International buyers not paying and no contact

[rogerrabbitwa]

Hi, I occasionally sell secondhand goods and am not operating a store.  When listing auctions, I had one situation recently where a person located outside Australia with 0 feedback had a winning bid, then made no contact and made no payment. It seems like a bot or a scam, but what is the purpose of this other than to waste sellers time?  I waited the appropriate time and cancelled the sale, but it was hard to find guidance on what to do in that situation. 

Yesterday, I had a very similar buyer profile bid on an Auction-only item and so I cancelled the listing, then re-listed as Buy It Now, which will make the item harder to sell.  

It was only yesterday (after using eBay for years) that I realised I have to explicitly state what countries I don't want to sell to. Is this new? - I'm sure it used to be that if you were Australia with Local Postage and no International Postage that it by default meant you'll only sell in country? 

Is there anything else I can do with my Auction listings to prevent these weird scam/bot users from bidding? I do have some collectibles to list soon that I do want to offer internationally, and I'm nervous about getting scammed. 

Many thanks! 

[countessalmirena]

You must exclude the countries to which you don’t post (postage options), and you must block buyers whose address is in a country to which you don’t post (Buyer requirements).

If you ever do offer items for sale internationally, your relative inexperience will put you at risk of scam buyers. I would suggest that you don’t list anything internationally if you can’t afford to lose the tracked return postage on such items in the event that the buyer claims “not as described”.

[gutterpunkz05]

Your first buyer, was probably waiting for you to send them an invoice with the international postage included.

If you wished to cancel the sale, there was no need to wait for any period of time to elapse, you could have simply canceled, with reason something wrong with buyers address.  ( IE: somewhere I don't want to post to)

[sugar249 · Accepted solution]

Don't worry the not paying also occurs with local buyers as well.

Do as others said and setup your countries you wont deal with,  this has being available for many many many years.

Just as an FYI, I wont post anything overseas, just not worth the hassle.  I would get at least one or 2 enquiries a week,  but they always get the no thank you now that my perspective has changed.  Have never had a problem,  even had one instance where I sent one of my chinese made items back to china at most likely a bundle load of dollars more then it cost to make, and the postage was horrendous,  sale went through ok.   But for the last 5 years or so its just nope not doing it.

[davewil1964]

 I have to explicitly state what countries I don't want to sell to. Is this new?

Define new. It's been a requirement since at least 2008. And you can exclude by region - much quicker.

[rogerrabbitwa]

Thanks, I did consider that however sent them a message and received no reply. 

[rogerrabbitwa]

Thanks for this, it's really good to get your perspective!  Unfortunately Facebook and Gumtree are scammy too, and I'm not a FB user so not a member of interest groups etc to sell the collectibles. I'll try one of the less expensive ones on eBay locally and at least see how that goes!  

[rogerrabbitwa]

LOL - I had thought maybe newer than that!  I've been a member since 2017 but only sell occasionally, and I think just assumed that item location / item postage being Australian would = only in Australia. It's only these two recent cases that I realised it wasn't automagic! The lesson for today! 🙂 

[springyzone]

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@rogerrabbitwa wrote:

LOL - I had thought maybe newer than that!  I've been a member since 2017 but only sell occasionally, and I think just assumed that item location / item postage being Australian would = only in Australia. It's only these two recent cases that I realised it wasn't automagic! The lesson for today! 🙂 

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Ha! Definitely not new. My sister & I got caught too like this many, many moons ago & quickly learnt we needed to change our settings.

It's worth the effort of changing it though. If you're only an occasional seller, believe me, it is often not worth the hassle of overseas sales because if something goes wrong, if they aren't completely happy (and with second hand items, you run a risk in what they might claim), then you're out of pocket too much for postage.

I don't think your non payers are bots. You say you had one that was zero feedback and from overseas. So it is someone with a fairly new account, they probably don't know how ebay works exactly and what is more, you're running an auction format, so unless they return to ebay in following days, they will probably not even have any idea they won. 

Sure, emails are sent out but that won't necessarily be to the person's main email.

Or it could be a bid from someone who changes their mind or is not interested really and let's face it, with zero feedback, they don't have an account where they would be concerned with getting unpaid item strikes.

There are some real people who are serial non payers. They are out there. Who knows why!

All you can do is open an unpaid item claim as soon as you possibly can after the auction ends. I think it is 4 days. Don't delay it.

You can block the non paying pests too. At least they won't be able to bid on your things again.