Any site that insist on using it gets one try with an alternative card (Amex is normally a good one to use ) and if that doesn’t work I simply don’t buy. Easyhotel is the cheapest by far in London but I won’t use them any more because they’ve implemented that infuriating crap. They’ve lost my custom and the last hotel I used cost well over £100 extra but didn’t insist on annoying me before I even turned up on their door step.

Last invoice period a guy purchases a suite, no payment for a few days, then comes on to tell me his wife purchased it by mistake and he didnt know about it, we agree to cancel only he hasnt yet, so £40 odd quid in FVF’s has to be paid now and I have to wait until the next billing cycle to get it back…f’kin robbery…

eBay, what exactly have I done wrong, please tell me?

Sue is spot on – eBay need to get up to date.

3rd party checkouts are a nonsense. eBay should be ashamed that they are so far behind everyone else. Sort out the Merchant account / Tax / Up & Cross-sell issues then ditch the 3rd parties. Buyers should be kept ‘on-site’.

Waiting 7 days to cancel a BIN transaction is a farce. eBay’s failure to update this speaks loudly about greed for manipulating fees and lip service for the buyer (and seller) experience.

Personally I’d like to see eBay build out their checkout API so that all 3rd parties can get all the hooks they need to run their back end reliably and complete checkout but for it to run on eBay in as few pages as possible
(“as few” meaning no more than 1 )

Yes that’s correct, however the above is a “personal opinion”, take the comments as you may, thats how it was intended and was written as such.

Matt

“Scot Wingo wrote a long and impassioned plea”

There are only two absolute uses of the checkout redirect, tax calculations (don’t really affect sellers in the EU at all, a real bummer in the US) and credit card gateways, the rest are niceties.

If eBay can provide a solution to these (I do not care much for the US tax issue, being in the UK), why should they keep this service going for what is a very hit and miss affair with such a poorly built checkout system., especially the buyer experience given in a CA checkout.

~~~~~~
To Wingo:
Is this not just an issue for “Channel Advisor” in general with antiquated system that cannot really cope with such major changes and as such quite humorous that yourselves, are trying to get your sellers to complain for you?
~~~~~~~

What eBay has in fact done, is attempt to enforce some “common ground” and uniformity of the checkout experience for their buyers (remember buyers are our priority, not because CA have their billing system tied to a system and they’re scared they’ll have to actually spend some time developing).

The latest guidelines they have created are very good, however very scary, if done incorrectly its going to cause problems of people bailing the checkout redirect pages because they are tooooo like eBay and may take as phishing sites.

Alas you will not be seeing it in a Channel Advisor checkout any time soon as far as I am aware they have yet to complete it their requirement to have this ready in time (Channel Advisor: Need VC another handout?).

However this is really only a half way house, they’re [eBay] bodging it with this step, when really they should be adding merchant services [Authorize.net, Optimal Payments, Protx and so on.... or offering PayPal Payments Pro WITH seller protection], fixing the complicated issues with tax [US centric] and adding the ability for sellers to control what items are cross/upsold against items in the checkout.

AND….. Crucially keeping the buyer ON eBay in a safe bubbly environment, with every cunning ploy to them and the sellers entertained. I’m shocked at eBay for not or attempting to pull the chain on it before now.

Matt

for example, someone puts one in his basket on monday, and doesn’t pay for it until friday. in the meantime all the rest sell out. Now as i see it there’s one of two things that happens here:

1. they haven’t yet paid for it, so the 5th one is sold to someone else, meaning there isn’t one left when the buyer goes to pay for it on the friday

or

2. the site has ‘reserved’ one for the guy, meaning that only 4 are left to sell. if the buyer then never pays for it, it means the seller loses out for a while.

can anyone clarify what would happen?

We get dozens of non-paying bidders each week (and many more nearer Christmas). They waste a lot of our time, and cost us money.

eBay is the only site on the internet where you can be told off for changing your mind. If I’m buying from Amazon, I can
~ put an item in my shopping basket and take it out again
~ get halfway through checkout and decide I don’t want it
~ go to pay, and decide I’m not going to
~ pay, and then decide there’s something else I want more, and cancel in the click of a button.

I can’t do *any* of that on eBay. Until eBay joins the 21st century, and gets a shopping cart and a buyer-initiated “cancellation before dispatch” process, I don’t think buyers should be penalised for changing their minds about things.

