The Corner Penthouse

I have been an eBay member since January 4, 2003, and selling on the site for over 10 years now. My sales suck because eBay does everything in their power to hinder me. I have already written a series of articles about eBay, who clearly has some sort of vendetta against me. I have no other explanation for the myriad of stupid reasons they've given for taking down listings of mine over and over again. I've written about some of these in the past, but I've never written about all of them - such as the nonsensical "Choice violations" all throughout the first half of 2019, or the constant takedowns for directly linking to externally-hosted product images that served to help buyers see more of the item.

I've put up with all of eBay's bullshit over the years because there were no alternatives that allowed me to instantly receive payment from a buyer via PayPal. Well, now eBay has taken away the one advantage it had over every other online marketplace. Read on to find out more...

I first became aware of eBay's "Managed Payments" scheme not from eBay itself - because it would make too much sense for them to tell one of their users about the scheme they plan to force them to partake in - but rather from my friend Nora Salisbury. eBay tried to force her into "Managed Payments" back on January 23, 2021. She posted the following on her Facebook profile:

...now I can no longer sell on eBay. Their new "managed payment" scheme is clearly set up to exclude poor people. Used to be, someone paid for a purchase and the money went into PayPal, so I could use my PayPal debit card at the post office. Now, eBay hangs onto the money, and I'm expected to front the postage to mail it, and I guess eBay reimburses me at the end of the month or whenever they feel like it.

Up until this point, I had never heard of "Managed Payments". eBay certainly never made me aware of it. I had to do a little research on my own to find out what it was all about. What I found out shocked me to my core! eBay's "Managed Payments" propaganda webpage told me that "eBay will manage payments for most of its marketplace sellers by 2021, and all sellers will eventually be required to have eBay manage their payments in order to keep selling on eBay." YIKES! Why would they want me to use this new payment scheme when there has never been a problem in the past 10 years of receiving payment from buyers via PayPal, and I've never had any issues paying eBay their exorbitant fees? Well, eBay's propaganda infographic says it all.

Here are the so-called "benefits" the infographic lists:
* Predictable - eBay initiates payouts as quickly as 2 business days after order confirmation.
* Flexible - You can choose to schedule payouts daily, as funds are available, or weekly.
* Convenient - Pending funds can be used to pay for shipping labels, refunds, eBay Money Back Guarantee claims and payment disputes.

None of those "benefits" are truly benefits. I get access to my money IMMEDIATELY with PayPal. Two business days is NOT quicker than that! I can transfer money from PayPal to my bank account ANYTIME, even MULTIPLE TIMES A DAY - which is more often than "daily". More importantly, I CAN SPEND THE MONEY IN MY PAYPAL ACCOUNT RIGHT AWAY to pay for postage on PirateShip.com (with my PayPal debit card) or to buy things ANYWHERE online or in-person (with my PayPal debit card). I can NOT do either of those things with "eBay's bank account" (which is what Managed Payments is).

The "Convenient" benefit is one huge LIE! Please, eBay, tell me how I can use pending funds to pay for shipping labels on PirateShip.com? Of course I can't, even though you say that "pending funds can be used to pay for shipping labels". (I have no interesting in buying shipping labels from eBay and making them richer.) Also, if you have to buy your postage in-person at the post office: YOU CAN'T!!! That means that eBay is not allowing some sellers the ability to buy the postage to send the item. You'd have to set handling to 5-7 days, in order to wait for the money to go from eBay to bank, and no buyer is going to put up with that. eBay expects sellers to front the money to pay for postage, and that's not possible for the small low-income sellers who made eBay what it is today.

The rest of the "Convenient" sentence is the key: "Pending funds can be used to pay for [...] refunds, eBay Money Back Guarantee claims and payment disputes." Those last few things are why eBay wants to hold a seller's money that does NOT belong to eBay. Honest seller's will rarely ever need to do any of them, so there's no need to hold a seller's money.

Using the "Managed Payments" scheme means that eBay, NOT ME, receives the payment for a sale. In order to get paid for the item I sold, I have to give eBay my bank account information, which I don't feel comfortable doing. Enough entities have that info, and I don't trust eBay, as they've done enough to me to lose my trust. Then I have to wait 3 business days (maybe longer) for the money to be deposited into my bank account so I can then use it anywhere. In the mean time, I have to front the costs of USPS postage out of my own pocket, unless I opt to use eBay postage, which I won't do. I've had issues with eBay postage in the past, and I don't wish to make eBay any richer than I already do.

