Placing a bid

[jayne37r]

My son and I had been watching an item he wanted me to get for him. Within the last minute we decided to place a bid for the item. We pressed to confirm the bid but a message said something about pay pal like not signed in with pay pal or something. It wouldn't go any further and then time had run out so we didn't get our item. If you want to place a bid, do you need to be logged in to you pay pal account. How do you do that I can't see it. It looks like you usually have a time period to pay eg 3-5 days so I thought pay pal would be opened up after you have won the bid. I have only purchased before when it was buy now so I don't know if that is different but I have never had that issue. My son was gutted, apparently he'd been watching this item for almost a week. I don't want to run into the same problem so please advise me what might have gone wrong.

Thanks

[momcqueen]

Is it possible this listing was both an auction and buy-it-now listing? If you accidentally pressed buy-it-now instead of bidding, it may have asked you to sign in to complete your purchase. Sellers are allowed that setting on their items should they choose to use it. It may also be that the seller has pre-screened buyers who don't actively have paypal accounts associated with their ebay ID. It's one of the options given to sellers as ebay believes buyers without paypal accounts are more likely to leave items unpaid. 

Either way, I would encourage you to contact the seller and explain the situation. It is always possible that another item like this one exists or that they might relist it (if it didn't sell) or that the winning bidder (if there was one) won't actually pay for it. Good luck!