Ep 292 || Best Practices for New (& Experienced) Sellers

[podcast_team]

eBay Seller Advocate and podcast correspondent Chuck Van Pelt returns with his best practices that any new or experienced seller should consider for their business. Also this week; how do you handle buyer requests post sale to delay payment? Griff and Kayomi read some of the responses to this question.

Episode Links:
Up and Running Grant Application
https://www.ebay.com/str/chuckmac
Preferences for items awaiting payment (Unpaid Item Assistant)
eBay For Business Podcast Facebook Group
Recurring Links:
eBay for Business Podcast
eBay Seller Spotlight Podcast
eBay for Business Podcast Listener Survey
eBay Seller News Announcements
eBay for Business Facebook
Community Chat with eBay Staff
eBay Seller Center
eBay Help
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Kayomi: I'm Kayomi Kayoshi.

Griff: And I'm Griff. And this is the eBay For Business Podcast. Your source for the information and inspiration to help you start and manage and grow a business on the world's most powerful marketplace. And this is episode 292. Welcome back to the studio Kayomi.

Kayomi: Why thank you Griff, how are you?

Griff: I'm doing well in the middle of a lot of work. As we used to say with Brian, it's been a busy week.

Kayomi: I know there is no downtime.

Griff: There's always something new happening, uh, with sellers or the seller product team or there's always something going on. Can you imagine how boring our lives would be if there wasn't?

Kayomi: I like having something new to look forward to, even if it is a bit busy. It's still good. It's exciting.

Griff: So I like that balance between chaos and routine. In between there, there's a nice sweet spot and I think we find it most of the weeks.

Kayomi: I'll have to agree with you. Well, Griff, who is our guest this week?

Griff: I know you sell on the site, right?

Kayomi: I do. And I don't wanna ruin the surprise, but a lot of the reason why it got started was actually because of our guests this week.

Griff: Oh? Fantastic.

Kayomi: Yeah.

Griff: All right, well that, that's a great lead in because one of the things about selling what we like to call the best practices and who better than our seller advocate, Chuck Van Pelt our regular correspondent now on the podcast, he visits us once every few months and Chuck's back and this time he's here to go over some important best practices for before and after you make a sale.

Kayomi: Back when we had San Jose Seller Week, Chuck and Jonathan, who are both on the seller advocacy team, they did this workshop and this presentation for eBay employees, just teaching them best practices, how to sell, shipping, everything like that. So, like I said, Chuck is a very large part of how I even got started.

Griff: Well that's good to hear. So tell us, is there any news this week?

Kayomi: Why? Of course, the seller product team has made important enhancements to the marketing tab summary in Seller Hub. Some of you may have noticed this. First off, there's a new create promotion button, so you can quickly put together a marketing campaign that attracts more buyers to your listings. They've also added an activity tracker that lets you keep track of all of your promotions in one place. And last but not least, the team has simplified and cleaned up the left navigation on that page to eliminate duplicate links.

Griff: Oh, that's great news.

Kayomi: Yeah. The team states that we can look forward to more updates to the marketing tab over the next few months. So stay tuned and to check out these updates, visit the new Seller Hub marketing tab.

Griff: Yeah, and I just checked and it's showing up on mine. That's a definite improvement. Is there any other news?

Kayomi: Of course. It's been a busy week. There's one more piece of news that we have.

Griff: We have more of a reminder than news.

Kayomi: Exactly. Remember this date, Friday, June 7th, 2024 at 6:00 PM Eastern Time. eBay small business sellers in the US can apply for this year's Up and Running Grant. eBay is looking to identify sellers to represent a diverse range of backgrounds, bring their unique experiences and inventory to the marketplace, and are committed to their communities and the eBay ecosystem. As part of the application, you can share details about your small business and how you plan to use the grant to accelerate your growth. To apply and to learn more about eligibility requirements, visit eBay.helloalice.com.

Griff: Yeah, and you gotta do that before Friday, June 7th at 6:00 PM Eastern time. That's when the application process, the door shut and there's a sign that says, sorry, no more applications.

Kayomi: You'll have to wait another 365 days. So...

Griff: Oh dear, that's too long.

Kayomi: Get your application in while you can.

Griff: And while you're writing that application, you want to listen to this next segment because again, Chuck Van Pelt will be joining us.