Of course, you MUST give eBay your checking account information. As stated in the infographic: "Managed payments does not support payouts to any PayPal accounts." So, if I wanted to use money I earned from a sale to buy something - even something on eBay - and I were using Managed Payments, I'd have to wait a few days for the money to go from the "eBay Bank Account" to my bank account, then use PayPal and fund the purchase with an instant bank transfer. Such a waste of time sending the money back and forth, and there's no time to waste if the item you want to buy is being sold as an auction. This also leads to more record-keeping for those who keep track of all transactions in their bank accounts.

If you can't use the "eBay Bank Account" (that's what it is) funds to buy stuff on eBay or elsewhere, as I do with money I received from my buyers on eBay, what's the point of it for the user? So, again, ZERO BENEFIT over PayPal.

There are plenty of other complaints about Managed Payments all over the internet, so it's not just me complaining. More proof that Managed Payments is a penalty against low-income people is a (since deleted) eBay Community forum post by Karenkat929, who points out that by having eBay money deposited into a bank account, it will reveal it as a source of income (with an incorrect amount) that would result in the seller losing government benefits when they have to show their bank statement:

I talked it over with some of my seller friends and one in particular, a single mother, was recently layed off and on unemployment. She started selling kids used clothing and toys & garage sale finds, to try to literally keep food on the table for her family. eBay's "Managed Payments" will force her to close her store as it would interfere with her unemployment. For those of us that must report our income with our bank statement, this is devastating news and will cause many eBay stores to close. Income from sales would show to be 100% and include shipping! Example-if you sell something for $100 but in reality, minus your initial investment, eBay fees and shipping, you make $35 profit, your bank statement would show as if you actually made $100 and would have to report that full amount. This is going to be a deal breaker for many sellers and they will be forced to sell elsewhere.

With all of this knowledge, I knew that when the point came that eBay forced MANGLED... excuse me, Managed Payments upon me, I would quit selling on eBay. This type of payment scheme, which doesn't benefit sellers AT ALL, is the old Wimpy payment scheme: "I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today."

That day came on Friday May 21, 2021. No, eBay didn't send me an e-mail about it. Would you really have expected for eBay staff to be professional like that? I found out when I was shown the following warning when I submitted a revised listing:

Your deadline to sign up for eBay to manage your payments is approaching. To continue listing new items, relisting, and revising listings, you are required to update your account details now at ebay.com/startpayments.{e72812-1134540x}

This message did not pop up when I revised a listing on May 18th, so eBay enacted it sometime between the 18th and the 21st. Had I not had that advanced knowledge of Managed Payments, thanks to my friend Nora, I wouldn't have known what the hell this was all about. Again, let me reiterate: EBAY NEVER SENT ME ONE SINGLE E-MAIL TO TELL ME ABOUT THE MANAGED PAYMENTS SCHEME, MUCH LESS TELL ME THAT I WOULD BE FORCED TO PARTAKE IN IT EVENTUALLY!

You'll also notice that the warning didn't even bother to tell me exactly when my "deadline" would be. Would it be in 7 days? 14 days? 30 days? Anyway, there was no problem revising the listing, so I gave it no mind and went about my business.

My ability to revise my listings or create new ones ended on Saturday May 29, 2021, so I guess the above warning was a one-week notice, not a 30-day notice. On Saturday May 29, 2021, I went to revise a listing, and was PROHIBITED from doing so. This message appeared:

Your ability to list new items, relist, and revise listings has been suspended, effective immediately. To resume managing your listings, please sign up now for eBay to manage your payments at ebay.com/startpayments.{e72843-1134538x}

I was able to edit all of my listings on Friday May 28th, so this prohibition was enacted on the 29th - a mere 8 days after I was first told that my deadline was approaching. By preventing me from revising my multi-listings, I can't delete items that are no longer available for purchase. Buyers would not be happy if they ordered an item that I couldn't sell to them because eBay prevented me from removing it from the listing.

Proving that eBay is truly run by a bunch of fucking morons - and that there is no end to the bullshit they thrust upon me - on Monday July 7th, they sent an e-mail telling me that my listings were in "non-compliance", based on a false claim of including contact information in them, and telling me to edit them:

Update your listings to keep them compliant
From: eBay
Sent: Jun-07-21 06:07

Update your listings to keep them compliant

Hi,

We found that 157 of your listings need to be updated to comply with changes to our site and security policies and to remain live.

