False Buy It Now

[hdj2]

I've been having increasing instances of my items selling as Buy it Now but when I send the invoice for payment to the buyer, they say they haven't bought it and haven't even ever looked at the listing before and request to cancel.  The first few times this happened I though it was just dodgy buyers but its continued to happen so I'm wondering if anyone else has had the same thing happen to them and if its a glitch in the system?

[jellybirddesigns]

Not sure if there is a glitch, but the best way to get around it is to add "Immediate Payment Required" to your BIN listings, so that you won't have to worry about sending an invoice and only genuine buyers will be purchasing.

Also means you'll never have an Unpaid Item Case, which is a bonus.

[hdj2]

Thanks, I'll give that a try and see if it helps 🙂

[ozstockman]

It may be that some of your buyers are liying or just do not have too much experience on eBay.

I have received a package recently with my products returned and a letter inside. The letter says "I have not bought it and have not paid for it. Please refund my payment"

 I have checked with eBay for sold items and I can see this buyer bought and paid for them through Paypal just 10 days ago before rerun came.

I would assume that her account was hacked but what haker would take a possession of someone's account, buy an item on ebay, pay from a hacked account and ask to send it to a real buyr's address. That just sounds ridiculous.

And if you have not bought it and have not paid for it yourself, why are you asking to refund your payment?

It is most likely this buyer has a very short memory or she is just lying. Surprisingly she went with a 3kg express satchel to post me the products back. They are small and their total weight without a box is about 100g. Their stucked size is just 100x270x16mm They could be sent via express without using a satchel and it will be express post for under 500g. So she has spent on return postage more than two products cost together. 

The only reason I have not sent her any refund yet is she can figure out who she bought it from and start demanding to return her postage cost to her as well because "she has not bought it and paid for it" She just used our return address on our box to return it. It does not seem she knows who she has bought it from.  Can you imaging it 'shappening within 10 days only? I cannot.

It is my policy not to refund postage cost to a buyer in case of returns if it was not our mistake with the order. I think it is just wrong to ask any business to cover postage cost which is not their charge in case somebody's changed their mind or simply playing dumb.

[springyzone]

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@hdj2 wrote:

I've been having increasing instances of my items selling as Buy it Now but when I send the invoice for payment to the buyer, they say they haven't bought it and haven't even ever looked at the listing before and request to cancel.  The first few times this happened I though it was just dodgy buyers but its continued to happen so I'm wondering if anyone else has had the same thing happen to them and if its a glitch in the system?

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I can't imagine how that would happen.

If other people report the same thing, then yes, there is a (serious) glitch in ebay.

But so far, it doesn't sound as if it is happening to other sellers. To me, that indicates the problem is probably with your buyers, who have had a change of mind.

I would say 'don't know how ebay works' but even a complete novice would surely know what a buy now button means.

If other sellers have not had this glitch then I'm thinking your buyers did commit to buy. They have definitely looked at the ad and done some clicking. They are lying if they say they haven't. What they didn't reckon with is that they really would be expected to carry through with the purchase, because they didn't pay. On a lot of sites, (and this can annoy me a lot), you can't see a lot of details such as postage & even total price etc till you do put things in the cart but as long as you don't pay, you haven't really 'bought' anything.

Some newbies may imagine it is like that on ebay. Click anything, don't pay, don't worry.

[lyndal1838]

You can put anything in the ebay cart but you do not commit to buy until you go to pay.

They would have had to make a conscious decision to buy for the invoice to be generated.

[springyzone]

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@lyndal1838 wrote:

You can put anything in the ebay cart but you do not commit to buy until you go to pay.

They would have had to make a conscious decision to buy for the invoice to be generated.

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That is true, but if you click buy it now without going into the cart, it takes you to another tab-commit to buy I think it says.

If they click that, they're done for.

I think it then takes you to 'pay now' and I am wondering if some of them think as long as they don't pay, they haven't really bought as they haven't completed the process, although the tabs are pretty self explanatory to be honest.

There is no way you could go through those steps though without being aware of what item you had been looking at or were interested in.

[hdj2]

Thanks everyone - yes I do agree with you but wanted to be sure. I block anyone who tries this 'I didn't buy it' thing as well.....such a waste of time!

[tazzieterror]

Sounds like dodgy buyers to me.  Have they been relatively new members, or ones with a bit of feedback behind them?

I recently had a buyer try a similar thing with me.  Made two separate purchases of the same BIN item on a multi-item listing (could have bought two items in a single transaction), then they never made payment.  When I sent an invoice a day later, they said they hadn't meant to purchase it - cancel the order.

I did some snooping and found they'd initially tried to buy the same item through a different eBay account that didn't meet my minimum buyer requirements, and then from their feedback I discovered they'd ended up purchasing a similar item from a different seller shortly after they committed to buying from me.

I copped an abusive email from them and lodged an UID for both items, then never heard from them again when I pointed out I could see the attampted purchase from their second account, and the feedback from the other seller they'd bought from. 

All that to say...some buyers will straight out lie to try and back out of a purchase.  As others have suggested, require instant payment to avoid this kind of situation, and play around with the minimum buyer requiremtns to weed out some of the questionable ones.