eBay Hacks

Opting Out of Checkout

Keep the personal touch in your transactions by disabling eBay’s controversial Checkout feature.

The direct communication between buyers and sellers is one of the main reasons that eBay works as well as it does, and one of the things that makes eBay fun. In 2001, eBay took an unfortunate step toward circumventing that communication by introducing the Checkout feature, which angered and alienated (at least temporarily) many of its most loyal users.

But the biggest problem with Checkout is that it allows the winning bidder to complete the transaction without having to wait for the seller to send payment instructions. For example, a bidder in another country can pay for an auction for which the seller has specified a fixed shipping charge intended only for domestic shipments. The result is a frustrated seller and a confused bidder, not to mention a transaction that has to be redone.

Warning

Sellers should think twice before including their postal address in their auctions. In addition to privacy concerns, this would allow buyers to mail their payments without any input from sellers. This is especially troublesome because a payment sent via postal mail is much more difficult to rescind than an electronic payment like PayPal. And bidders who have to resend payments typically blame sellers for the hassle.

Initially, the Checkout feature was designed to funnel more users into eBay’s now-defunct BillPoint auction payment system (and away from its rival, PayPal), as it ...