[Closed] Is eBay really this shit when someone doesn't pay?

That's just the nature of it. All you can do is leave the buyer negative feedback.

EBay, at all turns, are desperate to hide the fact that bids or any kind of 'purchase order' is totally <span style="font-size: 12.8px;">fictitious until cash exchanges hands. </span>

It's the same was walking into a store and shouting loudly "I'm absolutely going to buy this!" then never getting your wallet out.

Yes.

I ‘sold’ some wheels the other day, local collection and the buyer turns out to be seven hours away and starts on about couriers. I then have to cancel it and eBay only offer three reasons for that, none of which are ‘the buyers an idiot’.

eBay is very much ‘seller beware’. I’ve given up on selling big stuff through it.

You can cancel the sale rather than mark it as unpaid.

and yes, you can tick a box when accepting BIN that requires instant payment from any clicker.

It’s the same was walking into a store and shouting 

Except chakaping isn't a "store" and neither is eBay.. so well, it's nothing like that really!

Wont touch ebay for this very reason as a seller.

If you cancel it, are you not still liable for the fees? If buyer doesn't pay, then no fees? I could be wrong tho

I buy stuff off ebay, and when i bid i expect to buy it or be outbid.

but I hardly ever sell anything, for the reasons listed above, they virtually always side with the buyer in the event of a dispute.

If you cancel it, are you not still liable for the fees?

No, it's the same as if you didn't sell it, you just re-list.

But eBay won’t let me mark unpaid until 48hrs after the buy click. Is that how I’m supposed to proceed?

Just cancel the order, you don't pay fees. Then stick it on eBay again.  I can't really see what the issue is.  I 'sold' an iPad on eBay last week, buyer got in touch to say they'd bid on another one and won that, so I cancelled the order. Stuck it back on eBay and it sold this morning for more than the first time.

I sell lots on eBay and people not paying happens very rarely.

I want to go down the "unpaid" route so that I know the buyer will get a unpaid item strike.

Annoyed that I might also lose the £1 final value fee promo I was using for it, anyone know if that is preserved when re-listing after a non-paying buyer?

I want to go down the “unpaid” route so I know the buyer will get a unpaid item strike

Then you need to wait 24 hours.

Thats not ebay being “shit” .... you just didn’t set up your Listing to require immediate payment, you set it up to allow 48 hours for payment.

I want to go down the “unpaid” route so that I know the buyer will get a unpaid item strike

What's to be gained from doing that? The 'buyer' contacted you, it's not as if they just didn't bother their arse paying.  Seems a bit mean just for the sake of it.

When this happens, depending on how much of a cock the buyer is: I usually cancel the sale as long as  possible after the purchase. Waiting a month to get their money back might make them think next time before buying something "by mistake".

What’s to be gained from doing that? The ‘buyer’ contacted you, it’s not as if they just didn’t bother their arse paying.  Seems a bit mean just for the sake of it.

Because the buyer has committed to buy but not paid. That is literally what unpaid item strikes are for.

I have my account set up not to accept bids from anyone with previous unpaid strikes, which is probably why I don't get this kind of thing very often.

What’s to be gained from doing that? The ‘buyer’ contacted you, it’s not as if they just didn’t bother their arse paying.  Seems a bit mean just for the sake of it.

Because the non-paying buyer has ballsed up the auction for the seller? Punitive action might make him think twice before bidding next time if he doesn't actually intend to complete the transaction.

Because the buyer has committed to buy but not paid. That is literally what unpaid item strikes are for.

But they got in touch with you, its not as if they just didn't bother paying.  People make mistakes sometimes.

Because the non-paying buyer has ballsed up the auction for the seller?

Not really, it was buy it now, I could understand if it was an auction.

<em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 12px; vertical-align: baseline; background: #eeeeee; color: #444444;">s there a function to require instant payment before a B-I-N item is actually taken off sale? 

Yes, I have used it for years.  Just tick the requires immediate payment button and they can't 'win' the BIN item without paying.

I'm starting to suspect you were the "buyer" Gary M.

Do you treat B-I-N as an just being an option to buy when using eBay yrself?

Are you being real or just playing devils advocate ?

But they got in touch with you, its not as if they just didn’t bother paying. People make mistakes sometimes.

Not really, it was buy it now, I could understand if it was an auction.

I’m starting to suspect you were the “buyer” Gary M.

Don't be stupid.

Do you treat B-I-N as an just being an option to buy when using eBay yrself?

No, did I say I did.

Are you being real or just playing devils advocate ?

I'm really real, just understanding.

How is this not ballsing it up for the seller in your world?

It takes literally 5 seconds to relist an item

If it helps, I "bought" an item and because it needed extra shipping to Europe the seller just sat on it rather than finishing the quote process (despite them allowing shipping to Europe). In the end it resulted in me getting a non-payment mark against my account because I hadn't paid despite the fact I couldn't actually pay.

