Winning bidders not paying

[lestdog]

I know I’m barking in the wind but it’s becoming more and more common that winning bidders are just choosing not to pay. I just canceled an order after the winner said he couldn’t pay… I’ve had to do this several times in the past and I have an unpaid item currently posted. From experience if the bidder doesn’t pay within 2 days it’s highly unlikely they ever will. I wish we could go back to the day when we could leave negative feedback in both directions. 

[mom-5641]

That was the biggest disappointment for me as a seller when ebay did that with the feedback.  They are making everything easy for a "buyer" and more expensive and difficult for the seller.  So unfair.  Remember ebay, you wouldn't be the giant you are without all us smuck sellers!!!!

[ckimodog]

You may just want to use the Buy it now option...that way they pay.  I never understood the negative feedback thing with buyers.  I too have a few customers from hell.  But it's their call and their playing field.  Have a good weekend. 

[eleanor*rigby]

Other than "payback" or getting the last word, or enjoying schadenfreude, what possible good does leaving negative feedback do? 

If a member doesn't pay, just use the unpaid item cancellation feature. It gives the member a strike on his/her account, and two such strikes will bar that member from bidding on items or buying from sellers who have their buyer restrictions set at two strikes in twelve months (the most restrictive).

That'll do you and other sellers a heck of a lot more good than leaving negative feedback.

[bergenline]

This has happened to me in as many weeks.  Ray Charles could see that eBay would never support a negative rating system whereby sellers could leave negative feedback about buyers.  On the other hand, positive feedback may be deceiving. One buyer had great positive feedback - and yet the sale was canceled due to his not paying me. 

The inability to leave negative feedback has meant that now I have to block certain buyer(s) from bidding on my merchandise. After that I move on....

[d-k_treasures]

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@eleanor*rigby wrote:

Other than "payback" or getting the last word, or enjoying schadenfreude, what possible good does leaving negative feedback do? 

If a member doesn't pay, just use the unpaid item cancellation feature. It gives the member a strike on his/her account, and two such strikes will bar that member from bidding on items or buying from sellers who have their buyer restrictions set at two strikes in twelve months (the most restrictive).

That'll do you and other sellers a heck of a lot more good than leaving negative feedback.

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Exactly!

But I wish they would remove the 'leave honest feedback' from the leave feedback for a buyer page, since sometimes you can't.

[dbfolks166mt]

     I have had my share of UPI issues over the years but have learned after a couple of sobering experiences not to jump to the wrong assumption about the buyer. While the majority of the non paying buyers are doing so out of malice or as part of an attempted scam of some type there is the other side of the coin. Since an auction can run for xx days and depending on when the buyer placed their bit a lot of things could have happened 

     If the bid was place just prior to the auction ending and they do not pay these are the buyers I have little need for and who wind up on my BBL. However, I have had multiple instances, not a huge number, where the buyer placed a bid early in the auction and won but never paid and never responded to messages. Closed the UPI case out and relisted the item. In one case the buyer contacted me almost a month later and apologized sincerely for not paying for the item but he had gotten side tracked by the death of his sister. He asked if I still had the item and I provided him with the listing number, he wound up winning the auction again but this time immediately paid. I had another buyer who after placing the bid ended up in the hospital for two weeks, again sincere apologies when he did finally contact me but unfortunately by that time the item had sold to another buyer. In both cases I contacted eBay and explained the situation and they removed the strikes against the buyer. 

[buyselljack2016]

Distressing when a buyer does not pay, or asks to cancel, but there is no place that I make purchases other than eBay where there is "feedback" for a buyer.  ebay buyer feedback is meaningless nonsense.

To add..................  I have in the past made purchases "online" and then cancelled my purchase.  I have not been penalized publicly for doing it. 

[a_c_green]

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@lestdog wrote:

I know I’m barking in the wind but it’s becoming more and more common that winning bidders are just choosing not to pay. I just canceled an order after the winner said he couldn’t pay… I’ve had to do this several times in the past and I have an unpaid item currently posted. From experience if the bidder doesn’t pay within 2 days it’s highly unlikely they ever will. I wish we could go back to the day when we could leave negative feedback in both directions. 

