2 non payments in 2 days - what's up?

[maya-papaya]

I've been selling on Ebay for 24 years and never a non-payment. Now, I had 2 in 2 days, plus a potential third. One didn't want to pay tax and international shipping, one paid and then said he didn't have the money, and the third is ignoring invoices. What's going on?

[reallynicestamps]

After 96 hours and one second you can open an Unpaid Item Dispute and give the deadbeats a Strike.

They will not be able to leave feedback.

You can set up your Seller Preferences/Buyer Requirements to automatically Block any deadbeats with Strikes.

You can add any member to your Blocked Buyers List for any reason.

You can Block any country-- or even entire continents.

In passing, import fees (duty and taxes) are the total responsibility of the buyer /importer not the seller.

But your overseas buyer just doesn't know how to read listings if they think they will not be paying shipping or those government fees, no matter where they shop.

[dbfolks166mt]

     Unfortunately I have no explanation. It is a shame eBay discontinued the auto-pay function for auctions. The non-payment postings on this forum had really tapered off when it was active. I use the auction format almost exclusively and get an occasional non-payer I just take it as a part of doing business and using that format. Unlike BIN where you know the buyer is sitting at their terminal or on the app when they make the purchase with an auction a lot of things can happen between the time they place the bid and when the auction ends. 

     I will usually contact the bidder and ask them if there was a reason they did not pay. Sometimes I get a response and sometimes not. Several of the ones that have responded had valid reasons for not paying and ended up purchasing the item, and paying for it, when I relisted it. Those that did not respond I simply put on my BBL. 

     There are some oddities to your cases. For the international buyer they would have seen the shipping cost before they placed their bid so that should be no surprise. The taxes may have been a surprise but that potential possibility is always noted in the listing when the buyer is looking at it. The one that paid and then said they didn't have the money is really odd not really a non-payer did they ask you to cancel the order? For the third quit sending invoices every time you do that it resets the clock on the deadline for the buyer to pay. EBay is already reminding them. 

     You could always use BIN/IPR as opposed to auctions but that comes with tradeoffs. I would rather have a non-payer than to have to deal with a bogus NAD return request from a BIN/IPR sale.