Kayomi: Very nice. He is very well loved by the community team and we're always in constant engagement with him, so have fun talking to

Griff: Him. He's a source of many of the answers I get when I have questions that I need answered. So, let's bring him on.

Griff: Our next guest is like me, he's been on eBay for a while and he sells as well as supporting sellers. Please join me in welcoming back Chuck Van Pelt. Chuck, how are you?

Chuck: I'm doing very well, Griff. Thank you so much for having me back.

Griff: We're gonna talk about best practices as they relate to selling, but before we do, can you give us a little reminder of what you do at eBay?

Chuck: Yeah, I've been at eBay for eight years. My role currently is seller advocate, where I get to meet with our sellers and get our info, all that information back to our seller experience product team, make the product better. I've also been selling on eBay for 25 years. I ship about 10 to 15 items a day, just to give you an idea of the scale. Mostly vintage electronics and collectibles. I fully eat the dog food at eBay.

Griff: I know what to get you for Christmas. A new can opener.

Chuck: Exactly.

Griff: So let's get into the topics here. We're gonna talk about best practices and this is kind of a list that in reading through it, it's clear that this would benefit any seller, whether you're brand new or or experienced. So let's jump right in it. In fact, there's six main tips. So what's the first one?

Chuck: The first one is it's kind of unconventional. It's not so much how to use eBay as how to prepare yourself for being a seller. And this is something that I've learned over time. I had to really look introspectively at how I was as a seller and make some changes. I used to get really fired up about buyers who didn't play nice. We've all had these bad experiences selling right? Where it would take me right out of my flow every time I get a nasty gram member to member message or negative feedback or that kind of thing. I realized many times that a bad experience with a buyer starts out when they assume I'm out to rip them off or I'm not operating in good faith. I learned that coming back at them with overwhelming kindness can actually change everything.

Griff: Yeah. A lot of buyers are suspicious because they may have had bad experiences with previous buying online.

Chuck: Exactly. Exactly. I've had buyers come in hot and it ends up at the end that I end up having a good working relationship with them. If you fight it out with a buyer over some disagreement and they leave you negative feedback and you spend hours getting eBay to, or trying to get eBay to remove the feedback.

Griff: And they're not going to, so that's time wasted.

Chuck: Right? If you do all these things and spend all this time, did you win? Are you a winner from this situation? I say no, that you're not. And you could've lost hours that you used for running your business and then also maybe gave yourself an ulcer at the same time.

Griff: . Yeah. Hey, I gotta ask you, do you have a hundred percent feedback?

Chuck: I do not actually. And that's, I'm glad you brought that up. I'm not immune to conflict with my customers and I don't get any special privileges as an eBay employee. If I get a negative feedback, I just leave a nice reply and I move on. My business is still successful and I'm still doing it. I think that a super nice response to an unreasonable negative feedback is actually more powerful than expunging all the negative sentiments from my selling record. I think it shows transparency and credibility.

Griff: Yeah. And we know buyers look for those. That's what they want to see is how a seller responds.

Chuck: Exactly. Yep. Well the bottom line is you're not gonna please everyone. So learn to let go of the negativity and I guarantee that eBay journey you're on is going to be way better.

Griff: Let's move on to the second one. And we wanted to talk about sourcing. I know that you sell electronics without giving away all your secrets. Where do you get all the things you sell?

Chuck: Yeah, that's a great question. Before I talk about where I source, I want to recommend something to, especially new sellers. Start out selling something that you're passionate about. You're gonna get a lot more enjoyment and the likelihood that you're gonna burn out is gonna be less, you can less burnout if you sell something that you like. Think about your hobbies and your interests and that kind of thing. Part of the reason why I've had such longevity on the platform is I sell in a very narrow set of categories, including vintage electronics, which I love very much. If I was selling men's clothing, it would just be widgets to me. I wouldn't really get a lot of enjoyment out of it. Let's start with the easiest place to get materials to sell is around your own house. And I can do this now, even having done this for 25 years, I could do a circuit of the house and I could find toys, electronics, video games, clothes. I could go hit my kids up, Hey, clean your rooms and bring me all the stuff you find and I'll sell it. And that's a great way for new sellers to get started. Your cost of inventory is effectively zero.

Griff: Yeah. Bring me the things that you really love. You weren't so good a kid this week, so, but dad, no, no arguments.

