason.  One is about a week since I refunded.  They need to release my holds as I have completed the returns and provided refunds that were due.  

by: Jester

I was in this last wave to be included into managed payments. Nothing will ever be as good as getting my funds immediately after I sell an item. That considered the process so far is not as bad as I imagined but not as good as I had hoped for either.

I have experienced some noticeable delays on some payments the worst being around 3 days longer than seems to be the norm so far. The average time from the sell of the item till I get the funds are in my bank account is about 7-8 days. The first week is the worst till your payments schedule fills the pipeline and creates a general flow of money into your account. Having other income sources helps mitigate those delays and developing a larger buffer of funds in my business account is necessary for those extended delays or unusual occurrences in the system and also refunds and returns of which I have very few. I will say that sales since I started MP's have increased and my habits of listing daily has become more regulated or steady with one day off a week.

Some positive points is that you can have the shipping costs taken out of the pending funds instead of having eBay charge you for them if you like which I do. And it has changed my lazy habits of not listing more consistently to ensure I maintain a constant flow of funds into my account.

The opposite of this is, gone are the days of needing to pay a bill and running a big sale and immediately having money to pay a bill at the last minute or taking a few days off knowing you can run a sale if needed. This is the good time of the year for sales I am worried what will happen in April May June my slowest months come around. I will say I seldom run sales anymore and seem to be getting on average a higher price from my items.

by: songe-d-automne

Ebay attempted to force me into managed payments starting this past March. They told me to move over in July or else. I chose or else. Since I am collecting unemployment due to lack of sourcing (I live in a rural area and in a state with all over the map restrictions) right now it doesn't affect me much.

They've sent me about 41 messages over the past few months with various bait thrown out to try and sweeten the pot or threats to not let me sell and now ominous e-mails saying I am no longer able to list - Oh noes, I am sure I am missing out on that lowball offer someone was going to send me - then return it anyway. lol.

Don't let the door hit you where the good Lord split you, eBay. When I go back to selling next month, I'm taking my business to Mercari, Etsy and Facebook.  

by: Ebay_Seller_Since2009

I have been selling on ebay for over 10 years and am a Top Rated Seller.  On November 7th, 2020 a buyer purchased a used lab item (an HPLC column ) that had a quantity of two available.  The buyer bought both.

On Nov 12th the buyer asked to return one of the two items and I agreed.

On November 15th upon receiving the returned column, I went into ebay returns and attempted to offer a refund for one of the buyer’s two orders.  The buttons to click through to send the refunds were not live.  There was no way to send a full refund, let alone a partial refund.
I called ebay customer support.  The customer rep said that I must send a refund via Paypal because my store is on ebay Managed Payments but the buyer is not.  I told the ebay rep I did not have an email address because the original buy transaction ran through ebay managed payments.  She said to contact the buyer and ask for their email address.  Further, she stated she would hold the return open for me to have time to process the refund in this manner.

After securing the buyer’s email address, I tried to provide the partial refund but Paypal refused with a note “Sorry, this recipient can’t accept payments right now.”  When I asked Paypal why, Paypal responded:
I understand your time is valuable and I apologize to hear you have to experience this way. The case has been disputed through Ebay. I would strongly advise to call them directly at EBay customer service at 8665403229 for any clarification you may ask them the process.

I called ebay on 11/20 and a confused ebay customer rep put me on hold four times and spent 20 minutes before she said she had no answers but would pass me on to ebay Managed Payments for help with a resolution.  I held on the line for an hour before giving up; no one from ebay ever answered my hold.

On 11/21:  ebay automatically issued a full refund (2 orders plus all shipping) for the original full transaction.

On 11/23/2020 I tried to appeal the full refund decision.  
From ebay website: How to appeal a decision
To start an appeal, follow these steps:
Go to your Seller Dashboard.
Expand Closed without seller resolution to see your options.
Select See cases and find the item in the list.
Select See details and then send us an appeal.
Ebay’s guidance above on how to appeal a decision fails—because ebay has removed the case from my store’s Resolution Center. I went into my Resolution Center but ebay has removed all trace of the transaction.  The case does not appear on my “transaction defect report” for the period Sep 01 through Nov 20 2020, either.

In this instance, the dollar amount of the refund issued in error is not large (just over $50).  But, the ebay process is broken and sellers have no recourse.

Do you or your readers have any recommendations on how to navigate ebay’s bungled process without wasting hours on end waiting on hold for a customer rep in ebay’s Managed Payments division to take a call and actually have substantive answers?