First Time Unpaid Item Resolution Experience FAIL - Process Is Unintuitive and Archaic

[wilson2090]

As an IT professional myself, I am hoping that this will eventually reach to the eBay IT Department and/or the people in charge of User Experience at eBay.

First, a bit of background on myself as an eBay user. I am in my late 20's and buy and sell very infrequently on eBay for the most part. I mainly use to buy when I see a good deal posted on slickdeals for eBay, and then I use it to sell once in a blue moon when I need a little extra money and have something that I'm willing to get rid of. Over the probably decade that I've been on eBay, I only have a feedback score of 48, so obviously I haven't done nearly as much as a lot of users out there, but that is actually exactly why I feel the need to write this post.

So, most recently, I had an offer in my Inbox to list and sell within a certain time range, and then I would receive a $20 eBay coupon for my trouble. That, and I also wanted a little extra money to help me buy a really nice birthday present for my wife! So, I decided to list my translucent teal N64 with three controllers, 9 games, and a couple other accessories that had been lying around unused for several years. I put the item up for auction with a "Buy It Now" option for one week. In that time, several people viewed and watched it, but nobody bid. Then, on the last evening within the last couple of minutes, I had three bidders. I was quite happy! The winning bidder placed their singular bid within the last 5 seconds of the auction, so I assumed my money would be coming to me quickly and I would get my coupon soon too.

Unfortunately, they did not pay that evening, even though they were obviously online and could have stayed another 5 minutes to find out that they were the winning bidder, view the automatic invoice, and submit instant payment through PayPal. That was fine, though. The next morning, I reached out to them via eBay Message to let them know that if they got me payment by 3:00, I would be able to get their item to the post office to ship out that same day. They never messaged back, and I never received payment. The next day, I sent another message, this time with the "Send Invoice" option and told them to just let me know if they had any questions or were having problems getting the money together. I still heard nothing. The next day, slightly under 72 hours after the auction had closed, I began to get frustrated that I had not heard from them and was also worrying about getting my coupon as well as the gift for my wife. This was the first time in my decade of infrequent buying and selling that somebody actually didn't pay within the first 24 hours (and perhaps even first hour) of winning an item. So, admittedly, I was not sure exactly what to do next. I saw the "Second Chance Offer" option from my My eBay dashboard, and decided to explore that option. Since I had other bidders, the morning of the third day not hearing from the winning bidder, I reached out to him to let him know that if I did not hear from him by 3:00, I would offer the item to the second-highest bidder. 3:00 came and went, so I went through with my Second Chance Offer. Here is where the problems really started with my eBay user experience.

So, as someone that has used eBay before but is new to trying the "Second Chance Offer", here is how I expected it to work:

1. I click the "Second Chance Offer" link for the auction listing.

2. The options of bidders come up, I select one.

3. The contract of the listing purchasing rights shifts automatically from the original winner to the newly-selected bidder.

4. The "Second Chance Offer" bidder alone has the option to submit payment and purchase the item or not.

5. If they opt not to buy it, either the listing expires or a subsequent "Third Chance" person can be selected.

Again, that's how I EXPECTED it to work. Well, I sent one last message to the original winner letting them know that I was in fact offering the item to the second-highest bidder, and I apologized and wished them luck in finding a new listing with the item from someone else if they were indeed still interested. I then went through the "Second Chance Offer" assuming the above. Later that night, I received a payment confirmation email and thought everything was hunky dory.

The next morning, much to my dismay, I received an additional payment confirmation email on my way into work. I was planning to just confirm everything and ship out the item on my lunch break, but instead I immediately called eBay support to help me work through the problem. They briefly explained to me that the original transaction had not actually been cancelled and that my only option at this point was to cancel and refund one of the two transactions. I ended up opting to cancel the original winning bidder since he had rudely ignored my four messages to him up to that point and paid for the item even though I had verbally ended our buying contract. I then fulfilled the second-highest bidder. The eBay support lady took notes and said that I would be able to appeal any negative feedback that the cancelled buyer gave and get it revoked.

Well, she was wrong. The original winner FINALLY messaged me, and boy did he. He sent me three very rude messages and cursed at me. Seriously dude? I tried to contact you for three days after you didn't pay for the item even though you were online literally five seconds before you won the auction? I don't think so. Well, I called eBay support back to get the negative feedback removed that was accompanied by his rude messages that completely ignored his own ignorance and mistakes in this process, and instead they reviewed everything for 10-15 minutes and then came back and said that no, they could not remove the negative feedback. I sent the would-be buyer one more message and submitted a feedback change request to him, but he has ignored it thus far and can only assume it will rot. I replied to his negative comment directly in my feedback page, but it still just frustrates me that it's there in the first place.

Also, back to the coupon that I was hoping to get. It turns out that since I cancelled the original transaction with the original bidder that the subsequent "Second Chance Offer" itself counted as a COMPLETELY NEW LISTING! Are you serious?! That absolutely baffles me as a front-end user of the system. It obviously was the same item and was based on an amount of money offered on the original listing, so why does it not count itself as part of the same listing? Because it was counted as a completely separate listing, the listing start date was outside of the parameters of the coupon's terms and conditions, so I did not get my coupon either!!! There is NO reason for the "Second Chance Offer" not to count except for the eBay developers' design decisions on how to organize the data on the back end to track the time frame for the second offer's expiration from the first listing's duration. But again, I feel the coupon should be able to see and honor the first listing's active dates and base it on that as well as the Second Chance Offer's sell date. I called eBay support a THIRD time to request that this feedback be passed along to the eBay IT Department, but they just said there was no way for them to do so and pointed me to this Community. So, that is why I am posting it here.