Chuck: I would never do that to my kids, but I do find that they change their interests frequently. And so that kinda works out like, they're interested in this now. Okay, we'll sell these other things and we'll move on to the new hobby. Sure. In addition to your own house, I think all my friends and family at this time are aware of that I sell on eBay and that I like to do this kind of thing. I'll hit 'em up all the time. Yeah, you're cleaning your house, anything you're gonna get rid of. Anything that you might normally have donated. Hey, can I have a crack at it first? I'm actually finding that they see this as a benefit and I'm getting that these proactive calls now, Hey, can you take this stuff off my hands? You're actually helping me out.

Griff: Yeah, you still have to be selective though. You're not gonna take just any old junk.

Chuck: Exactly. I always say half of my business as an eBay seller is finding great things to sell and half of it is not buying garbage or getting garbage for free.

Griff: Yeah. Good advice.

Chuck: The next area where I source a lot is thrift stores. It's a great source of sellable items. Garage sales and estate sales, depending on where you are, might be more seasonal. I would recommend checking out Craigslist is a good source or an estate sale finder. We could do a whole podcast on garage sale and estate sale etiquette and adventures and we should probably do that sometime in the future, but for now, I'll just leave it at that. Go to garage sales. It's a great experience and I highly recommend it for anyone starting out.

Griff: There is an etiquette to doing this? This is news to me. I just barge in and pick up what I want and say, get outta my way. I'm taking that.

Chuck: That's one way to do it.

Griff: . . It's power sourcing.

Chuck: Exactly. It never hurts to nudge people out of the way.

Griff: Oh, nudge. I've been shoving them. Oh dear.

Chuck: Oh man, we gotta work on your, on your garage sale game, Griff. Another place where I find deals sometimes is through retail arbitrage. Basically it's just finding underpriced merchandise locally at like your Target or your Walmart or Walgreens or any of these other stores.

Griff: Costco.

Chuck: Costco, absolutely. You're looking for that difference in price between the market you bought it in and the market you can sell it in. So you can leverage our product research tools like Terra Peak to do that or sold item searches on eBay. You probably see people out all the time with their phones out. They're doing that price research.

Griff: Half the people in Big Lots are there with a phone going, let's see what this would sell on eBay.

Chuck: . Exactly.

Griff: Okay, so Chuck, I've got all this ready. I've got my positive attitude, I've got some things to sell that I picked up around the house. Now what?

Chuck: I say start listing, that's my, that's my next step.

Griff: Wait! I haven't done enough research. I haven't done enough fixing up this area where I'm gonna sell from. Shouldn't I spend the next six months getting that ready?

Chuck: That's one way you could go. I know everyone wants to build the perfect ship station in their garage and everyone wants to set their their light box up just the right way. But I think that just a simple photo with your phone can get you started and I have some tips for what I think are the quickest ways to do that.

Griff: Okay. How do we start?

Chuck: First of all, there are eight ways for people to list for sellers to list items on eBay.

Griff: That's a lot.

Griff: Crazy, right?

Griff: Oh yeah.

Chuck: Well i'm going to give you my personal tip for the quickest way to get listings up. The thing I like to do is the Sell One Like This listing flow. Selling like this, it speeds up the process and lets you take advantage of work that other sellers before you have done. To use Sell One Like This, you guys have probably seen this before, but like on the website, if you do a search for an item on eBay and then you click on that item below the gallery image, you'll see sell one like this. Or if you do a search and you switch to sold listings right there in the listing flow on every item, there'll be a little link to Sell One Like This. Now the beauty of this is that it will open up a draft for you. It will bring the title and the item specifics in from the listing that you were looking at. And that's a huge time saver. I do this for 100% of my listings on eBay and it's a huge time saver for me.

Griff: Okay. You can also, if you need to, you can tweak and edit a little bit of that information as needed.

Chuck: Absolutely. I mean the nice thing is if you look at the search results from a an item that you wanna sell, you find the one that sold for the most and you have a pretty good feeling that while something about this listing caused it to sell for the most money, so maybe that would be a good starting point for me. But once you bring in that listing, you wanna look at those items specifics pretty carefully and make sure that they do indeed apply to the item that you're selling.

Griff: When you use SALI as the acronyms Sell One Like This, does it bring in the photos?

Chuck: It doesn't. So we don't encourage our sellers to use other people's photos. I wouldn't even use any stock photos you find in the internet. You should always just get your phone out, take those images directly of your item.

