I just placed a bid on a card and eBay asks for a payment method. This finally means winning bids will be automatically paid for. This will most likely put a huge damper on shill bidding. Good for you eBay. Now need to see auction houses do some kind of deposit when placing bids.
Thoughts???
Is it for everything or just sellers who require immediate payment
Great question - I am not sure, it’s my first time seeing it and first bid placed in about a week. So it must be a new feature. Anyone else see it? Someone can bid $1 on a starting auction on an expensive card to confirm.
Thanks for sharing. Seems like auto payment would curb shillers. If an auction requires payment, how would this impact a snipe service like Gixen?
I just tried placing a bid on a new auction and it let me without providing payment information. I think wailmer is right, think it’s still just if the seller requires it
If I remember correctly, you can’t have immediate payment turned on unless you have buy it now turned on too. It yells at you if you try to start an auction and have immediate payment on with no buy it now option.
So either they changed it to now trigger that with auctions, or it’s something they’re slowly rolling out. I’d lean more towards they’re slowly rolling it out because that’s exactly how the payment method being required for an offer was. When that feature was first introduced it was not for every listing immediately, whether or not you had require payment immediately on or not.
Edit: I just tested it and the immediate payment option specifically says it’s for Buy it Now only, and you still get an error if you leave it turned on and try to submit an auction.
Was hoping it wouldn’t take them long to implement this, after they did similar for Best Offers. Nice!
Not sure why something like this wasn’t in place before. I know they started putting this in place for offers, automatically charging your card if the offer is accepted. This is just a win win in my eyes. You should only offer offer or bid with the intention of paying that so as a buyer, it just makes me life more convenient where I don’t have to go back later and actually charge my card if my offer is accepted, and obviously a win for sellers with flaky buyers.
I’ve always wondered why pwcc/fanatics doesn’t automatically charge a small % to a credit card. Would be a welcomed change there as well!
This wouldnt stop shill bidding, people still can with the risk of having to pay at the end. I feel this is more a deterrent, as a shill bidder would just cancel the order if they forced to pay
Anoyone play Pokémon World Online in 2009 timeframe? They had an auction house in game and when you bid on a Pokémon, the game put your pokedollars on hold until you are outbid.
Well one reason for any of these platforms to not be overly concerned about shill bidding is that real sales are still being made
eBay really needs to make it so 0 feedback accounts can’t bid on items - their first purchase should have to be Buy It Now so they at least know the account is real 
This is what collector car auction sites do. Doesn’t seem to deter any serious bidders. It’s reasonable to require something on the table when a bid is a commitment to buy an item (at the bidded price).
Thats actually where I’ve seen it! Car auction sites like bringatrailer & carsandbids charge a small percentage (w/ a cap) if you win the auction. Seems very reasonable (on a smaller scale) and wouldn’t be hard to implement this feature
I’m pretty sure ebay is making this change to combat non-paying buyers.
It offers some deterrent/inconvenience to shill bidding, but you can still shill bid on your own auction and simply cancel the order / refund yourself if you happen to win.
Iirc immediate payment for auctions is still in the testing phase so it’s not available on all accounts.
Agreed.
Can one hack this with a sniping service?
Thinking as a compliance and network defense guy, not an immoral scumbag.
