eBay "Make an Offer" Changed ?

[Bint Box]

Hi,

I just tried to make an offer for an item on eBay and it now requires you to login to PayPal to make the offer.
It looks like you need to allocate PayPal funds in advance before you can submit an offer to the seller?
They say funds will only be taken if the seller accepts your offer.

This is definitely a new thing as I submitted a few offers for other stuff last week and did not have to allocate PayPal funds in advance to send the offer to the seller.
It might be seller driven I suppose where they can choose if this is enabled on their listing?

 

[Bint Box]

Yeah noticed this as well. Maybe to stop people making offers they have no intention of actually paying.

That could be the reason?
I can only see it reducing the number of offers sellers get for their listings. I think I would need to be fairly keen for a listed itom to jump through this new hoop.

 

[Bint Box]

Define "allocate funds". What actually happens? Do you make a sort of pending payment?

I declined to login to PayPal and did not make the offer.
I am assuming that by signing in to PayPal it allows eBay to somehow charge the offer to your account but only take the money if the seller accepts?