eBay Policy on Bidders/Auction Winners that don't pay
Summary: collettcollects shared a frustrating experience on eBay where a bidder won their auction but failed to pay, despite reminders. They canceled the sale after four days and relisted the item, only for the same user to bid again, leading them to block the user and incur a $0.79 fee for ending the auction early. fullers_uk, dhbookds, mr_lincoln, and steve_stuff provided advice on handling such situations, emphasizing blocking non-paying bidders, reporting them, and using features like automatic payment requirements. There was also a discussion about eBay's feedback policy, which prevents sellers from leaving negative reviews for buyers. collettcollects thanked participants and committed to refining their approach in future auctions.
I'm not new to eBay, but new to the selling world. I recently had an auction end and waited for the buyer to pay. I messaged the buyer a couple of times asking if they were going to follow through with the purchase - no response. From what I understand, eBay also notifies them as a reminder to pay. Never received payment and I cancelled the sale after at least four days with no response. I relisted the item and the same user that was unresponsive and didn't pay was the first to bid on the relisting. I sent him a message to see if he actually wanted the item. No response so I quickly ended the auction and then blocked the user. I looked up the user's reviews and noticed that he had 100% positive. But the positive reviews included notes about how the user never paid and never responded.
Sorry for the long-winded message....My two questions/comments are this:
Why aren't sellers allowed to leave negative reviews on a buyer? This guy is obviously just out there to be a menace. And eBay won't do anything.
I was fined $0.79 by eBay for ending an auction early when there was a bidder. So, I opened a case to get a refund. Below is the response I received from eBay. The email isn't even complete. Obviously, eBay didn't try to do anything or didn't care to. Not sure. And the very end of the email tells me not to reply to this email. How do I handle this if eBay won't do anything?
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Hello collettcollects,
Thanks again for reporting the content you found to be problematic on our site.
Your reference ID: 2-108781314131
What happened:
We looked into your report and couldn't find the content you were reporting based on the information you provided to us. Therefore, we couldn't take any action on your report. This determination was made by a customer service agent.
If you reported content that isn’t included in the above reference ID, we’ll send a separate email once we’ve made a decision.
What this means for you:
Thank you for being part of the eBay community.
Thanks,
eBay
Please don't reply to this message. It was sent from an address that doesn't accept incoming email
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steve_stuff
·3 weeks ago"I recently had an auction end and waited for the buyer to pay"
How do you do ebay?
Real computer - internet - web site [like us]
or
Pocket phone - phone line - app?
and
How do you find out something sold?
Item appears on seller hub: orders page, along with a 'your item sold' email
or
a 'ding' on your phone?
If phone then we have no idea what you see/hear.
If you use the web site -
if the "Require buyers to provide ... " was checked at the time of the auction, then MOST LIKELY it was marked as being auto paid in the 'action' column on the 'seller hub: Orders page.
If you use the seller hub: Overview page I THINK it will show something like 'awaiting payment' when something is not paid yet - but don't think it mentions awaiting auto payment.
BUT we have no idea if seller can cancel auto pay items, so as you say you could/did cancel it, either sellers can cancel or it wasn't being auto-paid - and as every one of our auctions have been auto paid for the last two years? I guess you can cancel.
collettcollects
OP3 weeks agoThank you all for replying so quickly. I will check my preferences for auto pay on my auctions. In the future, I will cancel the bid and not the listing.
steve_stuff
·3 weeks ago'In the future, I will cancel the bid and not the listing.'
In the future, if the auto pay is on, their will be no need to cancel any bids as they will be paid.
After talking to our bidders, they say that they get the option to pick 'within an hour' or 'anytime in the next week' options.
If you offer combined shipping, ebay defaults to seven days [and an hour], if not it's defaults to one hour.
One hour - can't send invoice but can combine shipping.
Seven days and an hour - can send invoice and combine.
But again, the most important part, they will be paid
steve_stuff
·3 weeks agoIt sounds like you don't have the 'auto-payment for auctions' option turned on. As ebay turned it on for everybody (as far as we know) you must have turned it off.
If it was on the bidder would need to enter a valid payment option before ebay would let them bid. And upon winning the item would have been paid for either within an hour or sometime in the next seven days.
But it would have been paid for.
collettcollects
OP3 weeks agoWhere do I turn on the "auto-payment for auctions" function?
eburtonlab
·3 weeks agoCheck your Buyer Requirements page.
https://www.ebay.com/bmgt/buyerrequirements
If you allow "combined shipping", eBay will give buyers extra time to pay (up to seven days), so keep that in mind as well if you want immediate payment when the auction ends.
collettcollects
OP3 weeks agoWeird. I followed your link and the "Require buyers to provide a payment method before they place a bid" and "Require all buyers to provide a payment method before they make an offer" were both already checked.
eburtonlab
·3 weeks agoDo you offer combined shipping? If so, eBay gives auction winners extra time to combine auction wins before paying.
mr_lincoln
·3 weeks agoHi @collettcollects
-When Buyers do not pay for auctions you wait 4 days and on day 5 you Cancel and use the reason "Buyer hasn't paid". The Buyer will get one Unpaid item strike on their account. The strikes take 12 months to roll off an account and if they get 2 in 12 months they will have trouble bidding or buying on eBay.
-In 2008 eBay stopped letting Sellers leave Neutral or Negative FB (Feedback) for Buyers. All strictly Buying accounts have 100% Positive Feedback.
-Sellers are not allowed to leave a Positive FB with a negative comment for Buyers, that is a policy violation and the Buyer can have the FB removed.
-The reason you were charged a fee when you Ended the listing is because it had a bid. Here is the Help page on Ending listings and when fees may apply: Ending a listing | eBay
-Sellers can Cancel bids and that is what you should have done on the 2nd time around on the item being auctioned. You need the eBay item number and the Buyer's ID: Cancel buyer's bids | eBay
-You can also ADD any member to your Blocked list for any reason. That list is on this page AND you can have up to 5,000 members on the list: Buyer management | eBay
collettcollects
OP3 weeks agoThank you so much for the info. I will cancel the buyer's bid instead of cancelling the listing altogether. I have added the user to my blocked list.
grann-4629
·3 weeks agoIf eBay won't allow you to leave a neg for 'buyers' that don't pay, they should kick that buyer off the venue ... but they won't.
dhbookds
·3 weeks ago · EditedEbay deep 6'd neg feedback for buyers because sellers were leaving negs as retaliation against negs left for them, but probably the main reason was they didn't want buyers leaving because of negs........and some were pretty nasty.........
Proper way of handling this would be
1) put the buyer on your blocked bidding list when the problem lst occurred.
2) report the buyer
3) cancel the bid (that will stop the charge) before you end the auction (if you want to end it. Canceling the auction with bids does cause the charge.
I should also say there are some options under preferences to automatically block buyers who haven't paid........ with the caveat buyers can start new id's that won't be affected.
collettcollects
OP3 weeks agoI'll look for the option to automatically block buyers that don't pay. Thank you very much.
grann-4629
·3 weeks agoI thought eBay had a way to catch those who create a new id to beat a rap.
fullers_uk
·3 weeks agoMaybe a case of a bidder with 2 ebay accounts and has an item like yours for sale so want to get yours out of the way so buyers see his item more.
collettcollects
OP3 weeks agoThat's a good point. The user does have a ton of sales, many more than I do at least. Thank you.