This is what I call "Entitled Buyer Behaviour"

[sin-n-dex]

Probably more of a rant/complaint than anything else... I know the solution is to BBL these buyers, but there are specific reasons why I don't BBL some buyers even if their behaviour is a little annoying.

So I'm doing auctions, it's true that some people who win only 1 or 2 coins (and are shipping to Australia or South Korea) are trying to cash in on combined shipping and participate for a few weeks before making payment.

I have one buyer who is domestic who participates each week, wins a varying amount of items, wants each week's invoice to be separate and not combined with other weeks and takes all 30 days to make payment.

Said buyer tried to lure me into letting him slide with long payment times by trying to entice me with the possibility of a "bigger order" or "more sales", if I gave him lots of time to pay. I'm not greedy and I don't get enticed by offers of riches. I told him 7 days is long enough to pay, and he threw a fit like a small child.

I was told that I should be grateful he's bidding on my auctions and bringing prices up (because if he wins I get more than the second highest bidder, if he doesn't win he's pushed the price up), and how each sale is a blessing and he'd never tell a customer they only have 7 days to pay for their items when they are offering to participate in all sorts of auctions/buying, etc. I told him he had 7 days to pay because I'm tired of storing boxes of coins under my bed for weeks waiting for payment from some of these guys.

I do tolerate the longer time to pay from international buyers because most are winning very low value things and I get not wanting to pay $9.50 to ship a coin for 1.29, when you can pay 9.50 to ship 5 or 6 coins at once by winning a few auctions each week. They bid low, so that's why they don't win much. When I'm waiting for their payment, I'm waiting for about $12-15 in payments, which is not a big deal.

The domestic bidder bids on lots of stuff, wins lots of stuff, and in a give month I'm waiting on $500 in payments from this bidder which is much more significant than the international buyer who wins 2 or 3 coins in a month. That's another reason I want to be paid, like anyone, I could use the money.

I wanted to run a suggestion by this guy... if he always takes 30 days to pay, why doesn't he get caught up paying for his stuff for a month, and then start buying things and paying for them right away? If you always need exactly the same time to pay your bills, you can fix your problem by stopping shopping for a few weeks and getting caught up. That's how I get caught up when I buy too much stuff, I just abstain for a few weeks until I'm caught up and ready to buy again.

Anyway I don't always notice it's been 30 days and last month he went over the 30 days to pay, eBay wouldn't let him pay and gave him a non payment strike. I got a tirade about how ungrateful I must be to allow this to happen. Dude, it's not my responsibility to pay attention to you paying your bills on time. But I did learn eBay gives non-payers a strike after 30 days even if the seller doesn't cancel. So this is valuable info I've passed to my international customers to make sure they don't go beyond 30 days and can't pay.

Why I didn't block this guy... well I put up with all sorts of annoying behaviour and it makes a good story of the day to tell my friends at work about the crazy stuff that happens in the world of online selling. I make the frustration entertaining for onlookers to listen to.

I have some specific criterias in which I will block, and although this guy taking forever to pay is annoying, he hasn't met my block criteria of annoying me with too many messages, or some kind of scamming. He quietly bids on his stuff and then takes a long time to pay... it's annoying, but tolerable most of the time. But the entitled behaviour bugs me.

C.

[sugarnspice777]

I do auctions as well, and have it happen ALL THE TIME, but never have one wanting 30 days!  2 weeks is the usual.  

My pet peeve is when someone doesn't bother to tell you that they are waiting for the next auction to end.  I am old school about manners.  Just let me know!  Your guy just doesn't have ANY!!

Great story!  

[chevymontecarlo88]

That is insane and you have more patience than most. Maybe they are buying with the intentions to flip quickly but things are not moving for them? Sometimes its not worth the trouble to continue these relationships especially if your efforts are not appreciated.

[broto_64]

Dear Buyer,
It is my unfortunate duty to inform you of the following changes to have my policy align more with ebay's policy on specific matters:

Buyers must pay for the items they purchase on eBay within 4 calendar days.

If the buyer doesn't pay within this timeframe, the seller can cancel the order and an unpaid cancellation will be recorded on the buyer's account.

What is the policy?

When a buyer commits to buy something on eBay - by winning an auction, agreeing to an offer with a seller, or selecting Buy It Now in a listing - they are obligated to complete the purchase by sending full payment to the seller.

