Buyers with Unpaid Items

[morgonfika]

I'm new to selling on Ebay and I've just had to open my first Unpaid Item case. 

Been reading through some of your posts, it seems that some of you have encountered many of these unpaid item cases. I don't understand how this happens. The buyers who do not pay for the items have regular accounts just like you and I. They have positive feedback from other sellers. They are attached to real names and real addresses. They are not new accounts either. Are these real people who go out of their way to hurt someone's business?

[*tippy*toes*]

Some people make a habit of it, for example, they might bid on 10 identical things hoping to win one, then win all 10. They'll pay for the cheapest one and ignore the rest. Others buy and then change their mind and think by ignoring it it will go away, instead of contacting the seller saying, hey, sorry, but I've changed my mind. Others have life happen, like a sudden admission to hospital, or they or someone they love dies. There are many reasons.

While it's quite unfortunate, you have to remember that 98% of buyers are great. The best way to stop serial non payers is to have buyer requirement blocks set up, which you can do here http://offer.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?BuyerBlockPreferences

The tightest settings are:

Buyers with unpaid strikes - 2 in 12 months

Buyers in a location I don't post to - tick

Buyers with policy violations - 4 in 6 months

Buyers with negative feedback score - you can tick that if you like, but buyers can't get negative feedback so their feedback won't ever be below zero, unless they are a seller with a bad track record.

Buyers who may bid on several of my items and not pay for them - optional. You're not going to know until they buy!

Buyers who haven't gone through phone verification - tick both boxes and select which feedback score you like. It helps weed out scammers if you sell high risk items and it also prevents guest buyers from buying.

Apply to all current and future listings - tick

Don't allow blocked buyers to contact me - tick (although they can still contact you if it's within 60 days of a transaction).

Assuming your buyer doesn't pay, make sure you close the dispute 4 days (and not second earlier) after opening. That will issue them a strike. If they get another strike in the next 12 months they will be prevented from buying from sellers who have the above blocks in place.

Don't be tempted to leave feedback for the non payer. Some will leave feedback saying they are a non payer. It achieves nothing. You can only give a positive dot, so why add to it? it doesn't stop them buying because if they hit the buy it now button or bid in the last few seconds, there is no way to check their feedback prior to buying. It's also a policy violation and if the buyer reports you, the negative message will be removed, the positive dot will stay and you'll get a violation on your account.

Good luck with it all. If you're new to selling, pop in here when you have a question or are unsure of something. There are plenty of experienced members who are more than happy to help out a new seller.

[jellybirddesigns]

I never have auctions - all my items are set at a price I am happy to accept.

If you set up a Buy It Now (BIN) listing, there is an option box in the setup to make buyers pay immediately.

This way you'll avoid all the non-payers.

Good luck

[morgonfika]

Thank you all for your recommendations and suggestions! 

I do wonder if it really was the account owner doing the buying and bidding...

[justkidzbiz]

Generally it is the actual account owner, who either decide they no longer want it and don't have the courtesy to let you know. Since eBay changed the feedback policy so that sellers cannot leave negs, I now get on average 3-4 a month! And yes it's frustrating particularly when you have to 8 days after opening a dispute before relisting, which in most cases other interested buyers have bought elsewhere and using the second chance offers are therefore useless.

just make sure you have your blocks in place and add any NPBs to your blocked list.

[springyzone]

They are real people alright and they may have dozens or even hundreds of positive dots. That's because no seller can give them anything except a positive. Negative feedback for buyers has not been possible now for years.

On the whole, ebay doesn't ban their account either. So some of these buyers might have dozens of non paying episodes under their belt. Unless a seller puts in an official dispute claim, there would be no record of it & even if sellers did put in a claim, there is no way it shows up as such to the general public.

Do as tippy says & put in your blocks, that's the only way to dodge some of them.

Don't assume it is rare for anyone not to pay or that only new buyers who are confused might do it. We've had a dealer with thousands of numbers after his name give us the run around and if they know the system well enough, sometimes they can get out of paying and also out of collecting a strike.

[lane-ends]

It is going to happen every now abnd then, always has. So just go througn the motions and spare at the least of your time as possible and dont get stressed about it.

Better than selling through the classifieds with heaps of people not turning up.

In fact it is even better than buyers who hit the return button for effectively change of minds and flippant reasons.

[springyzone]

I can see a problem for ebay coming up in that it is more and more common on other buying sites to be able to click on the 'buy it' tab & go through several levels-looking at the invoice, having it add postage to show a total etc but until you actually feed in the credit card details or paypal details, you haven't actually bought it. You can click out at any time.

I know buyers click on 'commit to buy' here in ebay but there could be some newbies who may not realise that it doesn't work like other sites, you can't decide after that when the payment options show, whether or not to then go ahead.

[digital*ghost]

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@springyzone wrote:

I know buyers click on 'commit to buy' here in ebay but there could be some newbies who may not realise that it doesn't work like other sites, you can't decide after that when the payment options show, whether or not to then go ahead.

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Which is why I firmly believe that the sooner eBay get rid of the "buy it now' button so that there is only 'add to cart', the better, there's just no need for it, unless it's the optional extra on an auction (they also need to fix it so the cart doesn't load when you hit 'add' - I find that really annoying on any shopping site that does it, as I'm rarely ever buying a single item,. All of my preferred sites just update the cart on-page, and you can mouse-over the cart symbol to see a quick summary and total). 

[springyzone]

Which is why I firmly believe that the sooner eBay get rid of the "buy it now' button so that there is only 'add to cart', the better, there's just no need for it, unless it's the optional extra on an auction (they also need to fix it so the cart doesn't load when you hit 'add' - I find that really annoying on any shopping site that does it, as I'm rarely ever buying a single item,. All of my preferred sites just update the cart on-page, and you can mouse-over the cart symbol to see a quick summary and total). 

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You're right. On most other buying sites, things go into a cart & people only buy once they have finished shopping and actually go to the cart to pay.

I think that would work on ebay as so many things are set prices with 'buy it now'.

Of course, auctions are different but if ebay put up a warning before any bidding that it was auction format & a bid was a formal commitment to buy, I think people would get it as it works like that in real life too.

It will be interesting to see what changes ebay comes up with in the future as they do have to respond to how people use the internet, I suppose.