About the eBay “One or more sellers can’t accept payments right now” Message

About the eBay "One or more sellers can't accept payments right now" Message
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It’s frustrating to get the eBay message “One or more sellers can’t accept payments right now. Contact the sellers for help” (sometimes preceded by the code 70164, 70297, or 70350), and at least as frustrating when either the buyer or that seller can’t figure out why it’s happening! In fact, as often as not (or maybe even more often), the seller has no idea why it’s happening, even though eBay is telling you to contact the seller about the issue!

As an eBay buyer there are several different reasons why you may receive that message, some of them being on your (the eBay buyer’s) end, some of them being on the eBay seller’s end, and some of them being on eBay itself.

To make matter’s worse, eBay isn’t talking. In fact, the “One or more sellers can’t accept payments right now. Contact the sellers for help” message has been appearing for at least 10 years, and people have been contacting eBay about it for at least that long, and eBay has been less than helpful. In fact, they’ve been the opposite of helpful, but an opposite of helpful that is worse than simply “unhelpful”, whatever term you want to use for that opposite of ‘helpful’.

This is why we have compiled the “why am I getting the ‘One or more sellers can’t accept payments right now. Contact the sellers for help’ message” list of reasons that you may be getting that message. Here they are.

Why am I Getting the eBay “One or more sellers can’t accept payments right now. Contact the sellers for help” Message?

  • Your eBay seller only accepts payments from verified Paypal accounts, and you haven’t verified your Paypal account or you have verified your Paypal account, but somehow your verification lapsed or otherwise fell off the radar.
  • There is some other issue, about which you probably have not yet been notified, with your Paypal account.
  • The seller’s email address is not correct in their listing.
  • The seller’s Paypal address is not correct in their settings.
  • The seller has an error in their listing of payments that they accept.
  • The seller crossed the sales threshold by which they now need to provide their tax ID and other information, and has not yet done so.
  • The seller has an eBay store, which is still displaying their listings, however the seller has set their store to vacation mode (known as ‘Time Away’) while they are gone for a few days. Vacation mode turns off accepting payments so that orders aren’t piling up while the store owner is on vacation.
  • It’s an issue with eBay itself. For instance in 2019 there was an eBay service disruption to which eBay actually copped.
  • It’s an issue, such as a coding issue, between eBay and Paypal, such as the one discussed in this thread in which a frustrated eBay seller says “In my case, it is an unaddressed eBay coding error that is blocking the communication with PayPal when the buyer attempts to make payment. In other words, the request for payment never leaves the eBay system. eBay has not (and I assume will not) direct their IT department to address the issue to resolution… I am often told that it is a PayPal problem and that eBay hopes that PayPal will fix it. Two problems with this answer: 1. if PayPal does not receive notice (or a ping) regarding a payment request, how can they be responsible for the problem? 2. Is it feasible for two companies that were a single company last year to not be able to trouble shoot a problem collaboratively?”

What to do when you get the “One or more sellers can’t accept payments right now” message from eBay

The first thing to do is to make sure that your Paypal account is verified if the seller only accepts payments from verified Paypal accounts, or that there isn’t some other issue with your Paypal account. So log into your Paypal account and check your verification status and for any other issues.

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If that doesn’t work then you need to contact the seller and refer them to this list of possible reasons that you are getting the message.

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One thought on “About the eBay “One or more sellers can’t accept payments right now” Message

  1. Haven’t seen that one … yet, but another ebay issue was caused by not being able to add a card on paypal due to vpn being on, so the paypal only’s on ebay, some worked and some didn’t w/ direct card payment until I found out you had to add a card on paypal w/
    the vpn off

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