Buyers
Can Ebay better handle situations when buyers when auctions, but then just go away and do not pay. Do not answer repeated contacts via the Ebay email. Now the seller has to wait untail the 5th day after the auction ended before relisting! Ebay protects the buyers more than the seller which feeds their plate of profit as sellers do. Ebay allows the buyers to continue this practice without any reprisals.
maybe Ebay should establish a percentage fee for non payments? And if they continue this practice to blow them from using the sight. Something has to be done. Sellers, what do you say?
16 comments
jerseyboymusic
·2 years agoI also think four days for a buyer to pay is too long... even 24 hours is too long...
BUT list your items as Buy It Now with Immediate Payment Required and that will solve the problem!
soh.maryl
·2 years agoYou apparently are aware that, after 96 hours of nonpayment, a seller can cancel, citing "buyer did not pay" as the reason.
If that doesn't work for you, perhaps consider listing with fixed price, immediate payment required.
And there are "reprisals" which are actually more like "consequences". Buyer gets a nonpayment strike. Two of those in twelve months, and most smart sellers have set their buyer requirements so they do not have to deal with that buyer.
Part of the problem here, as I see it, is that there are sellers who just let it go and relist, they don't actually cancel. And then we had a seller who stated that he doesn't like to do that. As long as that continues to happen, there will continue to be chronic nonpayers.
luckythewinner
·2 years agoCan Ebay better handle situations when buyers when auctions, but then just go away and do not pay.
Not without requiring the buyer to submit a payment method with the bid. They have been testing this in a limited fashion with Offers for a long time and seem reluctant to roll it out. My guess is because they have discovered that is discourages buyer even if they have no history of non-payment.
maybe Ebay should establish a percentage fee for non payments
First, eBay does not have the authority to charge a buyer without his approval. Second, as a frequent buyer there have been a number of times where I had a legitimate reason for nonpayment because the seller either disclosed information (ex damage) after the sale or failed to live up to promises he made (ex. combined shipping).
Something has to be done
Nothing has been done about this for two decades, and there are still 1.5 billion listings here. Including yours 🙂
dbfolks166mt
·2 years agoCan Ebay better handle situations when buyers when auctions, but then just go away and do not pay.
Not without requiring the buyer to submit a payment method with the bid. They have been testing this in a limited fashion with Offers for a long time and seem reluctant to roll it out. My guess is because they have discovered that is discourages buyer even if they have no history of non-payment.
EBay also had a pilot in place for auctions, requiring the bidder to submit a payment method before placing a bid, but they appear to have ended that pilot without rolling out the capability. The auto-pay for offers and auctions had some issues just as the Immediate Payment Required (IPR) has with BIN items, combined shipping being one of those.
I participate in a lot of online auctions and ALL of them, except eBay, require you to have a payment method defined and on record before you are allowed to bid on any items, it is pretty much an industry standard. During the pilot the number of non-payment issues posted on this forum had tapered off considerably but it is now on the rise again. I suspect, other than the issues that needed to be resolved, that the biggest share of the buyer complaints were from sport bidders or those running bidding schemes.
reallynicestamps
·2 years agoDo not answer repeated contacts via the Ebay email.
Every time you send an invoice the payment time is extended by 96 hours.
You set up an auction which forced the bidder to wait seven days to find out if they had won, but you are not willing to extend the same courtesy to the buyer?
If you want to be paid immediately use Fixed Price/Immediate Payment Required.
The listing will be visible for 30 days or until someone actually pays.
dbfolks166mt
·2 years agoThere are 100's if not 1,000's of postings on this forum about the exact same subject. Almost all have the same answers, you au want to read through a few of those. EBay tried to address this issue with the auto-pay feature, in response to seller complaints, but there was so much pushback from sellers and buyers alike that they stopped the pilot and disabled the functionality. I am not sure if they are still working on it.
There are LOTS of reasons a bidder may not have paid some of which could be beyond the bidders control.
chapeau-noir
·2 years agoI still think 4 days minimum is ridiculously long. It should be 2 days minimum, with the seller able to chose a longer time frame just as we do now. I'd like to see 1 day, actually.
kensgiftshop
·2 years agoIf it's that much of a problem, I say ditch the auctions and list as a fixed price with immediate payment required.
dbfolks166mt
·2 years agoIf it's that much of a problem, I say ditch the auctions and list as a fixed price with immediate payment required.
Ironically eBay tried to implement the auto-pay feature for offers and auctions which basically equates to the Immediate Payment Required (IPR) for BIN items. During that trial run the number of postings on this forum about non-paying bidders decreased to almost 0.