Griff: We gotta take some pictures.

Chuck: Exactly. That brings me to the next point, taking photos. The next tip, if you have an intent to sell more than just a few items, it's worth investing in a light box. You know, I actually ordered the Puluz light box that I heard you talk about Griff in one of your previous podcasts.

Griff: Don't you love it? I see it there in the background.

Chuck: Is wonderful. It casts light from three sides, the top and two sides and eliminates shadows. So it's really great. That one was probably sub hundred dollars, but you can get for even 20 bucks a pretty good light box and I think it's worth the investment. That said, if you don't have a light box, we've got you covered. eBay has some really great background removal and clean up tools available and I find a dining room table is a great place in most houses with really great lighting to take pictures or a kitchen counter can also be a good place. But even if that tabletop or that counter is like it's marble, has a weird modeled background, the background removal tool on eBay works pretty well and I'd give that a shot. Is it necessary to have a white background on your photos? No, I don't think it is. I think when you're looking at items in the search results, white backgrounds are really gonna stand out.

Griff: Yeah. It's true. It's a good default.

Chuck: Yep, exactly. And then the, the final tip on photos, we do allow 24 pictures with every listing. You don't have to take 24, but I would put a little extra effort in and just take a few extras even over and above what you think. Like if an object has six sides to it, there should be at least six photos there.

Griff: Okay, so I'm ready to sit down and do this. I got the photos and now it's time to decide on a format. It's a question that comes up a lot. When do I use auction? When do I use a fixed price format?

Chuck: Boy, that's the million dollar question. And I see a lot of newer sellers kinda get in trouble with the auction. But really I sell almost exclusively 99.9% fixed price items. First of all, on auctions they only add value when you have a couple of criteria that apply, you have a unique or rare item, an item that maybe isn't on eBay at all or is super uncommon and condition is super important. So there's some uniqueness to your item that will drive engagement with your auction or if there's little to no pricing data about what that item is worth. So you kind of just cast it out to the winds and see what's gonna come back. Many times I've found a really rare item or something where I just could find zero pricing data and I just let the marketplace figure it out through an auction. Finally, if it's really important for you to make a quick sale on a certain schedule and that's more important to you than maximizing your profitability, put up a seven or 10 day auction and just let it ride and that item will sell. For sure. I said I use fixed price listings on most items. I do it when the market price of an item is well established. I find that for most of the things I sell, the market price is very well established.

Griff: No one's going to overpay for it in an auction. They're not gonna get into a bidding war over it.

Chuck: Yeah, there's a range of prices that are out there where people can see, okay, on the low end I can expect this, the high end, I can expect this with some variation for like condition or color or other aspects of the item. Now if you're unsure of the market price of your item, there's always a sold search. You can go do a search on eBay and then switch to sold listings and that'll give you kind of an idea. But, uh, I can't speak highly enough of our product research tool also called Terapeak, currently only on the web, but it's coming soon to the mobile platform and it is free for all sellers. It's a great tool and I'm so excited for the mobile version of it. You know, it's simple. You just search just like you do on a regular eBay search, it's gonna return a lot of additional details though, including the average sale price and the sell through.

Griff: And it looks back three years, which Sold Items doesn't do.

Chuck: Exactly. Sold Items is 90 days and you get a lot more data from the Product Research tool, you know, the sell through number. Is that something you factor in when you buy things Grif? Do you think about sell through or this concept?

Griff: I think about it when I'm purchasing for resale.

Chuck: Exactly.

Griff: Yeah. I don't wait until I'm listing. If I'm sourcing, I want to know, uh, how popular is the item itself, but I also tend to buy stuff and then put it away for a couple years until it's out of production and then the supply dwindles and the demand grows and that's a wonderful way of maximizing a profit. That's just me. What we recommend normally is, we just talked about this on a recent podcast with the Commonwealth Picker. When you buy it, list it! Laree also and what she was talking about, she knows people who they buy it and as they're walking out to the car, they're listing it. Sell through is important. I just tend to look for that before I even buy something.

Chuck: You know, I've always heard that term sell through but actually looked at how we calculate it. It's the number sold divided by the total listed and then you get a percentage. If there were a hundred listed in the last 90 days and 50 of those sold and that's a 50% sell through and that is pretty good.

Griff: You might have a 50% chance of selling it at your price. Those are fairly good odds.

