mam98031 • Volunteer Community Member • Buyer/Seller since 1999
@willowsbow wrote:Yeah the invoice thing was confusing to me. I thought I had to send one as a "reminder". I now know differently. The system still allowed me to report the user for non payment.
I have rarely had an actual non paying bidder. Once or twice and they each messaged me asking if I could cancel their bid. I have more jerks like the user I mentioned. The ones who self gratify by bidding things up with no intention of buying. I usually see it coming when I look at their info but I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. We all started out with low FB numbers and not knowing how to bid.
Yes if the buyer doesn't pay you can file for a Cancellation using the reason, buyer did not pay. We can do that 96 hours after the purchase if the payment doesn't arrive.
However if you send a buyer an invoice, the clock restarts and you will have to wait another 96 hours from the time you sent the invoice before you can file for the cancellation.
Keep in mind that Ebay sends the buyer reminders to pay, so there really is no need for you to do it and you are only prolonging the transaction unnecessarily. I would advise you not to send invoices at all and just cancel the transaction after 96 hours.
Also make sure you have your Buyer Requirements set to the strictest rule possible for non paying buyers. And that is 2 unpaid cancellation in the past 12 months. All sellers should have this set. Then repeat offenders get a notice on their screen when trying to bid or purchase from these sellers that they can't buy from that seller.
@willowsbow wrote:A combination of things: low feedback scores. Bidding very early in the auction. I don't mean just placing an initial bid but bidding the item up to a high dollar amount right away. In all fairness it could just be that the user doesn't understand the best bidding practices, but that has not been my experience. In my experience auctions don't get a lot of bids until the final day if not hours. The feedback they do have will always be past 90 days. They have usually not left feedback for others. Idk....just when I look at the users pattern or lack there of, something tells me they aren't going to pay and I haven't been wrong yet.
We NEED Ebay to draw in more buyers. It is what will enable all of us to survive in the future. Without new buyers we will get stagnate and can't grow. To ASSUME a low FB buyer is a bad buyer is bad business. We all start somewhere. The vast majority of buyers are great people.
Some people like to bid early in an auction. Sometimes it is just because it show on their list that they are bidding on it, sometimes it is because they get email reminders when they are outbid, and any multitude of things that help a buyer keep the auction active in their minds and not just forget about it.
A single buyer can't bid up a listing to high prices, there has to be someone they are bidding against as they can't bid against themselves.
Not all buyers purchase stuff on Ebay weekly or even monthly. It depends on the needs of that particular buyers. Assuming they are problematic because they only buy a few items every few months seems a bit odd to me.
The vast majority of buyer do not leave feedback for sellers at all. Speaking for myself, less than 25% of my buyers leave feedback. The fact a buyer doesn't leave feedback is NOT an indicator of a problematic buyer at all. In fact it is likely the opposite.
Should a buyer use these same points to evaluate if they want to risk buying from any given seller? Could you pass all those points? If you can't, does that mean you are a bad seller?