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You're listing big-ticket mass-market items at auction, and your lead bidders in the completed listings of yours that I looked at have histories of spraying bids across multiple auctions in those categories. What I think may be more likely happening here is that they're bidding in multiple auctions, buying the ones that they won for the lowest price, and ignoring the others. 

If you selling an item with a commonly known retail value such as (in this case) an iPhone, I would strongly recommend listing it as Fixed Price with no Make Offer button, and setting the Immediate Payment Required option. That way no one can snatch your item off the market without paying you for it first. I notice you have some BuyItNow sales, so it looks like you know a good price point listing. Set the others up that way, make sure to have the IPR checkbox filled on the listing form, and the nonpayment problems will disappear.

There is definitely a place for auctions here, but auctions are better used for vintage, rare or one-of-a-kind items where there's not likely to be one clear average price, and you would not want to leave money on the table. I use a mix of auctions for my rare vintage items and Fixed Price for my replacement parts.

[bimm_corp · Accepted solution]

@eleanor*rigby 

>Other than "payback" or getting the last word, or enjoying schadenfreude, what possible good does leaving negative feedback do?

It served to alert sellers about deadbeat bidders/dishonest buyers. Back when  sellers were still able to leave negs for buyers, I would often add the bad buyer to my blacklist as a way to protect myself from ever having to deal with them. Word got around quickly if a buyer received lots of negs from sellers. Used to work just fine.

[lestdog]

Thank you for this! Yes, again tonight my iPhone sold and I can see in the buyers feedback that sellers are complaining this individual is known for not paying. So I expect once again to not get paid. You’re right, I’ll just post it as a buy now option.. or just leave eBay completely. Not sure what the point of it is anymore. 

[soh.maryl]

This information is merely tangential to your question; however, just wanted to warn you that, if you are seeing buyer feedback where the seller complained that the buyer did not pay, that FB should have been removed at the request of the buyer and the seller would have then had a defect.  We are never allowed to leave negative FB for buyers and that includes positive FB with negative wording.  

[liawrig.nq8rdwqa3]

It's not "more and more common" it's always been common.  Because bidders know they can wait until Payday to pay the auction.  Payday may be 3-4 days away from the bid win.  I get the same thing.  However, if you go to other alternative sites like Poshmark, when you accept an "offer" as a buyer, Posh automatically charges the credit card.  With EB, even when you accept offers or have a winning bidder, you have to WAIT for payment.  It goes against Ebay's $$ earnings, doesn't it?  The longer we have to wait, the longer EB is not collecting money.  It's 2021 and EB is still acting like the site built in 2000.

[a_c_green]

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@lestdog wrote:

Thank you for this! Yes, again tonight my iPhone sold and I can see in the buyers feedback that sellers are complaining this individual is known for not paying. So I expect once again to not get paid. You’re right, I’ll just post it as a buy now option.. or just leave eBay completely.

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Good luck with your latest buyer... If you plan to relist as you described above, you will need to change the listing type from auction to Fixed Price.

BuyItNow is an option when running an auction, but (in most categories) the BIN price goes away when bids are received. A Fixed Price listing stays where it is until someone buys it. Use the Immediate Payment Required checkbox option so that the buyer has to pay you before the item is off the market to others. Do not use Make Offer as you cannot enforce payment even after accepting a buyer's offer.

[bimm_corp]

@lestdog 

> I just canceled an order after the winner said he couldn’t pay

It might be a good idea to NOT cancel an NPB order. if you do so, the deadbeat bidder/buyer does not receive a UPI strike.

I'm dealing with one of those now. Had a $70 bid on an item all week long. Then this guy bids $71 six hours before auction close. As soon as the auction ends, he sends a request for cancellation. No way. I declined the cancel request. Will wait it out until eBay does the cancel at the end of four days and the buyer will get a UPI strike. I've quite had it with these "sports bidders" playing games. Too many NPBs are trying to wiggle out of a UPI strike by requesting a cancellation.

I would imagine there are many honest sellers who feel that giving a cancel under such circumstances is just being fair and accommodating to buyers. Nonsense. All it does is set the NPBs free to do more of the same to other sellers. More sellers need to start using the shrinking protections we still have left on eBay.

BTW, when sellers let the eBay UPI process complete and the deadbeat gets a UPI strike, they can't leave a neg and any they may have already left get removed.