Chuck: It is good. And well, I always look for those super sellers. Those items that, you know, a hundred were listed and 90 sold in the past.

Griff: Great business model.

Chuck: They can't all be like that. But it helps me stay away from items that aren't going to perform. Don't get me wrong, I love some long tail items and I'll sit on stuff for a long time, but at the end of the day, my garage is only so big and I gotta get things moving.

Griff: You don't want to trip over your long tail. Okay, let's talk about after the sale, because now I've successfully, with that sell through rate, I've sold at least 50% of those items that I listed. Yay. I think I'm doing pretty well. If you ever used any of the forums where they talk and take questions from new sellers? Oh man, shipping, it's so complicated. It doesn't have to be.

Chuck: Yeah, it's one of the most frequent questions I hear from sellers that I talk to. So the first question I'm usually asked is, should I charge for shipping or should I make it free? It's a very hotly debated topic, so I'll tell you what I do. I do 100% free shipping. That's not to say that I pay for the shipping myself, but I build the shipping into the price of the item.

Griff: Yeah, of course. Yeah,

Chuck: Yeah. So if I think that uh, it'll be an average of $15 to ship the item, then I will add $15 to the sale price. And that's how I do it. I think free shipping is transparent. It's a psychological tool that helps attract buyers. Now that said, I'm fully aware that if I get a return when I offer free shipping, generally I will have to refund all the money, including the money I paid to ship the item. If I was to charge for shipping, I can set up my return policy in a way to keep that outbound shipping costs even when I refund the rest.

Griff: I see. I know for some people that thought of giving back the shipping money also is uncomfortable and I completely understand that. That's why there's a choice and we all get to pick the way we wanna do. It just comes down to the way you run your business. I personally build the occasional refund into my business model. 'cause I think offering free shipping outweighs the additional costs of returns, at least in my business. But I know that, uh, results may vary for everyone else. So this is one of those things that as a seller, you have to figure out over time. Test and learn and see what works for you best. I read something today in a post. It was a seller who said, yeah, eBay's determined to push us all to free shipping. And I'm thinking, no, that's absolutely not the case. All we concerned about is you make sales and if your shipping policy, whatever it is, helps you make more sales, mazel tov! It may not be free shipping. We leave it up to you. No one is forcing you to do anything. We're not your parents, we're not your moderators, but people tend to look at the business that way and it, it makes me want to put them in a timeout and maybe ground them for two weeks because I can be the parent if you want me to be.

Chuck: This has been a public service message from Griff.

Griff: Now you know, the more you know.

Chuck: Yeah, I feel pretty well supported by eBay. This is me putting my seller hat on, taking off my eBay employee hat. 'cause I am running a business here at the end of the day and I feel like having these options is good and it's a platform on which you can run experiments on your business and see what works for you.

Griff: The advice I always give to new buyers especially and this this whole segment's kind of geared towards the new inexperienced buyer, but I think there's information we've talked about that can help anyone. Just make sure that you can weigh and measure the item when you put the item up for sale and you enter those bits of information and even if you're not listing it for free shipping, you're gonna get an estimate of the cost. And that cost is either gonna be shown to the buyer if it's not free shipping or you'll, you'll know what it is so that you can add it in. It just makes the whole shipping process post transaction a lot easier don't you think?

Chuck: I do. My advice to new sellers is always get the item, put it in the box with all the padding you're gonna put in there. You don't have to close it up, weigh it and get the measurements of the three dimensions and then you want to punch that all into the calculated shipping tool and you cannot go wrong. It will give you the amount it will cost to ship, it will pass that along based on the buyer's zip code and tell them exactly what it'll cost. It's pretty hard to mess that up. So that's more labor intensive. But once you become a more experienced seller, you get a feel for, okay, this item weighs about this much. It's about this big. Yes, the farthest zone I could ship this to, which for me is Puerto Rico. What is that going to cost me? And I just add that amount into the into the cost.

Griff: So that you use free shipping still?

Griff: I would use free shipping, yeah.

Griff: And we're not the only sources of all knowledge here because like I said, you'll find on different forums, both on the community pages at eBay and sometimes in social media sellers who will explain how they actually do it. And you may discover a method or a hybrid of several methods that's going to work best for the kind of things that you sell and what you need to do to be able to function successfully as a business. Well Chuck continued success with your business and with helping sellers as an eBay Seller Advocate.