What is needed is not a stronger UID process, but a way for the whole thing to be streamlined and for sellers to not lose out because of it. IMHO eBay are so obsessed with the thought that sellers might use a sale cancellation feature to fee-avoid, that they hold the whole site back.

[I realise this would probably only work for BINs, and that's cool.]

I always add a note to disputes “Please click to CANCEL the transaction to let eBay know you don’t want the item. If you don’t click to cancel the transaction eBay will still expect you to pay £xx.xx for the item”. Seems to do the trick

It should also be made A LOT clearer to buyers that by clicking on the BIN button, the seller has incured a cost!…and I for one do not trust buyers to close a mutual agreement to cancel the correct way (they never do).

I also agree that feedback comments, positive or negative are the cause of most issues around FB. Remove the comments but keep the scoring (both positive/negative).

All you have to get your head around is the fact that buyers like seeing their score go up so eBay let em still have positives. It’s not an indication of reliability, it’s simply because buyers like seeing their score go up. It’s just marketing fluff like the feedback stars are and who cares that it’s totally meaningless if it keeps the buyers happy?

There are too many sellers who are quite frankly abysmal and can’t be trusted not to neg buyers for the sellers own shortcomings so eBay had to do something. For the few buyers who aren’t genuine the three unpaid item strikes and you’re out is much more effective than the old seller dilemma of “Not leaving a neg cos I’m scared I’ll get one back”.

3rd party checkout isn’t mandatory to maintain stock control. Quantity Manager is proof of that. All one needs is a way to automatically monitor your sales and transaction completion (payment), a centralized database to handle inventory data, and a way to hook into your other channels (Amazon, website, etc).

I don’t see any benefit for future 3rd party checkout. It isn’t needed for stock control, won’t allow you to upsell, and eBay will soon allow credit cards on their site. All that’s left is making your buyers angry when they don’t get their Microsoft live cashback or eBay bucks.

eBay needs to ban it instead of doing this half-way solution. It is like what they did with feedback last year. They restricted sellers so they can only leave positives as if that would still be an indication of buyer trustworthiness. eBay should remove both for everyone’s sake. No feedback for buyers and no 3rd party checkouts.

Below is the email that eBay mailed out on April 13th to “a small percentage” of sellers. Seller name “*”‘d out, and eBay’s typos are untouched.

//

Dear *:

Our records indicate that you?ve recently completed selling transactions through . We?re writing to let you know that as of June 15, will no longer be providing third party checkout service on eBay.

A big step toward reducing unpaid items for sellers is ensuring a secure and consistent checkout experience for buyers. That?s why, in the months ahead, we?ll be working to integrate key functions offered by current third party providers into eBay checkout.

The ultimate goal is to have all checkout and payments take place right on eBay–and to help you make a seamless transition to on-eBay checkout that fully supports your business as usual.

In the interim, as of June 15, sellers will only be allowed to use eBay checkout or third party checkout services offered by one of a select group of approved Certified Providers.

This would be a great time to take a close look at your business needs, and if you haven?t already done so, switch to eBay checkout before June 15.

If you need specific functionality that is not yet integrated into eBay checkout, you can choose a solution offered by a Certified Provider approved for off-eBay checkout.

We?ll keep you updated as new functionality becomes available in eBay checkout. We?ll also make sure you have the time and support you need to make a smooth transition down the road.

Thanks for helping us keep eBay a great place to buy and sell.

Sincerely,

Dinesh Lathi
Vice President, Seller Experience

//

And the email “Certified Provider” links lead to:

eBay Certified Provider Program
http://certifiedprovider.ebay.com/ns/checkout.html

If you need additional checkout features not available through eBay, some of our listing solution Certified Providers can help:

Benefits:

* Offer payment by credit card
* Perform tax calculation
* Offer additional shipping carrier options
* Show only the specific countries you want to ship to
* Support redemption of your own coupon codes
* Offer insurance
* Collect important information like color selection, customization requests
* Up-sell your other eBay items with a customizable merchandising module
* Custom seller branding on purchase summary

Certified Providers:
Auctiva
ChannelAdvisor
Kyozou
Vendio

//

Another example of a lack of coordination and back peddling by eBay’s management.

“Oh boy.”
Samuel Beckett, Quantum Leap