Require immediate payment with Buy It Now..... OR NOT?

[mnester01]

Hi, wondering what other sellers think about (or if there is some sort of consensus) whether or not it's better to "Require Immediate Payment" when using "Buy it Now". I've always just required it, but now I'm wondering if perhaps it's better not to. Or better not to under certain circumstances, or with certain items. 

What are the pros and cons?

Does Requiring Immediate Payment sometimes discourage sales? 

Does NOT Requiring Immediate Payment lead to more problems?

I appreciate any thoughts or information on this. Thank you. 

[sbbwest1]

Fantastic feedback Bob, I learned a lot of good information with your post. I’ve been on eBay for over 20 years and try to stay up on the features that the platform has. But these community posts with feedback from sellers are incredibly helpful.

Thank you!

Dianna 

[rosachs]

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@duncanvr wrote:

If no immediate pay on BIN they can simply not pay you for a week then you have to mess around block them and relist. My answer is immediate pay = absolutely!

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eBay can do that for you:  Account Settings > Selling Preferences:

The first setting tells eBay to monitor your unpaids.  Then you tell eBay how long you are willing to wait.  The third tells eBay whether or not to automatically relist for you.

No need to bother keeping track of anything - set it and forget it!

-Bob.

[rosachs]

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@sbbwest1 wrote:

Fantastic feedback Bob, I learned a lot of good information with your post. I’ve been on eBay for over 20 years and try to stay up on the features that the platform has. But these community posts with feedback from sellers are incredibly helpful.

Thank you!

Dianna 

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I'm old enough to remember when you had to build your own computer... and I mean soldering components onto circuit boards, not pulling pre-assembled, pre-tested stuff out of boxes.  🙂  And back then, everyone helped everyone... mostly because we were mostly computer nerds and sharing just came with the territory.

I'm pleased that you find value is my (too often) rambling posts.  I should add that I still learn new things from these boards as well, so it's give-some-take-some at it's best.  🙂

-Bob.

[leahcim1862]

If ALL of your sales are paid for at the time of the sale, then your business model assumes this will always be the case. Unfortunately, at some point, you will encounter the non-paying buyer (trust me, these buyers do exist). Why not have immediate payment turned on as a safety net since your business model expects this action from the buyer? Seems to be common sense to me.

[brightlightbookseller]

We don't, because we love getting combined orders, and thus we allow buyers up to 2 weeks to add to their order and then pay all together. That means in our eBay settings, it auto cancels the order after 19 days. I'm well aware many sellers are not able or willing to wait that long, and you can set it to whatever you're comfortable with, but unless you never or rarely get combined orders after some delay from the first purchase, you might be better off not requiring immediate payment.

It does, however, ward off some types of scams, so experienced users here on the forums will often recommend it to new sellers, even if they might not do it themselves (accounts that have been around a while are less likely to be targeted by those types of scams in the first place, I guess because of diminishing returns on the scammer's side).