Some eBay sellers are reporting that their settings have been changed to indicate they don't accept PayPal. A seller reported the problem in a discussion thread on eBay boards on Sunday titled, "Sellers if no sales! Go check your site preferences! (Mine) were changed to I don't take PayPal???"





Here's how the seller described learning of the problem: "No idea how it happened, but in another thread on this board a member found out his acct would NOT TAKE PAYPAL as a payment! Well I checked my acct and what do you know, some how my acct no longer takes PayPal? So I had to recheck that I take PayPal. So this explains why as of Thursday my sales died and I got a question from a buyer asking if I took PayPal? Because he didn't want to send a money order? So some how under Account-Site Settings and they Payments. My acct showed i only took money orders???





On another thread , a seller showed a screenshot: Under Selling Preferences, Payment from buyers, it showed "No" under "Offer PayPal on my listings."





And on another thread, a seller noticed that all their overseas shipping preferences were turned off as well.





There's some doubt about whether the default Selling Preferences are actually impacting sellers' individual listings. Wrote one seller, "The problem is sellers are assuming this is why sales are slow, there is no evidence that sales stopped coming in due to these settings because the listings themselves say PayPal on them as the accepted form of payment, we have to wait for eBay to answer on if sales were lost due to this issue."





Either way, it's troubling. Is having the setting set to no preventing buyers from making a purchase? Which begs the question, what other settings has eBay changed that may impact sellers?





Or is the setting not working, meaning there's no way for sellers to set their preferences to not accepting PayPal? Which begs the question, what other settings aren't working as they should?





The incident also highlights how many sellers are reporting a sales slowdown. eBay moderators have yet to clarify the issue, and the eBay System Status board shows all clear.