Doesn't ebay own Paypal, now?
I sold an item about 3 months ago on ebay. First time in a decade, at least.
Not a hitch doing it.. I figured they'd think I had been hacked or something... being dormant for so long.
Only thing was... it'd been so long since I'd been on the selling end, I didn't realize they want you to jump through hoops that they deem necessary, when they deem them necessary and in a certain order.
All of which I didn't know, couldn't understand and didn't bother to try and find out beforehand.
This item I sold... went for close to $400. I had zero dollars in it... free money to me.
It's impossible to talk to your customer without going through ebay. No trump/russia style backchannel stuff. I wasn't sure if you could only talk through "ebay messages", or through the email associated with your account, or what?
I wasn't trying to out maneuver ebay, but it was difficult for me to figure out how to send the guy a message. I stumbled around trying to tell the guy that I'd let him know how much it was going to be with the shipping added on... and ebay would send me nasty messages about "don't be trying to short us out of our money." I had to package it all up, take it to the post office and have it weighed and measured, then come back home and tell him the total.
Back when I was more active, I thought it'd be a good idea to include your backchannel contact info in your item photos.. but I read there during this fiasco that they have algorithms that will detect messages in photos and info you try to slip in there.
Their system wants you to have the grand total available during the auction, it seems like... even before the sale is final. I don't package stuff til it's sold, and this thing was a major pain to wrap.
It took me days.... no big hurry on either end. I told the customer it would take me a bit.
So, nearly a week after the auction ended, I had told him what he owed me and he paypalled me. All is well.
It wasn't long after I got his "paid" message that Paypal sends me one saying "Sorry, but ebay is asking us to put a hold on your funds because of some irregularities in your transaction", and "we'll release it when the item is delivered".
I wasn't hurting for the money... I had the tracking number and all.. so I waited for them to dislodge it from their ass when the item was delivered.
Assholes, anyway.