eBay

godzilla_goose · ‎02-19-2017

I have read that an eBay seller claims to be scammed by the buyer merely checking off "payment sent" in their (the BUYER'S) My eBay page. As a buyer, I do not understand the seller's claim of being scammed by the buyer merely marking "payment sent" on the buyer's end of the transaction.

As an eBay seller, do you see the payment icon "filled in" or "marked" on your end of the transaction if the buyer, in actual fact, did NOT make payment via PayPal?

I ask these questions to gather a genuine understanding of eBay seller concerns about being scammed and NOT "claiming" to be scammed merely by the buyer being able to mark "payment sent" on their end of the transaction in their My eBay page.

As a seller, when the auction ends or the Buy It Now listing ends with a buyer and BEFORE the buyer actually pays you via PayPal, do you, the eBay seller, receive ANY e-mail notification whatsoever from eBay that includes the buyer's name and (shipping) address?

As an eBay buyer, I know for a fact, that BEFORE I make my payment via PayPal to the eBay seller, I absolutely do NOT receive any notification from eBay OR from PayPal that includes the seller's real name (or their chosen "business" name). It is ONLY AFTER I remit my PayPal payment, that PayPal provides me with the seller's real name or their chosen "business" name be that the case. I am NOT provided with the eBay seller's (street or mailing) address AT ANY TIME. At the moment my PayPal payment is completed through eBay checkout, the "payment sent" icon is automatically filled-in in My eBay page. I do NOT have to mark that icon.

On the occasions that I have remitted my money order payment via snail mail OR if I contacted the eBay seller and provided them with my credit card number to process through their merchant account (and thus NOT through eBay/PayPal), I have had to manually check the "payment sent" icon in my My eBay page to prevent eBay from sending me those ANNOYING PAYMENT REMINDERS to pay the eBay seller especially AFTER I have already remitted my payment to the eBay seller.

If PayPal does NOT provide you, the eBay seller, with the eBay buyer's mailing address BEFORE the eBay buyer actually remits their payment via PayPal, how it is possible for the eBay seller to be scammed by the eBay buyer IF the eBay buyer merely clicks the "payment sent" icon in the buyer's My eBay page?

It is my belief and understanding that the item remains in the eBay seller's possession before the eBay buyer has made payment to the eBay seller so exactly how is the eBay seller being "scammed" if the eBay buyer is clicking the "payment sent" icon in the buyer's My eBay page?

It is also my understanding that if I, the eBay buyer, DO NOT make my payment to the eBay seller via PayPal, to the best of my knowledge, the eBay seller is NOT provided with the eBay buyer's name AND mailing address so how could the eBay seller print out a shipping label IF they do NOT have the eBay buyer's shipping address?

IF I, the eBay buyer, merely click the "payment sent" icon WITHOUT actually remitting a payment via PayPal, it is my understanding that there is NO PayPal Transaction ID number generated with respect to the eBay transaction and if there is NO PayPal transaction ID number generated and if the eBay seller is NOT provided with the eBay buyer's mailing address, how is it, EXACTLY, that the eBay seller is being "scammed"?

i.am.vivian · ‎02-22-2017

@sylviebee wrote:
No, it's not in the roll down menu.

I know that this option existed in the past, but if it's still available it's not easy to find.

Godzilla: How does a buyer mark an item paid?

I'm not Godzilla, but the way a buyer marks it "paid" if you want to call it that, is with the right side drop-down menu under "More actions".

There should be "mark as payment sent", just as a paid item has "unmark as payment sent" for some reason.

That does not mean it could ever fool the system into thinking the item was paid for. On, off, on, off, a buyer can play with it all day and it is never going to indicate anywhere that the item was paid for. Its just that the little dollar sign thingy changes color.

At least that is how it used to be. I don't know if there's been a change to that or not.

i.am.vivian · ‎02-22-2017

Cumos you beat me to it. I guess you win the race. 🙂

sylviebee · ‎02-22-2017

I'm again looking at the roll down menu and under "More Actions" I have 9 options and none is "Mark a Payment Sent."

I do know that the choice was there in the past, but it's not there now (at least not for my purchases).

Do you actually have an item waiting to be paid where you checked the options?

i.am.vivian · ‎02-22-2017

No, the only way I could find out for sure would be to buy one of my own items just to fiddle around with it. I've done that before to go through all the hows of who sees what, but I haven't bought anything recently. This particular issue isn't bothering me all that much. If you think of it next time you buy anything, even the tiniest item (beads or whatever) see if you can remember to try it. I am now curious to see if an item being GSP or non-GSP makes any difference.

i.am.vivian · ‎02-22-2017

@sylviebee wrote:
I'm again looking at the roll down menu and under "More Actions" I have 9 options and none is "Mark a Payment Sent."

