Problem with unwanted Buy It Now option in 'Auction' sale listing

[goc5]

I have sold items on ebay for probably 20 years or so, but when going to list a few things now I am having a problem that I can’t figure out.

If anyone can tell me what I am clearly missing, I would be SUPERDUPER grateful.

Here’s what‘s I’m running in to, should be a Fairy Story but it is a nightmare ...

I am not interested in a Buy It Now option for any sale, so select the correct category and enter the type of sale as ‘Auction’ not ‘Fixed Price/B.I.N.‘

Enter listing title fine, photos fine, details and description all fine.

Price next, enter a starting price, fine.

Next is a B.I.N. price box, which I hadn’t expected to be there with ‘Auction’ selected. More, it already contained a random B.I.N. price, which was entirely wrong price-wise for my item anyway.  So I needed it gone. It was labelled as optional, but there was no delete/deselect button so I deleted the price it contained, assuming that it wouldn’t then appear when live if blank.

I then went on via postage, start date/time, etc to complete the listing. All fine, then I clicked ‘Preview’ to check for errors/corrections if any, and to see how it looked.

It contained a B.I.N. option for buyers, and at that stupid-price.

Hmmmmm ...

I deleted B.I.N. price, went to ‘Preview’ again and B.I.N. was back showing in preview again. And it was also back when I went to check the listing form again, though I then didn’t bother editing/reviewing again and instead deleted the whole thing and began to create a new listing.

I took my time to make sure I wasn’t missing any setting-up steps/options.

But the listing form still contained that B.I.N. step despite being set up as ‘Auction’, and was still with a no-sense price already inserted so I changed that to blank again and completed the listing to preview.

Same thing happened again, not-wanted B.I.N. again. 

This time however I noticed that by the ‘Price’ section on the listing form there was a small Past Price comparison-panel that had automatically been populated with particulars of some past sales of the same or similar items, which also included a Recommended Price. AND it was THAT price that had been entered in the unwanted B.I.N. box.

As a double check I repeated all of this yesterday with a completely different item I want to sell, with exactly the same problem result.

As a triple check I did the same this morning with a third sale item, and it still ended up with a B.I.N. option-that-isn’t, and still with its own ideas of what price needed to be entered there!

Since then I have been searching online to see what I am missing, and have found tons of how-to guides and pointers etc but they are 100% saying the key is always select ‘Auction’ instead of ‘Fixed price/B.I.N.’, and delete any figure that is in the B.I.N. price box if there happens to be one, and then B.I.N. will not be in the listing.

MORE  IMPORTANTLY  I can find no way of deactivating the Past Prices comparison panel and the resulting suggested price which seems to be triggering the unwanted appearances of B.I.N. at all ...  if the price comparison panel was not there, probably the recommended price would not be available either and then the B.I.N. price box would not appear in the listing because it had not been given anything to enter/display. Maybe?

But it is there, and simply keeps getting entered automatically in to the B.I.N. box as a wrong/stupid/NOT-WANTED B.I.N. price that then gets displayed!  

Aaaaaaaannnndddd  I am now much too close to this to be able to see what I am missing.

All I want is a simple straightforward auction with no B.I.N., exactly the same as I have been able to do easily in just a minute or two on probably hundreds of occasions over a couple of decades.

I went to list my new items on Weds morning, it’s now coming up to Sat eve and dark outside too!

Anyone shine a light, please?

[cobwebcottage]

I might be way off the mark as I don't do a lot of auctions. Is the box with the unwanted price to the right of your starting price? if so, this will be your price inclusive of the buyer protection fee which says 'buyer will pay'.

The BIN box is further down underneath the auction price and if it is blank, it shouldn't show a BIN price.

[*vyolla*]

A few sellers have reported the same this week, it's eBay's latest weird glitch.

It's the same for me, when I go to submit my listing it's adding a BIN price.

What happens if you submit your listing then revise it and remove the BIN?

[cobwebcottage]

Pleased I don't do many auctions then.  How does it calculate the BIN price?

I can see a lot of unhappy sellers not getting the true value of their items.

That's bad.

[5970andyl]

Thank you. This glitch is driving me mad. In the olden days I could do an auction advert in minutes. Since ebay experts have "advanced" the system it causes headaches and wastes hours. 

[*vyolla* · Accepted solution]

If you're using desktop remove the BIN option here:

@goc5

[*vyolla*]

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@cobwebcottage wrote:

Pleased I don't do many auctions then.  How does it calculate the BIN price?

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Not a clue, it appears to make a price up. 😀

[5970andyl]

Where please? Andy


Sent from Outlook for Android<>

[*vyolla*]

When you're in the Pricing section of the listing, where you choose format and price, look to the right for the 'See pricing options' menu. Click on that to get the extra features up that you can select/unselect.

