How to remove automatic payments from ebay – The secret guide
That sounds like such a silly name for a blog post, but i kid you not, someone has to do it otherwise many of you risk the same fate as myself when it comes to your monthly ebay bill.
Ebay owns PayPal, we all know this, and since ebay bought paypal they have been encouraging sellers to sign up to their new ‘automatic payments’ whereby rather than sending you your ebay invoice at the end of the month, they simply automatically deduct the money from your card/bank account attached to your paypal account which is of course attached to your ebay account.
Now don’t get me wrong, i am not having a huge dig at ebay here, i understand the obvious decrease in administration with such a move, no longer chasing unpaid invoices, suspending accounts etc, ..no let PayPal, masters of screwing you over when you least expect it deal with being heavy handed, chasing debats and generally continuing along their path as one of the more useful companies to hold the ‘devil you know‘ moniker in my eyes.
What i object to is this, …THE RANDOM TIMING OF TAKING THIS MONEY AS AND WHEN THEY FELL LIKE IT FORM YOUR BANK ACCOUNT.
My ebay bill for the past few months has beenjust under £100, eBay sent me an invoice in July and i noted it, did not even see the automatic payment text (was it there or not, i am not going back to check) so as usual i left the email in my inbox to deal with in a few days.
Ok, a little home truth here i feel is required, …let’s let that few days turn into a few weeks, ..not more than 3 though :) and i get a letter from my bank informing me that an automatic paypal payment has been declined due to not enough funds.
Now hold on a minute, …i didn’t make a paypal payment !!.
Well it turns out i did, well eBay did on my behalf.
I was furious, it cost me a completely unnecessary £30 bank charges just because i had not moved money from a savings account to cover the fee i had not budgeted for.
This was not on, so i logged immedately into my ebay to remove the automatic payment method.
I went to My Ebay > Account ..and near the bottom of the page was the ‘Payment methods for Seller Fees’ box which allowed me to ‘change’ my automatic payment method. Well, change it i could, ..for an automatic debit, credit or paypal payment, ..but hold on a minute, NO OPTION TO REMOVE IT.
Well i won’t go into too much more unnecessary detail, you might guess like may others, i gave up at this point and went about my life, aware of a new evil, however when the next months bill came in, this time i allowed more than the money in my bank account to cover it, …and there it sat for 22 days !!
22 days after eBay invoiced me PayPal finally decided to take the payment. You guessed it, again i was a couple of pounds short, 3 weeks later i had forgotten about the money being reserved for eBay in my account, ..and went and stuck it in my van in petrol.
Now eBay would tell you that a) they only instruct paypal to take the money, they do not control them and b) it is my responsibility to watch my finances and maintain enough money.
I would tell them this a) if i instruct a company (whether i own it or not) to collect monies on my behalf, it is most certainly my responsibility and of utmost importance to my business and its reputation that they do so in a fair and honorable manner, and b) Invoices come with due dates, and automatic payment notifications come with debit dates.
I pay my broadband, phone, vodaphone card, electricity, water, gas, council tax, etc etc ALL by direct debit or standing order and THEY ALL tell me on my which on or around which date the money will be taken.
At this stage i of course got onto ebay, and only when on the phone did the agent tell me just how to remove the automatic payment option, which was so random and hidden that i feel i must share it for others to see.
So here it is.
Log into your ebay account and in the top right hand menu mouse over ‘HELP’ and then when it drops down ‘HELP TOPICS’.
Then type ‘automatic payments’ into the search box, and click on the top link as shown below.
Now scroll all the way to the bottom, …don’t stop or click on anything, they may look like the answer, but all links lead back to CHANGING your payment method, not stopping it from being automatic.
However there is one little paragraph at the bottom entitled ‘Removing a payment method from your account’ this has 3 links, ..the first is an easily overlooked ‘click here’ link, ..THIS IS THE ONE, THE HOLY GRAIL OF REMOVING THE AUTOMATIC PAYMENT METHOD.