However there was so much pushback from sellers and buyers alike that to the best of my knowledge eBay disabled the functionality and we are back to all the postings about non-paying buyers. IPR can also have it's share of issues and drawbacks but it's all part of the selling process.
12345jamesstamps
·2 years agoYou can block non paying bidders in future auctions.
You can also block any bidder during your auctions...check their feedback, bid retractions and how new their account is. It's your right during an auction.
Sometimes having "buy it now" as well as "auctions" help when a seller what's money coming in every week.
itscalledapostingid
·2 years ago@Anonymous
The following are ebay's terms for buyers and the last time I won an auction ebay sent an email telling me to pay within four days:
Timelines for paying
When you buy an item on eBay, whether you won an auction or used Buy It Now, you'll need to pay the seller within 4 days.
Source: https://www.ebay.com/help/buying/paying-items/paying-items?id=4009
That's why I never do auctions. When ebay gives them so long to pay it's no surprise people end up taking longer or never paying.
Of course when I buy I always pay immediately.
rosachs
·2 years agoI don't mind buyers waiting to pay... in most cases, it means they are waiting on a related auction to close so they can pay for both/all at once. And that's a bonus for me because I only pay the 'fixed' portion of the payment processing portion of the FVF once on combined sales, not once per item sold. With the industry average for that fixed fee being 30 cents, that can be a full 10% of the selling price of one of my elongates. But if I sell/ship 4 elongates at once, I save 90 cents on that fixed fee, and I can still ship them at the one ounce eBay Standard Letter rate!
I love combined shipments, so if a buyer waits for the rest of their purchases, I'm good with that. My repeat buyers, the ones I cater to the most, know to let me know when they are looking at/bidding on multiple items, so I can turn off the automatic 4day unpaid cancellation process for their purchases. They also know that I prefer to only do that a week at a time -- it's a reasonable period and still saves me money. And in some cases, these buyers purchase enough to get upgraded shipping! Win-win!
-Bob.
itsjustasprain
·2 years agoIt sounds like you know to wait until the 5th day before cancelling so that the deadbeat gets a strike. That is the only real enforcement mechanism that Ebay offers you (along with your Blocked buyer list) - that and making sure that your buyer requirements are set to their tightest setting that will block anyone with 2 Unpaids over the past 12 months.
https://www.ebay.com/bmgt/buyerrequirements
(This is my buying account.) I cannot see how Ebay would enforce a 'percentage fee' on deadbeats who are not paying anyway. Booting them from the site is only a temporary fix as they would just open another account.
rosachs
·2 years ago"It sounds like you know to wait until the 5th day before cancelling so that the deadbeat gets a strike. That is the only real enforcement mechanism that Ebay offers you (along with your Blocked buyer list) - that and making sure that your buyer requirements are set to their tightest setting that will block anyone with 2 Unpaids over the past 12 months."
Actually, there is a setting sellers can use to have eBay automatically cancel unpaid orders at the 4 day mark. Initially is was called Unpaid Item Assistant, but now it's just another configuration setting sellers can use to control the problem.
You are never truly going to get rid of non-paying buyers, but that doesn't mean you have to fret over them. Let eBay do it for you! There computers are big enough to handle it, and they've been doing if for years!
I love turning stuff like this over to automation, either from a service provider (eBay) or from something I'm using myself to manage my activity on a site (SixBit). The more I have the computers do, the more time I have available to do things that generate sales. Or list more inventory. Or my favorite - spend more time spoiling my grandkids!
You don't work for the computers... the computers work for you. And they work around the clock, all day, every day, and even right thru the eclipse! Take advantage - they don't mind one bit!
-Bob.
itsjustasprain
·2 years agoYes - it can be found here: https://www.ebay.com/Cancel/Preference/UnpaidPurchase
I should have mentioned it in my previous reply but the OP was talking about relisting on the 5th day so I was assuming that they were already familiar with cancellations. Thanks for adding that.
Unavailable member
·2 years agoYou can do something by cancelling transactions for nonpayment.
You can also list with fixed price with immediate payment required. That will put a stop to non payers.
Wait exactly 4 days or 96 hours cancel the transaction citing buyer didn't pay.
Do not send invoices as this will only increase the time to cancel.
When you cancel for non payment the buyer gets an unpaid item strike against their account.
2 strikes with 12 months gets that buyer blocked from countless sellers items and auctions.
Those sellers have their buyer requirements set to block buyers with 2 unpaid item strikes in 12 months.