Buyers with 2+ Unpaid Item Strikes Still Make Best Offer?

[snow-bears]

Someone sent me an offer and I accepted it. Despite having “Require immediate payment for Best Offers” set in my selling preferences, I did not get paid. I checked this person’s feedback and they have a lot of negative buyer feedback (positive feedback with negative comments) from the last 12 months indicating they are a regular deadbeat buyer.

I have my settings set to ban buyers with 2+ unpaid item strikes. Someone with this much negative feedback must surely have more than 2 strikes, yet they were able to make an offer on my item. Does the “Best Offer” feature bypass seller preferences???

I still like using the Best Offer feature (though why is eBay taking SO LONG to require immediate payment for Best Offer?!), but if is letting deadbeats slide right past the pitiful protections I have as a seller, then it really is a useless feature.

[coffeebean832]

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@snow-bears wrote:

Despite having “Require immediate payment for Best Offers” set in my selling preferences, I did not get paid.

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That feature is currently active on a small number of buyer accounts- people that are part of a pilot program. Sellers can adjust that setting- but it will only go into effect if the buyer is part of the test. eBay hasn't expanded it site-wide yet.

[albertabrightalberta]

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@snow-bears wrote:

Someone sent me an offer and I accepted it. Despite having “Require immediate payment for Best Offers” set in my selling preferences, I did not get paid. I checked this person’s feedback and they have a lot of negative buyer feedback (positive feedback with negative comments) from the last 12 months indicating they are a regular deadbeat buyer.

I have my settings set to ban buyers with 2+ unpaid item strikes. Someone with this much negative feedback must surely have more than 2 strikes, yet they were able to make an offer on my item. Does the “Best Offer” feature bypass seller preferences???

I still like using the Best Offer feature (though why is eBay taking SO LONG to require immediate payment for Best Offer?!), but if is letting deadbeats slide right past the pitiful protections I have as a seller, then it really is a useless feature.

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AFAIK, you can't have “Require immediate payment for Best Offers” set in my selling preferences. You can state it in the listing's description but there's no way to enforce it.

For all those sellers who left contradictory feedback for the buyer, not only did they commit feedback violations but it seems like they didn't give the buyer strikes. 

As for your case, you should have done what I do when I get an offer (and one of the reasons why I like best offers). 

Before accepting an offer, I give a quick look at the buyer's feedback and a longer look at the feedback the buyer leaves for others. In this case, that quick look at the feedback received would have disclosed the non-payment habits and I would have blocked the offerer and either declined or ignored the offer.

[albertabrightalberta]

Correction: If part of the b.o./ipr pilot, apparently you can have that setting. 

I stand corrected. The rest of my post stands.

[snow-bears]

Yes… hence my complaint that eBay is taking too long to implement this feature.

[ittybitnot]

Despite having “Require immediate payment for Best Offers” set in my selling preferences, I did not get paid

@snow-bears 

The setting is there apparently for when the program goes site wide.  It doesn't seem to  do anything now.  The eBay employee sandhya@ebay that was providing information on the state of this program has not been back to clarify. 

[snow-bears · Accepted solution]

So I asked eBay directly and they told me as long as a buyer appeals an unpaid item strike, it doesn’t count against them.

so… judging from eBay overly friendly-to-buyers-only policies, I’m guessing any buyer can probably easily have their strikes removed just by asking for it. Otherwise this person would clearly have had at least 5+ strikes based on their feedback, and never been allowed to buy from me

[kensgiftshop]

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@snow-bears wrote:

I have my settings set to ban buyers with 2+ unpaid item strikes. Someone with this much negative feedback must surely have more than 2 strikes,

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They probably would have if the sellers had opened UPIs and canceled the orders for no payment.

Instead the sellers make themselves look bad by violating the feedback policy.

[sandhya@ebay]

@ittybitnot @snow-bears The test is still running. 

The setting "Require immediate payment for Best Offers” is available for all sellers and is functional but this requirement is only applicable for the buyers who fall into the test.  So what this means is, you have a buyer A who is in test group, then because of the setting "Require immediate payment for Best Offers" the buyer A will be charged immediately when the offer is accepted.  Now let's take an example where buyer B does not fall into the test group. When this buyer B makes an offer on your item the setting "Require immediate payment for Best Offers" does not apply and the buyer B needs to come back and pay for the offer when accepted.

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@ittybitnot wrote:

Despite having “Require immediate payment for Best Offers” set in my selling preferences, I did not get paid

@snow-bears 

The setting is there apparently for when the program goes site wide.  It doesn't seem to  do anything now.  The eBay employee sandhya@ebay that was providing information on the state of this program has not been back to clarify. 

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[johnrj1226]

1.  A buyer will only receive positive FB as seller can receive positive, neutral or negative.  Some member  are both a buyer and a seller.  You can see the number of FB as a buyer or seller and FB left for others on the member profile page.

2.  The number of  unpaid strikes a member has  is not visible to other members.  Surely you can't make an assumption  based  on  a guess.  Many sellers  did  open & close an unpaid  items case properly in the past,  present and probably won't in the future -  it is even more simple to do so today.  When  it is not done correctly and timely  nothing is recorded on their profile.

[johnrj1226]

One more thing.  A seller can leave a negative comment in the positive  FB comment box for the  buyer - but that is against eBay policy and the FB and comment can be removed.

[soh.maryl]

Someone may misunderstand your statement.

Wouldn't it have been better to state that sellers are not ever allowed to leave negative FB for buyers, even if it's worded positively? And that the buyer can get the wording removed, the positive greendot will remain and that seller will receive a defect for having violated policy? 

[downunder-61]

I have my settings set to ban buyers with 2+ unpaid item strikes. Someone with this much negative feedback must surely have more than 2 strikes, yet they were able to make an offer on my item.

And there is the problem, if all those idiot sellers that decided to leave false positives had cancelled as Buyer did not pay - then you would not have had this issue. This sort of seller really annoys me for that reason.

So I asked eBay directly and they told me as long as a buyer appeals an unpaid item strike, it doesn’t count against them.

That is totally false information.

[ittybitnot]

sandhya@ebay 

Thank you so much!  

[snow-bears]

It is not false information, because that’s exactly what happened in this sitation. I asked eBay to look up my buyer and see how many strikes they had. She told me that the reason he was able to bid on my item is that he had appealed his strikes, so they didn’t count anymore - hence he was able to buy my item.