I hope this has proved useful to you, it is worth mentioning that i requested eBay repay me half of my bank changes (£30) which they said they could not do (i guess this constituted admitting they were on the wrong), but they did agree to credit me £20 to my account for future purchases, which for once i thought was a fair compromise.
Happy eBaying.
IMPORTANT ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
I woke up this morning to find out that although i have removed ny automatic payment from eBay, it is not removed from PayPal and they will just continue to try and take the money. Literally, they tried to debit my bankaccount directly, refused, £30 charges incurred, …then immediately they tried to debit my card attached to my bank account, refused, £30 charges incurred!!
I spoke to ebay, they say they requested the automatic payments be removed so it is a paypal issue, paypal say, the automatic payment notification is still on my account, it is an ebay issue. That is it, i can get no further, and after 2 hours on the phone, £60 in bank charges i give up, …it is not worth my sanity or a new phone which is going to be the outcome if i spend anymore time on the phone to these idiots as i will simply hurl it against the wall.
You have to go into your paypal account > profile > Financial information > Pay list ..and then click onthe ebay automatic payment request, and CANCEL.
I am off to cnsole myself with food.
What I'm Saying - 
What I'm listening to
Oh thank god you posted this, I accidentally enabled auto payments while trying to change my registered email address and immediately realized that this was a terrible mistake, so I have since been for so long trying completely remove this auto payment feature completely until I got here, thanks for the help!
you saying that makes it worthwhile …my pleasure.
i have done the paypal bit but i have noticed you cant remove from ebay if you have an outstanding balance.
Thank you for your guide
If you have done the paypal bit then in theory they should not be able to re-connect to your bank account without your authorization, ..having said that i have heard times in the past when they have, ..but i think your probably safe. If you still worried then a phone call to ebay might remedy getting it removed, ..and, ..sorry to break it to you, ..but paying the bill first :)
Glad you found it useful.
hi, i was wondering if you knew how i could pay my selling fee on ebay?
because it needs a credit card, which i dont have, neither do any family members, and also i have dial up therefore cannot recieve an automated phone call which can only be to a landline :(
Check out this page: http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/questions/selling-fees.html
You can pay by direct pay, cheque, directly from your bank account.
I think you should find something there that helps you.
This has been a GODSEND. Thank you thank you. What a nightmare trying to get out of this.
hey I jus want to say how much trouble i had as well.. This is the second time ebay has takent fees from my paypal accout w.o asking I DO NOT however remember ever signing up for auto payment as I do now see an E-mail saying I am, maybe a way to cover there behind I dont know. I went to buy lunch one day knowing I had 5 dollars in my bank account for under that amount.. Then a couple days later checked to see that my balance (lucky i checked) was -40 something… I was horrified as I did not have anough to cover it at the moment and couldnt understand why it was – only to find ebay took 5.50 from my balance and 6 dollars from my account that only had $5!!.. When I called paypal they clearly this is an ebay issue… I borrowed money to cover the overdraft, sped to the bank then tried to get a hold of ebay ha the phone number I obtained from a GOOGLE search is 1888-749-3229 but dont bother w/that unless you know the secret of getting to a live person, maybe a “help me”, or a repeated no. key, but dont push zero or the robo woman will simply hang up. I always wondered if they knew that some people love what a website, or company can do for them but might cancle the service because of the unhelpful losers on the other line, if your lucky enough to speak to one… Im not mad because of this but the continueing problems I have w. shady occurences likes it, for instance before I went on vacation I tried to take out 100 out of my paypal account to take,, I accidentlly withdrew 100 from my bank account so I added it back figuring it would even out…. Well a nice phone call to the bank turned depressing when I found my account to be in the negative. Why is it that either ebay, paypal, or my bank decided to conveintly process the 2 transactions made in 2 minutes a couple days apart from each other so that oopsies a couple days ago you tried to take 100 a hundred out and 2 days later put it back in, wrong! I did it at the same time so whyyy are they being processed different days. I’m sorry for gettin so far into this but it seems like its always OUR fault and not the company, apparently the costumers always right has turned WRONG.