Chuck: It was my pleasure to be here Griffin. I'm always happy to come back.

Griff: Chuck Van Pelt works at eBay as a seller advocate in our community engagement area and he's been selling on eBay for 25 years. We'll put a link to his eBay store in the transcript for episode 292.

Kayomi: You've got questions.

Griff: We got answers. And this week in lieu of questions. Kayomi I thought we'd talk about a very popular thread that was posted on our Facebook group. It was a few weeks ago. It's about a topic near and dear to many seller's hearts. So without any further ado, why don't you read the original post for this thread Kayomi?

Griff: I'd be happy to. But before I do that I just wanna remind everyone that this was posted in our eBay for Business podcast group and we'll link that as always to the group in the episode summary. You can also find lots of seller to seller conversations on our community pages as well at community.ebay.com. Alright, this post was started by seller Jamie who wrote, hello. I have been selling on eBay for quite a while now, but this is a first for me. A buyer emailed Jamie with the following request. I would like to pay you on the 24th of April, two weeks from today. That's when I get my next paycheck. I hope that's okay with you. Let me know. Thanks. Jamie posted his response to the buyer in the body of his posts on the group. It says Hi eBay Doesn't quite work that way. Currently I have the unpaid item manager set up and require payment within four days of the end of the auction. Asking me to wait two weeks is quite a long time. This is a question that preferably should have been asked before you bid on and won this auction.

Griff: Oh well okay. Not an unfamiliar uncommon case. So, so far so good.

Kayomi: Agreed. Jamie continues in the post. What happens when this occurs? The unpaid item assistant will take over after the fourth day canceling the order. Correct? Thank you for any input slash help on this matter.

Griff: For reference if you're not sure what it is. So we're talking about cases where it's not immediate payment and it's either an auction and in this case it was an auction or a Buy It Now out item with no immediate payment and the buyer purchases or wins and then the buyer says, Hey, can I pay you in two weeks? And what Jamie is talking about with the Unpaid Item Assistant or in the acronym world UIA, is a tool that sellers can employ to help automate the process of managing unpaid items. So that's what that is.

Kayomi: We will also put a link to the UIA in the summary for this episode as well.

Griff: So this post garnered a lot of interest. There were 41 responses and over 500 members who read the post. And I thought we might read a few of the more relevant responses to Jamie's question.

Kayomi: It is a good topic.

Griff: Yeah it is. And everyone has a different take on this. So first this was from seller Larry P and he said to Jamie, just let eBay do what it's supposed to do and automatically hit them up with an unpaid ding. If you really wanna make the sale and trust the buyer to rebuy it and pay, just tell them that it's out of your hands and don't relist it until you hear from them that they're ready to buy and pay for it. That is, if you're not too desperate to sell the item now and prefer to relist it, that's one take

Kayomi: JFJ asked, is it like a $10 item? And Jamie responded to Jeff with no, the auction went up to $158 and had 15 watchers and over 20 bids from six bidders. There was plenty of interest in the listing, I just don't like how the winner waited till the entire auction was over and all the last minute bids came in to not only win but then have the gall to ask me to wait two weeks to get paid.

Griff: I'm kinda with Jamie on this one.

Kayomi: Yeah, it's a fair response.

Griff: But not everyone was Sherry S piped in with her experiences. She said, I've worked with other buyers in the past in situations like this because it doesn't happen often and I understand what it's like living paycheck to paycheck. I personally think your response might have been a little harsh. If you're willing to give them two weeks until they get paid, you can go to your account and add their username to the list that would create an override to that four day window and prevent eBay from canceling the sale at day four. That is interesting information. If you have your unpaid item assistance set up for four days and someone like this buyer makes this request and you're willing to oblige, you can put their user ID on what's called the exemption list on that unpaid items settings page and it will give them 30 days another take. It's not necessarily one I would do, but good for you Sherry.

Kayomi: Yeah, I think it depends on the user. In this case, this is what Tom G had to say on the topic. The myth that eBay requires buyers to pay in four days is just that a myth. In the stamp categories. It's pretty common for sellers to allow people to buy multiple items within 30 days and pay all at once. And you set when eBay automatically cancels and removes a transaction. I have set mine for 30 days right now I have 18 unpaid items. Some of them are one to two weeks old, all from regular customers. It works just fine.