In the end I got so arsey with their customer support they removed the non-payment from my account but it was Kafkaesque in how they justified that because the seller hadn't replied to me, it was my fault.

No, did I say I did.

If you'd said you did then I wouldn't have needed to ask.

Why don't you do it, out of interest?

Why don’t you do it, out of interest?

I don't make mistakes and I'm prepared to forgive people that do.

You go ahead and raise your unpaid item case, I'm sure it'll make you feel better.

It takes literally 5 seconds to relist an item

I don’t make mistakes

Oh the irony and thanks for conforming you are a troll.

The irony? What do you mean by that?

It's hardly the end of the world when a buyer pulls out a sale on eBay. And I find it's best to just move on.

Is changing your mind a "mistake" Gary M?

You go ahead and raise your unpaid item case, I’m sure it’ll make you feel better.

You bet it will.

😀

Huge amount of idiots on ebay, and the system allows them to behave as such. Unless you are one of them (PP) you are going to get frustrated. Avoid as much as possible.

Sure it takes no time to relist, but if like me you wait for a fees deal to do all your selling it really cocks things up.

eBay seems to favour the dishonest.

I bought something on eBay the other day and got it for 99p which was a bit of a bargain so I paid and waited. 5 days later I get an email saying the seller has cancelled the sale and refunded my money. I was a bit annoyed but I’m over it.

Some people are d*cks, most people are some of the time and some people are all of the time. Accept that and move on. Life’s too short for getting this worked up about it

Give over. The seller'd be mad to sell the item for 99p (presumably it's "worth" more than that) and I can't believe you'd not feel guilty at taking it off someone for that much.

Gave up selling on eBay after trying to sell a bike.

I stipulated in many places local collection only.

I advised it would be sold without pedals.

With a few hours to go I got asked if it was stolen (said I’d ship with purchase receipts in the description).

So some mad woman buys it (the one that asked if it was stolen) says she’ll arrange a a courier (as she didn’t read the full description) and demands I prove it’s not stolen there and then.  She then demands I put pedals on it as who buys a bike without pedals?  My polite description of flats or clips was lost on her.

We had a very frank email exchange and both agreed to annul the purchase.  It put me right off selling anything on eBay.

Lot of stressed people it seems. Most of the time eBay works fine. Sometimes it doesn't (ie the other person is a dick). Shrug, move on, either re-list or don't.

Give over. The seller’d be mad to sell the item for 99p (presumably it’s “worth” more than that) and I can’t believe you’d not feel guilty at taking it off someone for that much

<span style="font-size: 0.8rem;">That’s the worst attempt of a troll i’ve ever seen.</span>

Sold something worth a good £100 the other day for £10.50. Disappointing yes, but still completed the sale and even delivered it as I was passing.

ebay should not be hard. Dicks make it so. Fnar.

eBay is fine if you can sell in a certain way.  I never sell via auction as that is open to non-payment which wastes a few days and hassle before you can cancel and list again.

I sell everything Buy It Now with immediate payment and only offer a tracked and signed for delivery method from Royal Mail.   I may be losing a few quid by setting my price and having expensive delivery option but I don't get hassle.

I also list with very good photos and very good descriptions which still only takes 5-10 minutes to list and I get more in return than I would if selling via any alternative local method.

Its the £28 fee that gets me- And paypal fees on top of that!

Reading half of the tripe above, I’d suspect the majority don’t use eBay frequently.

I buy I sell on eBay, have done for 18 years, yes it’s full of dicks, but so are pink bike, gumtree, Facebook etc

Always add immediate payment option on BIN

90% of the time I will go to non payment strike option, the reason I see fit

is because the eBay FVF promotions only come up every 3-4 weeks so selling a £280 shock in the ops post, if it sells costs £1 or £3 final value fee, as opposed 10% £28.. a stupid person has meant the op will be out of pocket today, when he may need that cash, and so he has the option relist is seconds and pay £28 fees on sale, or amend the price upwards, or wait 3-4 weeks for another FVF promo

I can see exactly why the op wants to take the action.. (3 strikes is a ban, most of these clowns do it all the time)

ps. The guy above who hand delivered an item, I hope they didn’t pay by PayPal, as they can charge it back claiming they never received it.

I always aim to send 2nd signed, £3.90 (Upto 2kg) or for cheaper items get a proof of posting (worth Upto £20), remember small parcel £2.80 now has a tracking reference

Its the £28 fee that gets me- And paypal fees on top of that!

But if your items sells for more than £28 than it would via other methods what is the problem?

I sell quite a bit of stuff and without eBay I don't really know where I would see it fro anything like the same price.