:) …you sound like you have either just got off the phone to customer services, ..or possibly still are killing the time you are spending currently on hold and would rather not throw things so are channelling it into the comment box :)
Glad to be oblige in saving your objects d’art from being hurled. Although personally i reccomend either breathing, slowly, ..or writing a well constructed letter the head office of paypal, ….(this is my new found relief from the stress of the situation, i take the 30 minutes or more i will spend on the phone to a clueless agent and use it to construct a letter that i physically mail to the heads of all of the rlelevent departments who details i can get my hands on).
Or, ..you could just read about people who have had it far worse by clikcing on the logo below, ..but i warn you, it ain’t pretty on the other end of the scales.
THANKS for posting this! I couldn’t figure out how to sell without setting up automatic payments so I thought it was required, now what a mess I’m in. I have a $200 bill that isn’t even due yet (amount owed says 0.00) but they still won’t let me remove my automatic payment. I logged into PayPal and deleted it there so we’ll see if that works. As soon as I pay (next month right before it’s late) I will remove my automatic payment method. Ebay should make it easier when you are setting up your seller account to just do one time payments.
BRAVO!! Very helpful information & so true. I really want to thank you for taking the time to write this. Ebay & Paypal are such an UNHOLY DYNAMIC DUO! Your review should be plastered on every sales, business & entrepeneurial forum on the net. I foten wonder if Ebay & Paypal are related to Plankton on Spongebob. After all, they both want to take over the world!
TYPO ABOVE^^^
foten = often… I meant to say often.
haha, .thanks :) …glad it helped. …i should write down more of my petty annoyances,. ..but then they might suddenly suspend my ebay account :)
Thank you for posting this :). Thanks to ebay and paypal (my bank doesnt really recognize paypal, so it charged me a fee of $38 each time it took money out my account), I owed my bank nearly $500. And not only this, but thier fees are rediculous. It says it charges about 49 cents or so (i dont remember exactly) to list an item for sell. I listed about 6 items, each sold on the first try, and some how my seller fees added up to $50?? <:l which of course, they took out of my account automatically.
So I've just deleted my paypal account :) Hopefully that solves everything. Im not sure it will, considering ebay is made up of sneaky, greedy ass*****, and Im sure they will try to find some way around this. But hopefully it does, and if not, atleast Ive made it a little harder for them to take money out of my account, which satisfies me for now :)
Look, this is what just happened to me. Six months ago, I “deleted and changed” my old bank account attached to my Paypal account. THOUGHT THAT WAS IT! Anyway, six months later, Ebay made an Auto payment debit attempt with this old account and “I WAS SHOCKED” that the new bank account was not used! OK, so, I said, Aparently you have to make the same transfer of bank accounts, on Ebay’s site. So, after paying the $35.00 NSF fee at my “old bank”, I went back over to Ebay’s site and THEN CHANGED
OVER ACCOUNTS! Thought this was it. A few days later, Ebay ran the debit through “again” at my old bank account, instead of using the Account I registered in it’s place! So, ANOTHER $35.00 NSF charged to me from the old bank account. And NOW, on top of this, an EXTRA $15.00 fee from Ebay! Plus the small
auto fee amount that they should have taken from the newer account. Anyway, after talking with ebay, they
OFFERED me a 25.00 coupon along with a 10.00 giff certificate and SAID they would NOT make any further attempts to debit my old account. Well, over nite, I was thinking so, the next morning, I called my old bank and asked them what I could do, short of closing the old account and they informed me that they could bar ebay from running any further debit attempt’s on that account. Further more, the bank told me that they would contact ebay and try to get an error report from them and would possibly refund, at least one, if not both, NSF charges made to me by my bank. Well, “AS YOU WOULD KNOW IT”, ebay sends me an email stating that I owe them 22.59 auto-fee plus the 15.00 service charge! Meanwhile, my new bank account registered with ebay, is still not debited. “It is my thought that they will probably NOT debit it because, if they were to, it would constitute an abillity to go to a re-registered account, WITHIN A PAY CYCLE! Thing is, nowhere does it state that one cannot re-register a bank account WITHIN a pay cycle! “THIS SHOULD DEFINATELY BE CLEARLY STATED BUT, IS NOT”!!! Anyway, I’m THROUGH with ebaY and for your info, I can’t seem to CANCEL the new bank account that’s registered with them. I did however, cancel the new bank account registered with Paypal. ANYONE know of a “sure-fire” way to CANCEL new bank account with ebaY, during billing cycle??