[5970andyl]

Thank you. I will try it tomorrow. Andy

Sent from Outlook for Android<>

[goc5]

I left for an evening out with family and friends shortly after making my original post, and we didn’t get home until the wee hours and then went pretty much straight to bed.

So I have only just dropped back here to check in case anything useful had been added in the meantime, and thanks SO much for taking the time to respond  -  much appreciated .

Just briefly first in answer to a cpl of questions in case it helps anyone coming along later:

Cobwebcottage - no, ‘twasn’t the price-plus-buyer-protection boxes, yes it was the B.I.N. box below there that should either not have been there or have been blank and stayed that way. 

Despite looking entirely random, the forced B.I.N. price is actually based on a system-review of same/similar items sold over a period X, and calculating from those sales an optimum B.I.N price for ‘your’ item (in that sales-price comparison panel I mentioned, I could click a button/arrow and it would extend downward to show the past sales it had found to use, and their achieved prices).

From my researches, yes a lot of sellers have not been getting the true value of their items. Yes, that’s bad.

Vyolla - no, I hadn’t submitted the listing and then attempted to delete the B.I.N.; didn’t want to invite the hassle of not being able to do so and maybe having a sharp-eyed buyer snaffle it for pennies and then need endless back-and-forth messaging and accusations and suspicions for days with them plus ebay plus everyone-else-and-his-wife in order to get things straightened out just to get back to square one! Quiet life, me.

5970andyl:  - thanks for chipping-in, and yes infuriating when a system gets ‘developed’ and the streamlining, even if well-intended, actually becomes gninilmaerts and knocks lumps out of everybody and everything until *The Way* gets clarified somehow but scatters casualties along the roadside until then.

Which brings me to ...

Vyolla: Massive thank you for lighting the way! I am so very grateful.

I have just dummied-up a sale for a million widgets, and when actually looking for that Pricing Options menu over on the right ALL of the damn options were ‘helpfully’ preselected for me:  Autofill, B.I.N., Reserve Price, Best Offer, Scheduling, Sell As A Lot, Auto Relist, Private Listing.

Note for ebay designers:  That’s genuinely a great facility to have, but only if it is clearly present so maybe put the “See pricing options” button alongside the “Pricing” heading instead of level with it but waaaaaay over on the far side when everything else actually follows-on downward - including the people filling out the form. That was a bad idea. Need proof? You are reading it!!

Anyway ...

Vyolla, special thanks for sharing your knowledge, you are a Star.

When I slid all the sliders to ‘off’, the listing form snapped a little smaller as the effect of all those selected options disappeared where visually present, including the B.I.N fluff.

I am assuming that that will have fixed my issue (and perhaps dodged others for me too, thanks!) but I have to make a Sunday visit now and can’t double check with a first for-real listing just to nail the lid on.

I can’t see why it all shouldn’t be fine now however, but as a precaution I’m not marking the problem solved just in case ebay has some other trick up its sleeve as a result ...  I’ll start getting my new listings together after lunch when I will be back, and will confirm then that all is now okay for the benefit of later-others, and mark it Solved.

Cheers!,

Vyollin, an aspiring Vyolla

[goc5]

Update a few hours later.

I have now been able to set up a couple of sale listings, with no repetition of the described problem.

For anyone coming across this while looking for a fix for the same thing, you should be able to take care of it by following Vyolla's straightforward steps above.

Marked as Solved, with thanks.

[technical100]

I came across this today after I did the exact same thing as op, created an auction listing, deleted the price under the BIN option, and I moments later my item then sold as someone had bought it using the automatically generated BIN price! I then cancelled the order as it was under priced and received negative feedback from the buyer. Have asked eBay to remove the negative feedback.

I can see now the BIN price can be disabled under the "see pricing options" button but it's not obvious you need to do this when the BIN box says optional and it lets you remove the price.

eBay, please fix this.

[president_slush]

It doesn't remove the BIN.  I am getting the same problem.  Had to end the listing before anybody snapped it up at the stupid price that I didn't ask for.

[*vyolla*]

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@president_slush wrote:

It doesn't remove the BIN.  I am getting the same problem.  Had to end the listing before anybody snapped it up at the stupid price that I didn't ask for.

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If you remove the BIN feature it removes the BIN.

Set up a test listing. Make sure that you untick the BIN in the ' See pricing options' section, it should be greyed out instead of blue.

Are you saying that if you do that it's still showing on the listing form underneath your auction price?

[eastern-lights]

Off topic for the glitch, but musing on Buy It Now prices on auctions:

I used not to set Buy It Now prices on auctions. I also got quite annoyed with the regular "What'll you take for it mishter?" messages. I started putting high (*) Buy It Now prices on all my auctions. Result: no more annoying messages.

(*) High but not stupidly high. Prices I would be pleased to accept. And on about 1 in 10 auctions the Buy It Now is taken up.