Hang on. Did I misread? (wouldn't be the first time) Did you mean you are looking under SOLD items or in your Purchase History as a buyer. Sellers could never "mark as payment sent" from a SOLD item, only as pyt received. It's buyers who can mark as pyt sent, from their PH.

Am I on the right page?

sylviebee · ‎02-22-2017

I don't understand your post Vivian.

As I said, I have items which have not been paid for yet so I don't have to buy a test item. I have them.

I tried to post a screen shot but haven't been able to yet so for now you'll just have to take my word for it.

(I have a screen shot but the system doesn't want to accept it,)

i.am.vivian · ‎02-22-2017

OK, you can't mark things pyt SENT as a seller. That's an option under More Actions in the PH of a buyer.

godzilla_goose · ‎02-22-2017

sylviebee,

First, go into your My eBay page.

Now, depending on exactly how you have set up your My eBay page homepage or landing page, select Summary.

On the left hand side of the page under Summary, there should be a section titled Purchase history. Click on Purchase history.

On the left hand side of the web page, look below, you should see an Icon legend to show you what the various icons mean.

When you have won an eBay item, there should be a dollar sign icon that is very faint IF you have NOT paid your eBay seller. When you remit your payment, then you should be able to manually click on the faint $ icon and this should change the icon where it will now appear filled in and this will indicate that you have paid for the item on YOUR end of the transaction.

Since I have not made any purchase since the July of 2016, I do not have any open orders to be able to determine EXACTLY where the faint icon or icons that appear with respect to an eBay item if I were to select the Buy tab and not the Purchase history tab within My eBay.

So to manually check "payment sent", meaning the dollar sign icon, you would have to select the Buy tab or the Purchase History tab within your My eBay page to see where the faint dollar sign icon appears with respect to the specific eBay item that you want to pay for.

Even if you are paying for a GSP item, to the best of my understanding, you should still be able to manually click the dollar sign icon for this specific eBay item even if you are paying the seller's own PayPal invoice and you are not paying through eBay's Pay Now button (or eBay Checkout).

===============

sylviebee,

As cumos55 and i.am.vivian wrote earlier, you should be able to manually mark the payment sent dollar sign icon from your My eBay page. Click the Won link on the left hand side of the page. Locate your item, and select Mark as payment sent from the Actions drop-down menu.

Now, to be perfectly honest with you, when I started this thread, I did not write about GSP items, because whenever I have actually bought through eBay's [BLASTED] GSP, I simply paid for the item as I normally would through the Pay Now button (or eBay Checkout) and not through the seller's own PayPal invoice that is outside of the GSP. Since I was paying for these GSP items via PayPal, there was no reason for me to mark the payment sent manually. That dollar sign icon is filled in automatically as soon as I complete checkout.

It is my belief, that you should be able to manually mark the payment sent (dollar sign icon) in your My eBay page when you have sent your payment via PayPal for your GSP item. Paying your seller's PayPal invoice will NOT automatically fill in the dollar sign icon on your My eBay page because your PayPal payment is, for lack of a better term, NOT "linked" to the eBay (GSP) item if you had simply paid via Pay Now or eBay checkout and actually proceeded through the [BLASTED] GSP NONSENSE.

godzilla_goose · ‎02-22-2017

@sylviebee wrote:
I'm again looking at the roll down menu and under "More Actions" I have 9 options and none is "Mark a Payment Sent."

I do know that the choice was there in the past, but it's not there now (at least not for my purchases).

Do you actually have an item waiting to be paid where you checked the options?

sylviebee,

If the "Mark as payment Sent" does NOT appear under "More Actions" drop down menu, does a faint dollar sign icon appear in the area that is directly related to or is specific to the GSP eBay item that you are paying for that you are NOT paying through eBay checkout but are settling your transaction via the seller's own PayPal invoice?

Even if there is no "Mark as payment Sent", you should still see a bunch of icons related to the specific eBay item to indicate whether or not feedback was received, whether the item was shipped, etc. The dollar sign icon (to indicate payment), to the best of my knowledge, should also appear among those other icons. If the dollar sign icon is faint, this would indicate that payment was NOT sent or made. If the dollar sign icon is filled in, then this would indicate the item was paid for via eBay checkout OR if you decided to settle the transaction via other payment methods, then you would have to manually click on that dollar sign icon to indicate that payment was sent.

sylviebee · ‎02-22-2017

Godzilla. GSP items are processed differently. I'm looking only at regular items now.