Cancel it through your bank!! …don’t worry about ebay, phone your bank and have them cancel the standing order/direct debit, …then it doesn’t matter what ebay thinks, they can’t take any money.
Thank you, very much! I will do this right away.
“Well I’ll be damn”! There HAS been movement. “Unbelievable”! First, I didn’t, in fact, get around to Canceling new bank account from ebay. I think I was daring them to debit my new account. Anyway. My old bank REFUNDED the SECOND NSF debit ebay caused and some additional charges. Then, after just a few days, I DID notice that, “in fact”, ebay DID debit my new bank account. -.34! THAT’S ALL. So, I quickly ran to my ebay message box and THERE WAS A MESSAGE! In short it read; ” WE’VE LIFTED THE TEMPORARY HOLD ON YOUR ACCOUNT “. And they further said, “You can now go back to selling on ebay”. Woopty F—– Do! NO further charges also, aparently! Hope this is a lesson folks! HANG TOUGH! For ALL Corperations ultimately know where there bread is buttered! “Never think, for one minute, that one person can’t make a difference..
they removed it i cant find it anywhere anyone got the link
Thank you for posting this! It helped me figure out how to get around my own auto payment problem- i have a very important airline ticket to pay for next week and I just KNOW ebay will take their money the day before I pay for my ticket, leaving me short the money I need, and I won’t see my brother. And he’s more important than their monthly bill!
They do seem to have changed it a little bit as takeit says, however if you go just do the little additional paypal thing you mention at the bottom (about the pay list) that seems to do the trick. I’ve just done it and they sent me an email to say no more payments will be taken by ebay in this method, and my seller dashboard says ‘automatic payment method- NONE.’ Of which I couldn’t be happier.
This is great – though, you need auto payment to donate to charities.
I’d like to point out that you can no longer do this through ebay but the paypal technique works (as Penny noted).
It’s interesting that I was logged into both paypal and ebay sites then I canceled the auto payment in paypal and refreshed my ebay browser and lo _it already noted that I have no auto payments_ that’s milliseconds! Surely, ebay/paypal are one website from a server/infrastructure standpoint.
Thanks for pointing up the new way of doing things, ..i haven’t updated this post in a while.
With regards to whether eBay and PayPal are connected, ..well they are owned by the same company, …but without meaning to sound condescending, “yes, the web has an uncanny knack of being able to send information from one point to another in a matter of milliseconds”. :)
does anyone have the link to the removing automatic payments. i cant find it in the 19 pages that show up.
thank you sooo much I have been stressing so much to try and sort out this problem and now it’s finally over. You are a genius and I love you =] hahahabut seriously thank you so much xxxxx
aaw, ..thanks Laura :) ..you made a geek smile ;)
I CAN NOT FIND THAT HELP TOPIC! WHAT DO I DO NOW?
http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/sell/automatic-payments.html
…at the bottom.
:)
Well it seems that without autopay you cannot sell on ebay now? but yea they got me for six months at 11.32 USD each time even though I was not selling anything nor did I have seller fee’s, they just debited my account for some free cash!
It’s not true dude, …i am selling on eBay without auto-pay, …worst case scenario if you can’t figure out how to remove it from your ebay account, …just remove your payment method from your paypal account, …no payment method, ..no payment.