Oh, juliette8844, you have made a bit of a muck of it, haven't you?
- First of all, yes, it's unfair that sellers cannot leave negative feedback for bad buyers. That cathartic experience is denied to you by eBay. Agreed.
- Secondly, yes, it's unfair that a buyer would bid on your items, win them, and then refuse to honour the transaction. Agreed.
- Thirdly, yes, it can be more than inconvenient for a new seller to have to wait for 3 weeks before receiving their funds from PayPal. Agreed.
However...
- The very fact that you can't as a seller leave negative feedback should alert you to the fact that this is probably something you as a seller should not do. eBay can and do take action against sellers who go against their policies, and giving a negative comment with a positive feedback is one of those things against which eBay do have a policy. It's a little hard to find now, but you can read here that "Members can't [...] influence another member's Feedback [...] by leaving negative comments with a positive rating."
In other words, do not leave a green dot with negative comments, no matter how tempting it is. It's a policy violation, and you are the one who may end up with eBay taking action against your account. - Secondly, your negative comment is useless as a warning to other sellers. They can't see the buyer's eBay username; they can only see the username as a masked algorithm. (You can see the username because you have had a transaction with the buyer; the buyer can see his username, of course; but no one else can. We see only this:
4***4
If you want to warn other sellers (to the extent that it's possible), just "follow" the buyer (by clicking on the buyer's feedback profile, then clicking onto View eBay My World, and then clicking onto ♡ Save. You can then post in the forum saying, "I had a bad buyer who bid on my item, won it, and then messaged me saying he isn't going to pay for it as he "can't affairs it - as r is too expensive and out of my budget!" Check to see who I'm following, and perhaps fellow sellers may want to add someone to their party list." Other sellers can then see the relevant information, and if they choose to, they can block this individual.
Keep in mind that negative comments to a buyer can't really help other sellers in most cases. For buy-it-now items, it's just not possible to check potential buyers' feedback before they buy! A blocked bidders' list is really the only thing that could help. - The best way to block repeat offenders (who buy and then don't pay) is NOT to cancel the transaction; that just lets the buyer get away with it. Instead, just calmly report an Unpaid Item once the four-day period is up (the soonest that you can report it), and once the Unpaid Item timeframe allows you to (another 4 days), close the dispute so that the non-paying bidder receives a strike against their account. If the eBayer in question does this more than once, there are many many sellers from whom he will no longer be able to purchase, because these sellers have their buyer requirements set up to block any bidders or purchasers who have too many unpaid item strikes.
- Set up your own buyer requirements. This post will show you what you can set, and how to set it. Isn't it at least something to know that bad buyers will be blocked from bidding?
- Re the 21-day hold by PayPal, there is a reason for that. It's to prevent new sellers popping up with the intention of scamming as many buyers as they can, then running off with the money while the going is good. A quite good way to mitigate the effect of this hold is to sell some low-value items initially, until you have established yourself as a seller in eBay's and PayPal's eyes, and you know that your funds will no longer be subject to the hold. If you can, you may want to list some pick up only items, and make a point of preferring cash on pickup. (Be careful, though; you can't actually refuse a PayPal payment for pickup items.) Then you can list the items which are higher in cost, or which involve more costly postage.
Above all, face eBay selling calmly and professionally. Things WILL go wrong occasionally, and you need to have a carefully thought out strategy in place for the various situations you encounter. Reacting emotionally and going against eBay's policies isn't going to help you; you need to find ways to make the policies work for you (or at least, not work so much against you that you become frustrated).
