Ebay doesn't protect sellers from non-payment or flag non-paying members.

[artgive]

When buyer's don't pay for something they've bought on Ebay, Ebay does nothing to help the seller or to flag the offending buyer to warn other others from doing business with that seller. Other sites segregate the buyer's funds immediately on purchase. Why doesn't Ebay do this?

[woodland_gnome · Accepted solution]

eBay doesn't publicly flag any buyer as having unpaid items, but it does do so privately and sellers can use that flag to automatically block any buyer with 2 or more unpaid item cancellations in the past 12 months.   This works FAR better than expecting to be able to see such a "flag" and act on it before you are already in a transaction with the buyer (especially those who used Buy It Now, or bid towards the end of the auction).

[eburtonlab]

eBay allows sellers to preemptively block any user with two or more unpaid item cancellations in the last year. Have you set your Buyer Requirements to do that?

If you sell via auction or offer, buyers have at least four days to pay before a seller can cancel for nonpayment. Are you waiting four days and cancelling for nonpayment so that non-payers get those strikes and can be blocked?

To avoid nonpayment, list your items for a fixed price with immediate payment required and do not make or accept offers. Then users must complete payment in order for the transaction to proceed; otherwise the item remains listed.

[lady_madonna]

@artgive 

All unpaid items are recorded on a buyer's account. Buyers who have excessive unpaid items, or canceled transactions, may have limits imposed, or lose their buying privileges.

Put the non-paying buyers on your Blocked Buyer List.

https://www.ebay.com/bmgt/BuyerBlock?

Set your Buyer Requirements to  Block buyers who caused cancellations of 2 unpaid purchases within 12 month(s).

https://www.ebay.com/bmgt/buyerrequirements

[artgive]

It's much more effective if, like other sites, Ebay would collect the buyer's funds when the buyer commits.

[woodland_gnome]

You can require that any buyer purchasing at the Buy It Now price pay up front before the item is removed from inventory.  It is an option in the payments section of the listing form to require "Immediate Payment."

eBay is experimenting with requiring pre-authorization for payment when a buyer makes a Best Offer but that's just an experiment and not applicable to all buyers (as a seller you can opt out--it makes combined shipping discounts difficult to impossible--or into the experiment in your Buyer Requirements). Otherwise auctions and Best Offer (and some Buy It Now) allow the buyer to promise to pay in order to scam you.

Most sellers who run auctions would NOT want to require pre-payment or pre-authorization, as that would cut down on the bidders and it requires more than one bidder to raise the price.  Perhaps if the experiment on Best Offers ends up working out (there have been many problems) eBay might consider letting sellers set it as an option for auctions.