Any compelling reason not to re-list an auction item if you dont' think the winner will pay?

[gurlcat]

Am I correct in thinking a seller gets no kind of demerit strikes for ending an auction after it has bids but before it ends?  And if so, is there any reason not to go ahead and re-list an item if you have a strong suspicion the first winner is not going to pay?   I'm saying if the second auction's end date is past the date that the first winner's time allowance will run out, so if your suspicion was wrong and they DO pay in their allotted time, then you can end the second run, so as not to wind up with two auction winners of the same item. 

To be clear, I don't LIKE the idea whatsoever.  I wouldn't like dashing any hopes that bidders in the second run might have of getting the item, and I realize if nothing else, they might remember my handle and not buy from me in the future.  Then again, I don't exactly like being in a situation where my sales have gotten so bad that I have shutoff notices and literally every day counts.  Until May of this year, slow payers and non-payers were just annoyances; now they're crises.   And I've never liked the fact that Ebay gives auction winners 5 days to pay, without so much as a deposit, communication, or anything else to inform the seller when they will pay, or if they'll pay at all.

Said it before, I'll say it again: if Ebay is "the online garage sale" well I don't know anyone running a garage sale who would set an item aside just because someone claimed they would pay more than anyone else, then turns around and walks away as if to go get their money, but doesn't come back FOR DAYS and the seller can't offer the item to anyone else while waiting.    




  

[nobody*s_perfect · Accepted solution]

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@gurlcat wrote:

Am I correct in thinking a seller gets no kind of demerit strikes for ending an auction after it has bids but before it ends?  ....    
 

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No, you are not. In order to discourage this activity, eBay will probably charge you a penalty fee equal to what the final value fee would have been.

https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/listings/creating-managing-listings/cancelling-listing?id=4146

[Anonymous]

Ending an auction with bids can subject you to FVF fees.

[aeparts1]

If you end an auction that has bids, I believe you have to pay the fee for what the auction was at when you ended it. 

If people not paying is a problem for you, go to Buy It Now, Immediate Payment Required. No more auctions.

If you want the potential for the addition $$$ auctions may bring, learn to live with people not paying as soon as the auction ends.

[terrycece62]

If I understood your post correctly

If the seller ends the listing early with bids there is NO winner the bids are all canceled and the listing ends 

Relisting the item is a NEW listing

[mam98031]

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@terrycece62 wrote:

If I understood your post correctly

If the seller ends the listing early with bids there is NO winner the bids are all canceled and the listing ends 

Relisting the item is a NEW listing

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That is true, but Ebay does not like this behavior from sellers, therefore Ebay will charge the seller the FVFs they would have paid on the highest bid on the item.  So it really isn't a good idea to do this.

[Anonymous]

IMO anyone who thinks it's ok to make a habit of cancelling bids and ending auctions should be listing as BIN only.

[mam98031]

How do you know the buyer isn't going to pay?  If you have your buyer requirements set to the strictest possible, if the buyer has 2 unpaid strikes in the past 12 months, then they wouldn't be able to bid or purchase your items at all.

It isn't just auctions that get 4 days to pay, it is all listing that do not have IPR.  If you don't like this practice, why not just run fixed price listings with IPR, that will solve the issue for you.

Cancellations for non payment are available to sellers on day 5, however it is important to remember that if a buyer purchases something from you at 12 PM on Monday, at 12:01 on Saturday you can file the Cancellation.  So you do not have to wait 5 days unless you chose to.  

[reallynicestamps]

If you cancel an active auction you will pay fees based on the high bid, because eBay assumes you took the sale off-eBay and that makes them grumpy.

You can cancel and Block any bidder you mistrust. There is no investigation into the reason.The buyer has no "punishment" when you do this.

 If the buyer is not paying, you can cancel the transaction after 96 hours and the deadbeat gets a Strike. Most sellers have set up an automatic Block against deadbeats with Strikes.

If you do not ship to a paying bidder, you will get a Defect on your selling account.

The easiest way to avoid non-paying bidders is to list as Fixed Price and use Immediate Payment Required.

The listing stays active for 30 days or until someone pays.

While Auctions only make up about 15% of listings, there are ten times as many deadbeats with Auctions than with FB listings,

[reallynicestamps]

Auctions are not a garage sales.

And in reality, auctions do "set aside" lots that are unpaid all the time.

I should point out that the auctions I am used to (before retirement we held auctions for over 30 years and DH is still president of an auction firm) were catalogued and online as well as accepting floor, agent, phone, fax, email, and live internet bids.

[gurlcat]

I would ask how long you would set aside items with no deposit or anything else the winners had to lose if they didn't pay (like ability to bid in future auctions?), but it's probably a moot point anyway, and I should have known better than writing that last paragraph.  All I meant was I don't find Ebay's risk-free 5-day time allowance reasonable.  But my post is really about what I can do to work around the policy, not whether others share my opinion on the policy.  Sorry if I was unclear there.  

[a_c_green]

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@terrycece62 wrote:

If the seller ends the listing early with bids there is NO winner the bids are all canceled and the listing ends 

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For an auction with bids, the seller has the option of ending it early either with all bids cancelled or with the current lead bidder as the winner. I have some recollection that you get one bid-cancellation ending per year without a penalty, but beyond that you can be dinged for the Final Value Fee of whatever the current price was when you cancelled everything and pulled the plug. Not a good place to be.

In addition, auctions get their most action within the last 60 seconds anyway. If you've already got bids, there is a very high likelihood that you may get even more bids at the very end. In my buying account, you won't see me in your auction until the last five seconds, when I will slam in my single, high bid and hope for the best. 😁

[mam98031]

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@gurlcat wrote:

I would ask how long you would set aside items with no deposit or anything else the winners had to lose if they didn't pay (like ability to bid in future auctions?), but it's probably a moot point anyway, and I should have known better than writing that last paragraph.  All I meant was I don't find Ebay's risk-free 5-day time allowance reasonable.  But my post is really about what I can do to work around the policy, not whether others share my opinion on the policy.  Sorry if I was unclear there.  

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You can't work around the policy of what will happen if you close an auction that has bids on it.

It is not a 5 day allowance for non paying bidders as I explained earlier unless the seller choose to wait 5 days.  A buyer has 4 days to pay.  If that buyer purchases something from you at noon on Monday and they don't pay by 12:01 PM on Saturday, you can file the cancellation for non payment.  Buyers are given 4 full days to pay.  So at the very beginning of day 5 a seller can cancel the transaction.

[gurlcat]

Thank you so much.  Looking at my payments history, I do see where I ended an item with bids a while back (for a totally different reason), and was assessed the FVF for the highest bid at the time I ended it.  Knowing the bid patterns of the kinds of items I opt to auction (as opposed to selling BIN, which I do 95% of the time), I think I know how to minimize the damages in the event that the slow-beat does pay, but it's very useful to be armed with this knowledge.  Thanks again!! 

[gurlcat]

I've never been able to think of a reason why 24 hours wouldn't be fair.  I get that a buyer might be asleep or at work or whatever when the auction ends, so they might not know they won for a few hours, but what with notifications on multiple devices and the easy few-clicks of paying for things online, there's no excuse.   In the event of some unforeseen financial problem, there is still the ability to write to the seller and explain the situation.  I wouldn't let the sun rise and fall one time after winning an auction, without either paying or communicating.