What do you consider the usual time for buyers to collect items from sellers?

[janellehollycat]

Bad experiences recently on Ebay - have had to block people from me!!

Had a buyer last week who won an auction off me on Friday afternoon.  My expectation was that the item would be collected that weekend or shortly afterwards.  I am always very fluid with pick up times and days as I do shift work.  The buyer said she would not collect until the following Sunday - 10 days after end of auction - even though I had offered different collection times and days.  There was no negotiation - it was all one-sided and this is what she demanded.  I am sorry now that I didn't put my usual "please pick up within 7 days of end of auction" in the ad!  Oh, I just wish I had of cancelled the transaction from there - had a really bad feeling about this!

My experience has been that prospective buyers usually request special circumstances BEFORE they bid at auction not afterwards.  The buyer was not grateful that I allowed her to do this - either personally thankful or offering additional money for making me wait so long to have the items removed and thus inconveniencing me.  

I sent her an email during the week to confirm a date and time with me, which she did.  Then she was late arriving for collection and I sent her another email saying that if the item wasn't picked up that morning, it would be relisted in the afternoon.  Fair enough I had waited 10 days without any communication from her except the email that I had sent for her to confirm with.

I was very pleasant with her and helped her, etc.  I was quite taken aback that she wasn't more "so sorry for making you wait so long" sort of thing that most people would have done and perhaps offered another $20 for my trouble which is something I would have done had I inconvienced someone in the same way.

Now she has left me negative feedback - not a bad comment, not neural - but negative - her feeling is that she should have 10 days to collect a winning item and this should not be an issue.  She says I was rude for sending her confirmation emails.  

[springyzone]

Here's my take as a buyer.

If i buy something, I usually prefer to pick up on a weekend. I am happy to pick up on weekedays also, but usually most sellers aren't home during the day, only at night and I am not keen on driving at night when I don't know where I am going.

If I won something on a Friday, I would try to pick it up that weekend, but it is quite possible that failing that, I would ask if i could pick up the next weekend.

I would be willing to pay into their paypal account to prove my good intentions, if they wanted that.

I would never say to a seller-I will pick up on Suday. That is rude. I would ask when it was convenient for them, but then give them a list of possible times I could make it and ask if any of those were suitable, but if not, could they let me know some other suitable times. Then I usually send an email the day before pick up just to remind/confirm it is still okay to call at that time.

So it sounds to me as if the buyer has been a bit rude in the way she treated you, but 10 days in this circumstance isn't an unreasonable time frame either, although it is on the outside edge of reasonable. You don't deserve negative feedback though, by the sounds of it.

If I saw 7 day pick up on a description and I needed 10 days, I would ask before I bid.But sme buyers don't read ads anyway. I've had buyers from interstate who have bid on pick up only items, then expect me to know of a courier, at a dirt cheap price of course!

[janellehollycat]

Thank you springyzone - you are what I consider a "normal" ebayer - this is exactly how I feel and exactly what I would do too.  And if I must say in my opinion, this is what most Ebay buyers do!

If the buyer had asked for an extension of time or if she explained why she needed so much time, OK - but she gave no negotiation on this point!  I had to send her 2 emails asking her to confirm that she was coming and to please book in a time and day - she considered this rude!!  I received no confirmation from her that she was coming on the particular day and she turned up late.  I sent another email to her stating that if the item wasn't picked up that morning I would be relisting in the afternoon  - I had not heard from her in 6 days - what would you do??  

Yeah, buyer has around 30 points and I have over 1600 so go figure!!  If this buyer thinks that I am "rude", I do feel she is in for an enormous shock if she continues buying on Ebay!  Alot of sellers will automatically enter an unpaid item case after 4 days of not hearing from a buyer and I must admit I'm alot tougher now on Ebay than I used to be.  Experience teaches us what to do!

Yeah, there's some shocking buyers out there but this is the most inconsiderate and rude one I have had - a bit of a shock to me as I would say 95+% of my transactions have been great and I don't feel I deserved that feedback as I really was very nice to her when she arrived here.  Maybe I should have rolled out the red carpet and hired moving men to pack the furniture into her car for her!!  As one other commenter has said, some people are never happy, no matter what you do!  Case in point!

Thanks for all your comments - I am feeling better about this now and I do take partial responsibility in this nasty transaction as I didn't state a pick up time!!  

I'm still perplexed as to where the buyer got the "pick up within 10 days" idea from?  Sounds really, really slack to me and I haven't heard this one before!!