Griff: So here's an example. It's not my business model, but Tom G has a business model where allowing buyers to wait until they purchased a bunch of things and then pay for them all at once and ship them all out at once. Works for him. So hey, knock yourself out if that works. But Jennifer a had the opposite opinion. Jennifer said, I don't use unpaid item assistant, I haven't had a non-pay in ages, especially if it's something I'd be happy to get rid of. I might not. If it was a high dollar item with a lot of interest, it a lot of bids, but I don't know for sure until I know the item in the situation. So the choice is up to you. Jennifer says, turn off on paid assistant and wait or add the name to the exemption. List the user ID or let it cancel. Better yet, why don't you use immediate payment if that's what you want. Well I can pipe in here and say that I don't think it's available for auctions yet. So I think they're still in a ramp up and or test. So it might not have been available to Jamie.

Kayomi: One thing I love about this topic is how everyone has a different take and they're all valid takes to each of their own. I think it just depends on your business model and how you want to operate.

Griff: Exactly.

Kayomi: I really do like Jonathan B's take. He said, my job is selling on eBay and this is my paycheck. Would you be okay if your boss told you I can't pay you this week, I'll pay you in two weeks when the revenue comes in?

Griff: Well good point.

Kayomi: I know. I'm like when you put it like that, .

Griff: So like I said, everyone has a different take on it. Cassie O had praise for Jamie. She said your response is nice and professional. I like that. Since it was a good item with multiple bidders, I would wait the four days and cancel. She says, I actually waited on a $40 item once and it was fine. They paid and were happy. But that was a Buy It Now fixed priced item and then it would've been sitting in my store cis cassiopeia for months. So I didn't mind waiting. She wanted to get rid of it.

Kayomi: And finally to close off this thread Flo F had this to add. I had the same thing. I waited and never got paid. I had to cancel the order. Sometimes you wonder what's wrong with people. Thank you. Flo.

Griff: Don't worry Flo. I think a lot of us when we're selling in situations like this, we think the same thing. What I tend to do is like to keep it to myself though. So I never, I would never express that to a buyer.

Kayomi: Griff, have you ever encountered a situation like this? Have you ever had buyers that haven't paid?

Griff: If I had it, it was years ago because I don't usually use auctions and I always require immediate payment, but I have had, sometime in the last few years I've had one or two requests from a buyer saying, Hey, if I buy this from you, can I wait till X date in the future to pay you? And I always say, well no, I wish I could but I'm not. My business on eBay isn't set up that way. So my advice would be to wait until you can pay for it and then come back and buy it if it's still available. There's always that little tease at the end.

Kayomi: On the opposite side of the coin, have you ever been in this situation? Have you ever asked to do that?

Griff: I never buy something without having the money on hand. Or the credit.

Kayomi: One or the other.

Griff: One or the other. Exactly. Well that's it. Kayomi. Thanks so much for reading all those. It really helps to have two people doing this and I want to thank all the sellers that participated in this discussion on our eBay for Business podcast group. I'll put a link in the summary so you can find it. What about you? Do you have the occasional unpaid item or do you get these requests to hold off payment? And if so, how do you handle it? Let us know. We'll share it with the rest of your fellow sellers.

Kayomi: And you can always let us know by calling us at (888)723-4630 or if you prefer, by emailing us at podcast@ebay.com.

Griff: That's (888)723-4630 or podcast@ebay.com. And now Kayomi and I will read through our three point podcast checklist as we do every week.

Kayomi: Check the announcement board at ebay.com/announcements for up-to-date seller news every day.

Griff: If you don't always use immediate payment on your listings and you would like to automate the management of any unpaid items that might come your way, start using the unpaid item assistant feature and we'll put a link to it in the summary for episode 292.

Kayomi: Check the transcript for this and all episodes for follow up on what you've heard and to find the links we referenced during the episode.

Griff: And on our next episode, we'll be taking another deep dive on the topic of on and offsite marketing with product team manager Avinash Madhavn.

Kayomi: And we'd like to again thank our guest this week, seller advocate, Chuck Van Pelt.

Griffin: The eBay for Business Podcast is produced and distributed by Libsyn and podCast411. We'll see you next week Kayomi.

Kayomi: You then. Bye Griff.

[longboardluv]

Chuck is the man, it good to know that eBay has people dedicated to making sure us sellers are being heard!