If these icons exist I can't find them. I do recall these on the seller's page.

The way I know if I've paid for an item or not is when the Pay Now button disappears and the item goes below the line with all of the other paid items.

If there is an option for the buyer to indicate that the payment has been sent for unpaid items it's well hidden.

sylviebee · ‎02-22-2017

P.S. Also, for buyers, the icons you refer to appear with the paid items but not with the unpaid items.

sylviebee · ‎02-22-2017

I've blanked out the item details, but this is the way unpaid items appear on My EBay. There are no icons for unpaid items. Only for those paid, and unless there's a completely different route to unpaid items, I can see no way for a buyer to mark an unpaid item as paid.

godzilla_goose · ‎02-22-2017

@sylviebee wrote:
Godzilla. GSP items are processed differently. I'm looking only at regular items now.

If these icons exist I can't find them. I do recall these on the seller's page.

The way I know if I've paid for an item or not is when the Pay Now button disappears and the item goes below the line with all of the other paid items.

If there is an option for the buyer to indicate that the payment has been sent for unpaid items it's well hidden.

sylviebee,

Since I haven't purchased anything since July, 2016, I will just have to take what you say (at FACE VALUE) about GSP items being processed differently.

When I did buy a GSP item, I did so through eBay checkout and NOT through the seller's OWN PayPal invoice so when I did buy a GSP item, then it is treated like any other eBay item.

If you are only looking at regular items now, and none of those icons appear, then I don't know what to tell you because I am not about to go bidding/buying an item just to see what does appear in My eBay.

If eBay is constantly making changes to its interface (meaning pages, layout, tools) and I have not had transaction activity during that time, then I will be unaware of the specific changes that you appear to be stating that have occurred.

sylviebee · ‎02-22-2017

If the scam you were referring to in the OP was about buyers marking unpaid items as paid, then it's not possible to do that.

GSP items are different only when the payment isn't made directly through eBay. In that case even sellers cannot mark the item as paid and that causes a number of problems for buyers. It can be a major headache.

Several years ago I had a buyer from France who bought about 10 high priced items and paid for all but one of them.

She marked all of the items as paid and that caused a major headache because English was not her first language. She had made an honest mistake but trying to get her to understand that she still had to pay for an item was next to impossible.

It looks like they've plugged that hole, thank goodness.

godzilla_goose · ‎02-22-2017

sylviebee,

The other thing that is NOT clear to me is when you say that GSP items are being treated differently than regular eBay items, are you stating this with respect to a GSP item that you have a mutual agreement with the seller to generate their OWN PayPal invoice for you to pay so that you are, in actual fact, NOT dealing with the GSP process?

Because from my memory, when I did buy a GSP item, I did NOT make a separate arrangement with the seller to settle the transaction OUTSIDE of the GSP framework. You, on the other hand, did, so our experiences with actual GSP items are going to be different.

Since you are making a separate arrangement with your GSP seller to, in effect, "take the item OUTSIDE of GSP" so that you can pay them directly so that they can ship the [GSP] item to you via the Postal Service directly and not through the GSP program in which the seller ships the item off to Erlanger, Kentucky for Pitney-Bowes to ship off to you.

godzilla_goose · ‎02-22-2017

sylviebee,

I am going to sign off as I have other real life work to do so please don't think that I am ignoring you.

sylviebee · ‎02-22-2017

Yes.

godzilla_goose · ‎02-23-2017

@sylviebee wrote:
Yes.

sylviebee,

Thank you for affirming that the arrangements you have with your GSP sellers are to settle those eBay [GSP] items OUTSIDE of the GSP framework.

Since your "GSP" transactions are different than the conventional GSP transactions, then it would seem that those transactions aren't "recognized" by eBay and therefore you shouldn't find any icons related to those specific items that you are having sent to you OUTSIDE of the GSP process. This is my best guess.

Since I am not privy to the GSP seller's listing, I don't know, what, IF anything, the seller did with their listing in order to facilitate your mutual agreement to ship outside of the GSP. Assuming the GSP seller did NOT "OPT OUT" of the GSP and just let the listing continue to completion, the GSP seller would have to create their OWN PayPal invoice for you to pay. Now, the thing is, I don't know if the GSP seller puts an eBay number associated with that PayPal invoice or not.

Sometimes, when I have made a PayPal payment to the eBay seller (non-GSP transaction) and I did NOT use the Pay Now button or eBay checkout, I would pay their PayPal Invoice and manually make a notation that the payment is for eBay Item #[item number]. I can not remember if making the payment in this manner caused the payment sent icon to be filled in or not within my My eBay page.