Lots of non paying buyers lately, cant give bad feedback

[phantomchris1984]

I came back to ebay about late august this year to start selling again to clear out my room of the piles of games, movies i never play or watch often. I have sold on ebay before and it has been fine with no troubles.

Now that im back selling again I have noticed some people bidding and winning and then simply not paying. since august i have had 6 non payments, possibly 7, waiting to see if the buyer responds yet or had possibly died of a heart attack at their computer screen, unclear yet.

What is going on. In all my many years of selling i have only had about one non payment. Now im back selling and i have seven in about four months.

These people not paying just simply dont respond, checking their feedback other sellers leave feedback saying they have no payment or response either.

What makes it difficult is that i cant give bad feedback like i could before. All these non payers have all this positive feedback with comments saying they have not payed.

I feel like this is some sort of scam.

Did ebay do this to not scare away customer by having bad feedback. whats the deal. Does ebay ever get rid of these ebayers that occasionally buy but mostly dont pay to get more positive feedback. I doubt ebay would get rid of customer even if they do not pay some times, they want the fees.

I have opened unpaid cases for all these items, wasting my time because the buyers have nothing to fear anymore because there is no bad feedback anymore.

Anyone else notice an increase of non payments recently?.

[*new2vintage]

It's very important to open a dispute and to close it to make sure a non payer receives a strike from ebay. A buyer with 2 strikes can't bid on a seller's auctions who blocks a buyer like that from bidding. Sellers who leave negative comments are fools and only help non payers. They can no longer leave negative feedback because of sellers who left retaliatory feedback years ago.

[foxette-in-sox]

Chris,do you have your buyer requirements blocks in place & have you put the actual buyers who haven't paid on your blocked bidder list?

If not,here's the info on how to do it

By adding buyer requirements to your listing, you can stop members from bidding on or buying your items based on certain criteria. You can block buyers who:Are in countries you don't want to send items to.Have a negative Feedback score.Have unpaid item strikes recorded against them.May bid on several items and not pay for them.Have breached eBay policies.To add buyer requirements:Go to Site Preferences in My eBay.In the Buyer Requirements section, click Show, and then click Edit.Selec...
Blocked bidder list page.Enter the user ID(s) you want to block, and then click Submit.

[leader-of-the-band]

All these non payers have all this positive feedback with comments saying they have not payed.

and if these non-payers have/had strikes issued by sellers going through the UnPaid Item process then they would be blocked from bidding/buying from sellers with non-payer blocks in place.

The fact that the non-payers have multiple false positives demonstrates that this is pattern behaviour.  Strikes help break the pattern.

eBay should have a seperate box on the listing page that has a 'check box' along with a statement like "Block eBayers with more than 1 UnPaid Item strike in the last 12 months" rather than having it in the buyer requirements section that pops up.

[siggie-reported-by-alarmists]

All sellers need to follow the non-payers process, to weed out those  who don't pay. It definitely  helps the next seller, who has to deal with these people.

And yes phantom, it is happening more often, as many people either don't understand what this does to the seller...or just don't care. 

[phorum_junkie*]

I have all my blocks in place and although I sell in a category that is not particularly prone to non payers I have to look at it context, in actual numbers yes I have seen a gradual increase over the years but it is actually a decrease in the percentage of non payers as I now sell a lot more than I used to.

Unfortunately with things like DVDs and games you get kids buying them and then not being able to pay so you are more likely to have to go through the dispute process but they wouldn't give a stuff about neg feedback anyway and even if they did how would it stop them from either bidding at the last moment or using BIN as you would have no way to see their feedback in advance. Leaving negs for non payers usually just resulted in a seller getting one back which had more impact anyway.

[forumfool]

I still think there should be some other avenue other than an unpaid item strike.   That's my opinion as both a regular buyer and seller. 

Sellers should be able to see how many unpaid item strikes a buyer has had.

Or is there an option for this that I am somehow missing?

[Anonymous]

Yes, and I have just written to ebay with the same questions as you. If negative feedback isn't given a red negative mark (it seems that it is  given a positive green mark) then how do we know they are bad payers when they have a 100% positive against their name. And as you say if we claim them as a non paying bidder and get our selling fee back, we are then not allowed to leave negative feedback. It doesn't make any sense at all.

[polocross58]

Sorry to hear your ebay woes, OP

Lots are saying the same as you - from both sides of the fence

Buyers are being refused items they've won in good faith by sellers who refuse to honour transactions

and sellers are spending time and money listing items, only to have buyers refusing to pay

What's the common denominator ?

You're right -- ebay's refusal to accept responsibility or safeguard both sellers and buyers ---- despite ebay's alleged 'policies' and terms and conditions

So who's ultimately responsible for all of it ?

Ebay of course

Which results in increasingly large numbers of people walking away from ebay

When ebay feels the pinch sufficiently, it might feel motivated to clean things up --- but only in its own interests, of course

Until then, it's pot luck on ebay and you're lucky if you don't actually lose money, instead of just time and energy

[2106greencat]

I never want to see Neg feedback for a buyer come back in. Too many sellers could (and I believe used to) use it as a retaliatory thing. Good for Good, Neg for Neg, and while I think the strikes a buyer receives are a good thing, I do think there should be something on the buyer profile/fb page to show the non payers. Face it, we sellers have red dots to advertise our shortcomings, why can't a buyer have the same sort of flag for non payment? A seller could not use ia in retaliation as if the buyer paid - no mark against them. JMO