Invoice vrs immediate payment issue.

[ceenare]

I am into my 4th week of selling. Some buyers can ask for and or wait for my invoice, others are forced to pay immediately.  What is causing this?  I have googled and tried to research this problem but find no definitive answer.  If eBay has a immediate payment policy, why not consistent for every one?

Fyi -I am not set up as a store; Most of my auctions/listings are 30 day Buy it Now; Most do not have a Best Offer option.  My wish is for a buyer to have the option of pay immediately or wait for combined shipping invoice. 

Thanks for yr help.

[femmefan1946]

Sellers can choose the Immediate Payment Required option.

Those who do are often

• in categories where multiple purchases are uncommon
• where Unpaid Items are common
• do not use Free Shipping*.

If you are still stuck in the horrible Simplified Sell Your Item form, you can change it through a link at the upper right of the form to the Advanced/Business SYI form.

This has more options and also lets you see more easily what you are opting into.

EBay invoices your buyers almost as soon as they purchase. You don't have to do it yourself.

If your customer is using a Shopping Cart, you have the opportunity to make adjustments to shipping.

As a new seller, you may not yet be able to use even your 50 Free Listings yet.  All new sellers are restricted in the number and value of their listings as a Protection for both buyers and over-enthusiastic sellers.

Don't open a Store until you have 100 unique items to list. The cost of a subscription is higher than paying for 49 listings in addition to your 50 Free.

*Free Shipping means the cost of shipping is included in the asking price. If a customer buys three $10 +Free Shipping items where the cost of shipping makes up $5 of the asking price, he would be paying $15 for shipping, although the actual cost to the seller is less.  Basically it's an ethical question.

[femmefan1946]

Just took a look at your listings.

Do open a Store.

Those 161 listings are costing you $56.35 a month.

A Basic Store would allow you to list up to 250 Fixed Price items for only $24.95 monthly (slightly less if you opt for the annual subscription).

https://pages.ebay.ca/seller-centre/fees-payments/fees.html#fees-table

[richardcm]

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@femmefan1946 wrote:

Just took a look at your listings.

Do open a Store.

Those 161 listings are costing you $56.35 a month.

A Basic Store would allow you to list up to 250 Fixed Price items for only $24.95 monthly (slightly less if you opt for the annual subscription).

https://pages.ebay.ca/seller-centre/fees-payments/fees.html#fees-table

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Most likely the OP is using one of the free listing specials that came out in the past weeks. At least I hope so.

[ceenare]

Thank you for your information. I believe I am not in the simplified format and  I know the "immediate payment" box you write of and I made a point of not check marking it.

I did use an offer of 50 free listings and now Im on 200 free listing (till end of April)  offer.  Do these offers limit my choices??

I will look at a store then, but Im just clearing out an old hobby and didnt think of myself as a store. I can foresee this taking a few months so maybe is worth it.

So If Im not in the quick sell, simple format and Im not checking off " immediate payment"  What could this be?

[ceenare]

I've continued to poke around for a setting or something Ive missed and inside My Account, I've found a Manage Shipping Settings page where I could select "Allow Combined Shipping and Payments" .. Maybe this will solve the issue. I'll report back in a few days and a few more sale.

[pjcdn2005]

This isn't a simple answer to your question because everything is not consistent and because they are melding an old buy it now system with a newer cart system.  eBay does add immediate payment required (ipr) to some listings even if you haven't checked it off on the listing form. The official standpoint that I've heard is that they do that to all listings under $1000 but that doesn't seem to be true. At one time is was just on listings initiated on .com but now some .ca seem to have it as well.  For myself, it seems that all .com listings that I look at are ipr so I've always assumed that they do that for international buyers but that's just a guess.

Another  reason that some buyers pay right away and that some ask for an invoice is based on whether they use the cart. If you or ebay have ipr on that listing and the buyer clicks on buy it now  they are required to pay in order to buy it.  If there is no ipr, then they have the option of committing to buy so at this point you could send them an invoice if necessary.

If a buyer puts more than one item from the same seller in their cart they can request an invoice IF...

Items are not on sale

Items do not have free shipping

The seller has not chose ipr (ebay chosen ipr will allow an invoice)

Seller has enabled buyers to pay for more than one item

I might have missed something..

And sometimes the request invoice is grayed out for the buyer and we really don't know why.

eBay wants sellers to set up shipping with shipping rules so that invoices aren't ever required but for some of us that is very difficult to do so we just do the best that we can.

[ceenare]

Thank-you for your comments and insight- this is very helpful.

[recped]

Further to PJ's comments......

This forced Immediate Payment is my single biggest complaint about eBay's meddling (much worse than the recent exclusion situation I posted about).

At time it seems like if buyers log into the .ca site (if your listings are on .ca) and adds items to the cart and does not have anything else in their cart they MAY be able to access the "request total" button. I've instructed buyers to do this, works for some but not for others.

I'm really fed up paying extra PayPal 30 cent fees, tired of paying fvf's that are not refundable and soon I'll be very tired of not even getting a refund of PayPal fees when I do a small partial refund.

The (oranges) origins of this issue go back a long time, when originally "announced" (actually not officially announced) it was said to be done to "help" sellers avoid non-payment issues but then as now the option for sellers to require Immediate Payment is available to those who want to use it, no need to have it forced upon us.

[zee-chan]

If you decide to open a store, open it near the end of April (or even in May) instead of now. Your listings right now are already live so there's little benefit to opening the store right now unless you really want to start organizing your listing into categories.

[ceenare]

Thank you experienced sellers for your comments. I, at least, understand what's going on now.  I think I've set this up as best as one can and will work on how to deal with the confusion it causes. I've already lost one buyer over the appearance of excess shipping costs.   Thanks zee-chan, unfortunately I jumped on the store yesterday (lol)  Regardless, will be a benefit long term.  

Many Thanks.