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.    




  

[reallynicestamps]

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?)

 Not only our auctions, but philately is a handshake business, and unknown bidders on high value material would be vetted by a few polite calls to colleagues who sold similar material and who might know the bidder. Deadbeats soon find themselves unable to bid in any auctions.

Generally though, from five to 14 days, although most bidders had left us with a  credit card number.

And, buyers would not be asked to pay until an expert certificate had been obtained if that was part of the deal, although usually the item already had a certificate or the auction house had agreed one would have to be obtained. Getting a certificate can easily take six months.
Fun fact, the usual terms for expertising are that the buyer pays for the certificate if it is good, and the seller/auction house pays for it if it is bad.

[gurlcat]

That sound so fabulous. 
Certainly a far cry from having an ebay shopper (I don't call people who don't pay "buyers") write to ask if you'll remove their non-payer restriction so they can bid on your item .... you check their feedback and they have only a few, none in the past six months, and have left only one for a seller (negative, petty, looks like a failed scam) .....  so you ignore the request .... then the auction closes and the winner is an account created that same day ..... and there's no seller preference to prevent that, no vetting, no handshake, no telling who or where this person is ..... and you just wait, knowing that if they don't pay, all you'll be able to do is report them and at very worst they won't be able to use this brand new account again, as if that means anything, because they can just keep creating new ones.   

[mam98031]

"... write to ask if you'll remove their non-payer restriction so they can bid on your item..."  Sellers can't do this, only Ebay can.  However a seller could change their Buyer Requirements so that this buyer could purchase.  

[a_c_green]

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@mam98031 wrote:

"... write to ask if you'll remove their non-payer restriction so they can bid on your item..."  Sellers can't do this, only Ebay can.  However a seller could change their Buyer Requirements so that this buyer could purchase.  

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You can certainly change your Buyer Requirements to allow that, although you're then lowering the bar for all. 

There used to be a Buyer Requirements Exemption List that would allow you to waive blocks on a specific user ID, sort of like the BBL in reverse, but eBay seems to have quietly eliminated that. (The link to where it used to be is http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?BidderPermitLogin, but that now times out without going anywhere.) There is a similar exemption list for buyers who want more time to pay (here), but as far as I know, that only acts on users who have already completed a sale.

[mam98031]

Yes @a_c_green , I said that, but thank you.

[gurlcat]

I just tried your link there and no it doesn't work, but you can still add buyers to your exemption list here:

[a_c_green]

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@gurlcat wrote:

I just tried your link there and no it doesn't work, but you can still add buyers to your exemption list here:

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Yes, that's it! eBay changed the URL for it; I had the old link stored in my bookmarks. https://www.ebay.com/bmgt/ExemptBuyers is the new one. Thanks.

[gurlcat]

No problem!  BTW the reason I knew where to find that was I just exempted someone by their request recently, because they had an 'emergency' excuse for why they didn't pay for a couple auctions back in December (could be made up but the effort to make it up and write in full sentences is a thousand times better than most of these request messages), also they had great feedback by/for others.  

Contrary to how reactions to this post make me sound, I LOVE 99.9% of buyers, and I think I have a pretty grounded view on Ebay.  It has it's flaws but you'll never see me making hyperbolic posts about how they've gone down the toilet and I'm done with them or whatever.  That said, I'm also a disabled single mom so I don't have a lot of income options, my kid and I live on the knife's edge (right now more than ever) and if I have to ruffle a feather now and then to survive, I won't apologize for it.  It's not like I'm selling insulin or kidneys by the way, just used junk that nobody actually needs, so if I do something like end an auction early once in a blue moon, pretty sure it will have no real impact on anyone.