Buyer Wins Bid then cancels

Question

This seems to be happening quite often to me I list an item then a buyer wins the bid and refuses to pay or cancel itâ€™s usually someone with under 5 feedback scoreâ€¦What can be done about this is seems to happen way to often and there is only a small penalty but the seller then loses all the watchers and has to Relist the item.please help this makes me want to sell on a different platform.

woodland_gnome · Answer

To keep the deadbeats and scammers from committing to buy your item (and tying it while you go through the unpaid item process) don't use auctions or Best Offer. List as fixed-price Buy It Now only and set the BIN to Immediate Payment Required. Click "Payments managed by eBay" in the "Preferences" section of the "Complete your listing" page of the new listing flow and check the box for "Require immediate payment when buyer uses Buy It Now" at the top of resulting popup.

eBay is experimenting with requiring pre-authorization for payment when a buyer makes a bid (the experiment on Best Offers is over and all buyers must pre-authorize payment to make one unless you opt out, but that does not apply to counteroffers you make to them) but that's just an experiment and not applicable to all bidders (as a seller you can opt out--it makes combined shipping discounts difficult to impossible--or into the pre-auth requirements in your Buyer Requirements). Otherwise auctions and Best Offer (and some Buy It Now) allow the buyer to promise to pay which ends the listing (unless it is a multiple item fixed-price listing).

Note that anyone requesting you to contact them outside the eBay message system (email or text or phone) is almost certainly a scammer trying to get your contact information (e.g. to send you a fake payment message). Any mention of a gift card is also a red flag (they make the real money getting sellers to buy gift cards to send with the package for which they "pay" extra in the fake payment message).