Before they commit to buy, buyers should note:

• All the terms that the seller has included in the listing, including shipping and handling costs
• Placing a bid on an auction is a commitment to buy, and bids can only be retracted under exceptional circumstances

Failure to pay for items is a violation of ebay's abusive buyer policy.
The full policy is available here:
https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/payment-policies/unpaid-item-policy?id=4271

Thank you for your understanding in these matters,
Seller.

[chapeau-noir]

This guy has hooked you and he knows it. He'll just keep pushing until you cut him off.

So it's down to how long do you want to put up with Mr. Princely Pants?

[sin-n-dex]

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@chevymontecarlo88 wrote:

That is insane and you have more patience than most. Maybe they are buying with the intentions to flip quickly but things are not moving for them? Sometimes its not worth the trouble to continue these relationships especially if your efforts are not appreciated.

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I suspect, based on what I know of things people do... he's buying my coins, and selling them to other people before he pays me for them. When he succeeds in selling a couple from the lot, he sends me my money.

This is a despicable practice, but he's not filing INAD/SNAD, reporting lost packages, or causing me other types of grief of the scammer type. Basically when he pays, I know I get to keep the money, so that's the important thing. As my business partner says "money's money, if he eventually pays, just deal with it".

C.

[chapeau-noir]

Some of that aggravation would be worth it, then - in fact, I would probably not even call it aggravation so much as 'doing business with this guy'. What would frost me is his crying about how heartless you are because HE didn't pay for his buys in time. If this guy is going to engage in retail arbitrage, he needs to understand that the risks are on him. Too much of that sniffling and I'd probably shut him down just because it always accelerates. If he shuts his mouth and just pays for what he buys then cool, his money spends just as well!

ETA: In other words, I'd have a short fuse for his yanking my chain.

[sin-n-dex]

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@broto_64 wrote:

Dear Buyer,
It is my unfortunate duty to inform you of the following changes to have my policy align more with ebay's policy on specific matters:

Buyers must pay for the items they purchase on eBay within 4 calendar days.

If the buyer doesn't pay within this timeframe, the seller can cancel the order and an unpaid cancellation will be recorded on the buyer's account.

What is the policy?

When a buyer commits to buy something on eBay - by winning an auction, agreeing to an offer with a seller, or selecting Buy It Now in a listing - they are obligated to complete the purchase by sending full payment to the seller.

Before they commit to buy, buyers should note:

• All the terms that the seller has included in the listing, including shipping and handling costs
• Placing a bid on an auction is a commitment to buy, and bids can only be retracted under exceptional circumstances

Failure to pay for items is a violation of ebay's abusive buyer policy.
The full policy is available here:
https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/payment-policies/unpaid-item-policy?id=4271

Thank you for your understanding in these matters,
Seller.

---

I actually wrote a similar email (but with my own store policies tolerating payments past 4 days). He wrote back "you obviously are sending this to all your buyers". Nope, just him. My other buyers message me after the auction is over to tell me they want to bid and is it OK to wait. Probably 3-4 buyers a week want to wait another week or two for more bidding, but they usually only won a coin or two and really cheap, so they're just trying to save postage. A few dollars here and there that I have to wait for is no big deal. The fewer packages I send out, the more profits for me because there's an imbalance between what my shipper charges me and what I charge the buyer (I can equalize this, but can't totally fix it if I want to compete with USA sellers).

C.

[sin-n-dex]

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@chapeau-noir wrote:

This guy has hooked you and he knows it. He'll just keep pushing until you cut him off.

So it's down to how long do you want to put up with Mr. Princely Pants?

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Until I go to Japan in October, and then auctions are over for good... unless of course we get more collections. The last one was a bunch of stamp albums (which will also be ending in October), and I intend to keep auctioning stamps, but coins haven't worked so well. It's only because we got the coins so cheap and some had unknown values that I decided to run auctions. Financially that wasn't the best way to make the most money possible on the collection, but it gives me room for new stuff.

C.

[chapeau-noir]

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@sin-n-dex wrote:

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@chapeau-noir wrote:

This guy has hooked you and he knows it. He'll just keep pushing until you cut him off.

So it's down to how long do you want to put up with Mr. Princely Pants?

---

Until I go to Japan in October, and then auctions are over for good... unless of course we get more collections. The last one was a bunch of stamp albums (which will also be ending in October), and I intend to keep auctioning stamps, but coins haven't worked so well. It's only because we got the coins so cheap and some had unknown values that I decided to run auctions. Financially that wasn't the best way to make the most money possible on the collection, but it gives me room for new stuff.