To help, we created a summary of the changes that need to be made and added the number of listings to each one. You can also find this list in your Seller Hub tasks.

Remove contact information and links
157 of your listings contain personal contact info or links to external sites.

The FUCKING IDIOTS AT EBAY TURNED OFF MY ABILITY TO EDIT LISTINGS ON MAY 29th!!! How do they expect me to edit them in order to comply with their petty bullshit?!? eBay is so scared of losing sales that even the slightest bit of text that could potentially take a buyer off of eBay - even if it's to provide information about a product or the seller's (my) business practices - gets their panties in a twist. They want sellers to remain anonymous to buyers, which is a REALLY SHADY EBAY BUSINESS PRACTICE. As a buyer, wouldn't you want to know everything about the person you're buying from? Well, eBay would prefer that you make your purchase in the shadows of a back alley.

Since all of my listings are "Good Til Canceled", I was curious as to whether eBay's system would auto-relist them. One came up for auto-relisting on June 9th and - surprise, surprise - eBay's system automatically relisted it for another 30 days. All they've done is remove my ability to edit them or manually re-list them. At least, for now. On Thursday June 10th, I tried again to revise a listing (as eBay wanted me to do), this new variant message appeared.

Your ability to list new items, relist, and revise listings has been restricted and your active listings will be ended. Start selling again by updating your account details now at ebay.com/startpayments.{e72887-1134538x}

At first glance, that looks identical to the May 29th message. However, read it carefully and you'll notice that it now says that my "active listings will be ended". No information was provided on when that will happen. It also certainly goes against the auto-relist behavior that I witnessed the day before, which makes me wonder if it's a false threat designed to scare me.

Well, the joke's on eBay. I've long thought about giving away all of my eBay inventory to friends, family, and donating the rest to a local church that does a "white elephant sale" every Summer. A LOT of my inventory has been up on eBay since after my father died in 2014; SEVEN YEARS AGO! A few items have even been on eBay since the OLD HOUSE THAT HURRICANE SANDY DESTROYED IN 2012!!! That there are SO many items that have remained unsold for YEARS, and even a whole freakin' DECADE, and eBay hasn't done a damn thing to help me sell any of it, but does everything they can to hinder my sales, is the reason I decided to give nearly all of it away. Most of it will actually cost me a large amount of money to pay for postage to mail out to friends and family across the globe. Think about that for a minute. I WOULD RATHER PAY TO GIVE MY EBAY INVENTORY TO FRIENDS AND FAMILY THAN JOIN EBAY'S MANAGED PAYMENTS SCHEME! If that's not the biggest damnation against Managed Payments, than I don't know what is.

I can't have this stuff sitting around my house any longer. Today, May 10th, I donated more than half of my eBay inventory to a local church. Just like that, my current eBay listings went from over 400 items down to a mere 99 items. That's over 300 items for which eBay will no longer have a chance to receive any money from the sale of. The items that remain on eBay will be mailed out to friends at the end of the year if they are not sold beforehand, thrown out, or if eBay doesn't delete the listings since I will not "play ball" with them. I also have everything displayed in two Facebook galleries; one for everything currently listed on eBay, and one for everything that's not listed on eBay. As a reminder, I also have a store hub at BuyItHere.tk.

I looked into eBay alternatives in late 2020, and they all do something like Managed Payments. I could not find one that would let you receive payments immediately to PayPal. I suspect it's because the other marketplaces want to ensure that you pay them their fee(s) for sales you make. They don't trust that sellers (their customers) will be responsible enough to pay them of their own free-will. That's the other reason why eBay is doing this Managed Payments crap; even though millions of sellers have responsibly paid their eBay fees for the 25 years that the company has been in business. I pay their ridiculously high fees every single time I sell an item, yet "mommy" feels the need to manage my money for me.

Long story short, the eBay "Managed Payments" scheme doesn't benefit anyone but eBay. It definitely doesn't offer me a single benefit, but gives me plenty of negatives. As such, it's the final nail in the coffin to me selling on eBay. I'd rather pay to give away my inventory than sell it under eBay's "Managed Payments" scheme. It would be nice if the suits in eBay's corporate offices, who make these stupid decisions, hear that statement...but I doubt they will. Maybe when more people like me and my friend Nora stop selling on eBay, they'll get the hint.

-- Paul