Difficulties choosing "Bill Me Later" as payment option...

[cheyrene]

Having "Bill Me Later", I am discovering, that for many transactions, the "Bill Me Later" payment choice is not an option at checkout.  "Bill Me Later" is shown as a payment option, but is not highlighted and I am unable to choose it as my payment option.  Does anybody else have trouble with this issue?  Does anybody know what I may be doing wrong?  Why would some transactions allow it at checkout and other don't?  I have read the user agreement, and the items I am purchasing are not listed as items that are not allowed to be funded via the "Bill Me Later" option.  In fact, some of the items are duplicates of other items I have already purchased, through the same seller.  It makes no sense to me and is very frustrating, since some of the items I am purchasing, I am purchasing with the intent to pay via "Bill Me Later".  I have requested help, both online and over the phone, but nobody seems to have any answers... they just shuffle me around and give me memorized statements that do not pertain to the issue. 

[Jp2]

I'm going to have to agree with the moderator "Paypal_Andy" on this one. I think this issue has to do with how many BML purchases you've made in according to your balance, whether outstanding or possibly not. Further evidence to back this up would be I've also noticed it seems I cannot purchase anything more with BML when it's nearing my "Minimum payment due" time, which shows up towards the end of the month in the Paypal balance section. This 'purchase blocking' usually seems to occur about a week before and has happened to me at least three times, so I'm pretty certain this is what's going on. I could of course be wrong though, since I know nothing of the inner workings of BML. I'd say the only other thing it could be is some sort of system update or something. Nothing to get too flustered about. Just make your payments and shut up people. lol

[rodforshort]

I made three purchases today. They all three had the Bill Me Later option. I have a 0.00 balance with a huge credit line. One for 7.98 whent though. The other two of larger amounts I got this error message.

We're sorry, but this Bill Me Later® offer is not available at this time. You can still choose Bill Me Later® by logging into your PayPal account or you can select a different way to pay.
The Bill Me Later button in PayPal was grayed out.

You don’t know this until after you purchase an Item. So now I cannot trust Bill Me Later as an option.
It seems that the folks at at Bill Me later maybe low on funds.

[doidge]

I bid and won an item that said "this item qualifies for bill me later" then when I try to pay says" bill me later not available"

[cornsguy]

I also had a problem with the checkout on eBay for a "Bill me Later" item. I have been told it's due to an error with the eBay link and Paypal/bill me later and"at this time we're not sure when it will be fully functional." This of course makes it difficult to do business on eBay as ALOT of us will have "unpaid" items listed until the problem is resolved. Maybe enough cries to eBay's resolution center to fix the problem or cancell orders will help speed the process along.

[upmich46]

Jp2,

Are you old enough to remember the old "Bait and Switch"?

Sounds like eBay has resuscitated the old fraud. The BML is very predominate during the bidding/purchase but AFTER you have contractually committed yourself to purchasing you then are informed the BML is now NOT an option.

When you remember that eBay and PayPal are the same company, then I think there is the possibility of fraud being committed. Now you have to drag the seller into the mess if you do not have the ability to pay at the present. The fact that this has been a problem for about three months would indicate that the profit from this mess is worth not fixing.

.

[orangeboy77]

It can happen for a number of reasons according to BML. I wanted to try using the service said it wasn't available for my purchase and I didn't understand why at first. It's because I am a US citizen, US paypal account, US ebay account but I currently live in Canada. So I have my shipping address listed here and I purchase on ebay with no problems. When I switched to my US shipping address it let me continue but that wouldn't do me any good so meh.

[JMyhra]

As of this week, I cannot OPT FOR Bill Me Later with the new "simplified Paypal" payment method. Have a large credit balance, am paying monthly (even though payments not due), and the BML option is grayed out.  If payment method is "optional", you would think the "opportunity to choose" would exist. Not now!  Yes, it was a pain to opt out of BML each time I wanted to pay via Paypal (my credit card), but at least the opportunity to choose existed. Apparently no more. Thanks, PP, if I had known in advance, I wouldn't have made the purchases today.

Consistency is everything. Arbitrary stinks.

[rodforshort]

I am having the exact same trouble that you are. Was on the eBay chat line for a hour and no one could give me an answer.

[duibuchi]

I also recently had an issue regarding my existing Bill Me Later account after selecting a "Buy Now" item from ebay.  When i went to pay for the item, I selected the Bill Me Later option, but after having done so I received an error message indicating that it was unavailable at that time.  However, supposedly I could select Bill Me Later as a funding option through my PayPal account.  Alas, no option to create a funding source exists in the PayPal website.  I called ebay, explained the situation to them, and they attempted to walk me through selecting Bill Me Later as a funding source but were just as surprised by the lack of such an option.  I was then transferred to PayPal, and after explaining my situation was then transferred to Bill Me Later contact.  At the end of the day they acknowledged that they were having some software issues with ebay and PayPal and hoped to have the issue resolved soon.  Who knows when that will be.  Anyhow, once I received the error, the only way to return to the payment screen with Bill Me Later as an option for checkout was to logout/login to ebay.  But last time i tried the issue was still unresolved.  I contacted the seller and they authorized a cancel on my purchase so at least I did not have to go through with the purchase.  Ironically enough I purchased two items last month in the same manner and had no issues whatsoever. 

[amomx5]

I absolutely agree.  Bill me later used to be an option but now it is nowhere to be found!