C.

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Believe it or not, I'm in that same boat with DVD players. I thought I was done with them. Nope, here are more DVD players. They do sell, but they're a pain in the dupa.

[sin-n-dex]

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@chapeau-noir wrote:

Some of that aggravation would be worth it, then - in fact, I would probably not even call it aggravation so much as 'doing business with this guy'. What would frost me is his crying about how heartless you are because HE didn't pay for his buys in time. If this guy is going to engage in retail arbitrage, he needs to understand that the risks are on him. Too much of that sniffling and I'd probably shut him down just because it always accelerates. If he shuts his mouth and just pays for what he buys then cool, his money spends just as well!

ETA: In other words, I'd have a short fuse for his yanking my chain.

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We had a chat after has last couple of outbursts where I told him I'd put up with his delayed payments so long as he's not requesting time beyond what eBay allows (the 30 days), I'm not responsible for making sure he pays within that time, he loses the coins if he doesn't pay. I won't give him an unpaid strike, but eBay will do that if he's past 30 days (they told me so when I inquired, another buyer got caught up with that by accident and I called to see if I could get the unpaid strike removed because I agreed to wait, I just didn't know it was only 30 days).

Provided this guy is no trouble, I'll let the payments slide, since I do for other people as well. The response I got was that he'd pay his invoices within 30 days, and to please invoice each week separately. So I've been doing that.

C.

[sin-n-dex]

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@chapeau-noir wrote:

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@sin-n-dex wrote:

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@chapeau-noir wrote:

This guy has hooked you and he knows it. He'll just keep pushing until you cut him off.

So it's down to how long do you want to put up with Mr. Princely Pants?

---

Until I go to Japan in October, and then auctions are over for good... unless of course we get more collections. The last one was a bunch of stamp albums (which will also be ending in October), and I intend to keep auctioning stamps, but coins haven't worked so well. It's only because we got the coins so cheap and some had unknown values that I decided to run auctions. Financially that wasn't the best way to make the most money possible on the collection, but it gives me room for new stuff.

C.

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Believe it or not, I'm in that same boat with DVD players. I thought I was done with them. Nope, here are more DVD players. They do sell, but they're a pain in the dupa.

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I keep thinking I'm done with very big collections and a new one pops up... first we had the trip to Saskatchewan to buy the huge stamp collection (which I'm still listing stuff from, I got this collection in September of last year).

Then the dealer in Southern Ontario that died and sold us his entire shop (or rather his family did). We got the inventory pretty cheap because there was a lot, and when there's lots of stuff, and much to do to process, we don't want to pay lots because we pay labour. After a year of the collection sitting in the basement, I inherited all the world coins as a new "project" to work on. So those auctions are going on from now until probably late Sept/early Oct.

Two weeks ago I got a huge stamp collection (from the family of the collector) and they have all these nice albums with lots of work done making the collection look nice. The shop doesn't want to take the time to photograph all this stuff, and they're not tech savvy with things like embedding photos in a listing, so they've given me the books to photograph and list. We're doing 6 books a week for the next 9 weeks, then that's done.

Seems as long as huge collections are coming in, they're going to be my project and I'll work on it for months. I don't even deal with ordinary stuff anymore because there's no time.

C.

[chapeau-noir]

Seems like that is good, though - you always have more and new inventory.

[sin-n-dex]

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@chapeau-noir wrote:

Seems like that is good, though - you always have more and new inventory.

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Problem is, I work full time and am paid too well to quit and stay here (regardless of how good my sales look to someone checking solds).

Coins and stamps is my biggest interest, I'd rather deal them and make money than collect them and spend money. I used to collect some 15-20 years ago, and I worked on my collection every day for hours, just like I work on my eBay store every day for hours...

Although if this was a full time gig, I'm not sure I'd be happy doing this all the time... I probably like it because it's just my evenings and weekends, but I have almost no social life as a result of running my eBay store. The most social that things get is friends coming over to work on their coins or other projects to socialize while I package coins for listing.

C.

[broto_64]

And it is because of buyers like yours that I stick to canned answers, don't get into conversations with buyers, and it's sad because it offers little in ways of true customer service but I've had quite enough of being jerked around... Give them an inch and they take a foot, I won't put up with it.