Lastly, I want to review the official process for filing an official "Unpaid Item Ticket" and give some feedback on it as well. Here is how it goes as it stands:

1. After 48 hours from an auction ending and no payment being received, an "Unpaid Item Ticket" can be opened.

2. After the "Unpaid Item Ticket" has been open for four days, the item can be officially cancelled and the lack of payment goes on the buyer's record. The Seller then has the option to submit a "Second Chance Offer".

Here are my main problems with this:

1. As I described above, the "Second Chance Offer" counts as a COMPLETELY separate listing, which automatically disqualifies you from special time-sensitive Seller promotions and coupon offers.

2. Even if it didn't count as a separate listing, by the time you wait an entire WEEK, you may very well be outside of the Seller promotion's time frame for final payment to be made to complete the sale, even if the original listing ended within the listing time frame.

3. Perhaps most importantly, when you have to wait an entire WEEK to make a "Second Chance Offer", there is a very high chance that the second-highest bidder has already sought out another eBay listing of the same item and is no longer interested!

So, in general, I feel like eBay's policies for unpaid item cases are stuck in the 90's. In today's day and age, when the vast majority of people have smart phones that are capable of having dedicated apps such as the eBay app with push notifications and people are used to things happening instantly, there is absolutely no reason to have such long, drawn-out time frames for people to pay. A person has no excuse not to check one of their most likely several web-enabled devices and promptly respond to a notification that the listing they committed to buying has ended and provide payment in a much more timely fashion. Honestly, I think even 24 hours is probably too much to give someone to make a payment. Especially, it seems like the "Second Chance Offer" feature is completely useless when put at the end of a week-long waiting period of red tape.

I really hope somebody officially from eBay sees this and passes it along to the User Experience Team or IT/Development Team. If anyone else reads this and has had a similar experience and/or similarly finds this process incredibly un-intuitive and antiquated, please post and let me know! I really appreciate any feedback or assistance anyone is willing to provide!

[mysalonsavings]

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@3eyedfishcatcher wrote:

Look at it this way that is how your buyer saw the whole experience dealing with you. If a seller treated you like that would you not be upset. Learn from your mistakes and work on communicating with your buyers better. And going forward in almost all situations ebay will side with a buyer as they are spending the money. If buyers have bad experiences they go elsewhere. 

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Sorry but the buyers are not the only one spending the money. We as a seller spend a lot of money. Inventory, shipping supplies, fees, store cost. You cant sell it if you don't have it. It cost a lot to keep inventory going. Without it there is no Ebay buyers. Just sayin . . . 😉

[wilson2090]

Hello, 3eyedfishcatcher,

Although I appreciate the time you took to try and show me the error of my ways, unfortunately I still completely disagree with you. The honest truth is, I would not be upset if a seller treated me like this, because again, I wouldn't be in this situation as a buyer anyway. In my opinion, if you don't have the money on-hand to buy something, just don't buy it! Or go to QVC and get it with 6 easy payments or something like that. My whole premise for this problem is that we are living in an age where everything can be done instantly on the Internet, so expecting payment within a couple hours is reasonable and within a day is MORE than reasonable, in my opinion.

I can step back and see where it could be interpreted as pushy, especially if we were back in the 90's, but again, I see someone waiting three days to make a payment on an auction they won at the very last second as them being a jerk and being inconsiderate/rude towards me. And although I might have been annoying in all of my messages, I was being nothing but courteous in all of them even though I was super annoyed at their lack of response.

All of that being said, I will say that I have learned from my mistakes. I didn't realize that the unpaid auction process was like this, and honestly, I didn't think I'd ever have a problem with an unpaid auction just because I've usually had such good communication with buyers in the past. I'm probably just only going to do Fixed Price auctions from here on out. Again, the main reason I even posted here is because I didn't want anyone else to face the same frustrations in the future that I did. I was hoping that maybe somebody at eBay would see it and consider making some changes. It doesn't seem like that's happening, but at least I tried.

I do appreciate you adding to the conversation, though, and I hope you have a great weekend!

[divwido]

This is a part of the error of ebay's systems. The main post should always be how the site works.  How do an unpaid item, how to file for an item not received and on.

The bulk of the posts are a repeated pattern.  And I agree, ebay throws second chance offer at you, but doesn't tell you how to do it or what you have to do in order to make an offer.

These  are things that need to be addressed to the masses in a very visible way.

[wilson2090]

Hello, mysalonsavings,

A very good point, indeed! Yeah, that's why I keep referring to this whole problem I had as "my experience as a consumer". Typically, the consumer is the one buying something, but in this case, I was buying my experience of selling my item on eBay. I don't sell on eBay often, but every time I do, it makes me so very sad to see all of the PayPal and Final Value fees. It almost makes me not even want to list on eBay, but when I need some fast cash for a project or gift I want to buy or something, then it's still usually my best option. But yeah, it's very true: If there weren't sellers on eBay, then there would be nothing to buy!

[wilson2090]

Hello, divwido,

This is a huge part of what I saw as a problem! After I already made the mistake and couldn't go back from it, I ended up finding a good bit of documentation on how the process is supposed to work, plus what I found out from eBay support while I was trying to fix the mistake. The UI just did not warn me well enough, and the process itself was completely counter-intuitive from what I would expect as a novice seller that had not encountered this before. As I've said before, I myself will definitely not make this mistake again, because now I understand how it works. But my whole point is that there should be better warnings for people that don't know how it works, and/or if there are enough other people out there that think like I do and make these sorts of mistakes, perhaps the process itself needs to be changed.