Usually I tend to sell games on Craigslist and have had a lot of luck with it. Unfortunately when it comes to obscure and rare items, people either low ball or have no interest at all in them. So earlier this year I decided to take the plunge and started selling a couple things on Ebay. My first and 3rd auction went great but 2nd one ended up turning into an unpayed item case. The buyer asked for 3 days to pay right after putting in a last minute bid. I wasn’t happy with the situation but I agreed. Needless to say, he never ended up paying and I opened the case. I made a second chance offer but the bidder said that they had already ended up doing a buy it now on the same item. I ended up relisting it and it sold. I just decided a week ago to sell a few more items and I am now having the same problem with a buyer not paying and having no communication with me. In short, I’m just wondering if this is normal with sales on ebay or am I just having some weird bad luck?

I also have a problem with a buyer who bought an item using the Buy It Now option. After he bought it, I received in like 20/30 minutes a message that his child purchased it accidently when playing on his phone… Yeah well, I don’t believe that shit. I messaged him that he still needed to pay, but he didn’t paid automatically. So I just sent an invoice and if he ignores this sign, I will just open an unpaid item case.. Though I’m a curious what the chances are of paying when I will open a case.

Not only have I had those same issues, but on normal auctions style listings, especially for rare items, I often see people that will bid extra high just too see what the high bidder’s max bid is, then they will retract their ridiculously high bid claiming – “Whoops! My kid did that!”

It’s just another B.S. tactic people use to work the system and Ebay does nothing to protect the sellers in those cases.

I just dont get it! Why bid on an item if you dont have the funds available at that time? 1/3 of my auctions so far have been an unpayed item. Now this is the 2nd time that I have been forced to relist an item because the 2nd highest bidder has no interest. Ebay needs to tighten their policy on this and get rid of these people. To make matters worse, I cant even leave negative feedback on them to warn other buyers! SMH…

I’ve come across this as well. It’s usually easy to tell if it’s a shill bidder (ie having 0 feedback and no communication). For those cases, I’ve just opened an ebay case so I didn’t have to pay fees and relist it.

Recently I’ve grown accustomed to using “Immediate Payment Required” on my buy it now items and haven’t had any issues since.

Regarding fees, eBay should be referred to as ePay.

Other than fees, do you have preference to list using auction versus buy it now?

[Dave_]

This used to happen with me a lot, but I found adding some buying requirements helped.

To select buyer requirements for all your listings:

Go to My eBay.

Click the Account tab, and then click Site preferences on the left.

In the Selling preferences section, scroll to Buyer requirements, and click Show.

Click Edit.

On the Buyer requirements page, select your requirements.

Click Submit to save your requirements.

My requirements are currently set to block anyone that:
-Have received 2 unpaid item(s) recorded on their account within 1 month(s)
-Have a primary delivery address in a location I don’t post to
-Have a Feedback score of -1 or lower {EDIT: this isn’t actually possible any more now they don’t let sellers leave negative feedback}
-Have a Feedback score of 5 or lower and no credit card on file

On the preferences page there is also a link to a blocked bidder page, where you can add people to stop them bidding/buying on any of your future listings.

• This reply was modified 10 years, 2 months ago by Dave_.

Dave_ wrote:
This used to happen with me a lot, but I found adding some buying requirements helped.

To select buyer requirements for all your listings:

Go to My eBay.

Click the Account tab, and then click Site preferences on the left.

In the Selling preferences section, scroll to Buyer requirements, and click Show.

Click Edit.

On the Buyer requirements page, select your requirements.

Click Submit to save your requirements.

My requirements are currently set to block anyone that:
-Have received 2 unpaid item(s) recorded on their account within 1 month(s)
-Have a primary delivery address in a location I don’t post to
-Have a Feedback score of -1 or lower {EDIT: this isn’t actually possible any more now they don’t let sellers leave negative feedback}
-Have a Feedback score of 5 or lower and no credit card on file

On the preferences page there is also a link to a blocked bidder page, where you can add people to stop them bidding/buying on any of your future listings.

Great advice, as I have been using these measures for awhile now. I’ve been selling on Ebay for at least 10 years, and sadly, there is now way to completely remove these bogus buyers. Ebay is so pro buyer, that now doing business there has become a job in it’s own right.

I haven’t had the “kid” excuse in awhile, but I get deadbeats all the time. As stated above, I add any troubled buyers to my blocked bidders list, and as a point of reference, I have almost 100 users on my list thus far.

You can also offer “no returns”, and this will stop some of the non payers as well. If someone buys something, and you offer returns, it’s pretty much the same as them not paying, as they could pay and return the item anyway, so it’s a non starter.

Now, when you offer no returns, that really doesn’t work either, as Ebay will allow ANYONE the option to return any item as long as they complain. So it’s really dumb of them to even offer the option, but it will give pause to some of those who play fast and loose with the system.

Since Ebay has taken away any power from the sellers, we will all continue to get such situations on a regular basis. I under stand “the customer is always right” mentality, but Ebay really takes it to extremes, and does it so badly, that it also hurts revenue from sellers. As many new users like those here, will decide not to use this service due to the issues and headaches of it all.

So at the end of the day, they keep a few lame customers happy, at the cost of really good sellers who could potentially make them way more money than these deadbeats ever could.

jumpman wrote:
So at the end of the day, they keep a few lame customers happy, at the cost of really good sellers who could potentially make them way more money than these deadbeats ever could.

I can understand that ebay became frustrating for sellers, especially when customers don’t feel obliged to pay anymore. I have never sold anything on ebay. However, I have bought quite some stuff and made many many bad experiences with sellers. Some of the would send broken stuff, wrong items, not ship on time or ship without tracking even though I especially paid for it to only name a few. On top sellers would often be very aggressive or not respond at all when I would contact them because of issues (in a very polite way).

After one special case where a seller threatened to file a fraud case against me because I dared to ask when they shipped my item (Teleroboxer, first VB game I bought, 15€) I swore myself to never ever use ebay again.

All of the changes made to make ebay more customer friendly have given my a bit of trust back. I’m not trying to protect buyers that don’t play by the rules. However, right now I rather pay more if I don’t have to bother with ebay.

[RunnerPack]

I just listed something (shameless plug! ;-)), so I’ll soon have another data point to add to this discussion.

@Dave_: Thanks for mentioning that buyer requirements thing!

(Note about the item: it says I only ship to USA, but if any overseas member here wants it, I’ll gladly ship it to you; just contact me through eBay, PVB, or email to make arrangements.)

• This reply was modified 10 years, 2 months ago by RunnerPack.

I’m about to start listing over a hundred items (Japanese Virtual Boy and NES stuff). Hopefully this time I have better results.

If you do, offer international shipping WITHOUT the international shipping program of eBay. That sucks…

HoMenace wrote:
I’m about to start listing over a hundred items (Japanese Virtual Boy and NES stuff). Hopefully this time I have better results.

I hope yours all go well (and earn a lot!), HoMenace. Mine went swimmingly. I haven’t even had any communication with my buyer, and it’s already been delivered (presumably intact). Of course, being a new seller, I’m still waiting on my money, but that’s to be expected of a faceless, heartless, self-serving corporation like eBay/PayPal 😉

Marioguy wrote:
If you do, offer international shipping WITHOUT the international shipping program of eBay. That sucks…

Yes thats correct
dont offer international shipping program thats really a no go for buyers here in europe
they claiming to much tax and 90% off the delivers here still need to pay tax again

Me myself have had this 2 times and now i never buy again from sellers that using this program.