I manage the eBay account for a retail business.  I had an item with a retail value of about £1900 on a BIN or best offer sale, with the BIN at £1500.  Basically these were old stock but excellent quality items sold with full warranty. Prepared to take an offer that would leave us little margin I sold two for £1400 based on best offers. The third item  had an offer of £1000. I rejected it and said I wouldn't take less than £1250.  The buyer offered me £1000 again so I rejected it, again telling him i wouldnt accept less than £1250.  Two days later he offered me £1175.  The boss, keen to use the cash from the sale to buy in a new line told me to accept it.

That was several weeks ago. The guy messaged me to say he was waiting for funds,  could we wait? Yes, we waited. He asked for an invoice, I sent him one.  He promised to pay "tomorrow when  I get paid", twice.

I've waited. We have paid eBay the final valuation fee on the sale, and the item hasn't been advertised/listed for a month now. I gave him a two day ultimatum this week. No payment, so I had no option but to open a case against him, otherwise  I won't recover my fees from eBay.  If he gets a non-payment marker against him I'll lose no sleep. I've been more than patient, and despite being as helpful as I can, I have to accept  some people are dicks.

I've just had a bit of an ebay clearout. About a dozen people won auctions and paid immediately, lovely.

One auction for a Hope AM stem attracted a lot of bids but was won by a bidder with no feedback. No contact, no response to messages. Why do people do this? Muppets. Relisted it.

Had a knackered cruiser BMX for sale which just ended. I saw this morning that the high bidder had zero feedback and is based in Oz so cancelled his bids. He then bid it straight back up and won. And then messaged to ask how much for postage to Perth despite the listing stating collection only in a couple of places. The message exchange we've just had is quite amusing though, I don't think I'm on his Christmas card list!

Need to look at advanced settings to block some of these idiots I guess

In the case of the OP I may be inclined to just brush it over and get on but in the cases where people bid on stuff and then change their minds with no communication it's straight to a strike.

If I was going to be out of pocket though I would do it regardless of the circumstances. It's not my place to subsidise stupidity (and relisting a BIN out my own pocket is included in this).

I manage the eBay account for a retail business. I had an item with a retail value of about £1900 on a BIN or best offer sale, with the BIN at £1500. Basically these were old stock but excellent quality items sold with full warranty. Prepared to take an offer that would leave us little margin I sold two for £1400 based on best offers. The third item had an offer of £1000. I rejected it and said I wouldn’t take less than £1250. The buyer offered me £1000 again so I rejected it, again telling him i wouldnt accept less than £1250. Two days later he offered me £1175. The boss, keen to use the cash from the sale to buy in a new line told me to accept it.

That was several weeks ago. The guy messaged me to say he was waiting for funds, could we wait? Yes, we waited. He asked for an invoice, I sent him one. He promised to pay “tomorrow when I get paid”, twice.

I’ve waited. We have paid eBay the final valuation fee on the sale, and the item hasn’t been advertised/listed for a month now. I gave him a two day ultimatum this week. No payment, so I had no option but to open a case against him, otherwise I won’t recover my fees from eBay. If he gets a non-payment marker against him I’ll lose no sleep. I’ve been more than patient, and despite being as helpful as I can, I have to accept some people are dicks.

That's your bosses fault though. If you're desperate for the cash then you're automatically in a poor position. As you said, your BIN price was reasonable so anyone making repeated offers of well below this is obviously going to be a muppet. Sometimes I don't even make an offer on an item, I just BIN if the price is right.

We aren't desperate for cash, we use eBay to sell off stock that has sat on the shelves and use the proceeds of those sales to seed smallish orders of new lines to test the market. We use the eBay account to dabble, not to survive! The last sixty days on eBay has raised what we put through the till on a single weekday.

Mouthbreathers on the internet shocker.

Click here to see what happened next - the conclusion will blow your mind!

It happens now and again.  It's annoying but there's nothing you can do.  It's just part of selling on EBay that every now and again someone will just not pay.  Sometimes they ask you to cancel the deal, sometimes they're just invisible.

Funnily enough a few years ago I sold an Orange EVO2 to an Ebay buyer that has exactly the same user name as a regular poster on this forum.  After the auction end he told me nonchalantly that he'd bought another bike so had decided not to buy mine.  These are the worst kind of buyers who treat auctions like a supermarket where they can put stuff in and our of their basket with zero regard to the cost and hassle to the seller or other bidders.

We aren’t desperate for cash, we use eBay to sell off stock that has sat on the shelves and use the proceeds of those sales to seed smallish orders of new lines to test the market. We use the eBay account to dabble, not to survive! The last sixty days on eBay has raised what we put through the till on a single weekday.

You said your boss was keen to sell. Same difference.

It happens now and again.  It’s annoying but there’s nothing you can do.

Well in future I'll require instant payment on my B-I-Ns - so shouldn't have this problem again.

To other posters saying I could relist in a minute or so, yeah but then the "buyer" wouldn't get the unpaid item mark would he?

It's a ballache having to wait two days to report as unpaid and then four days for him not to pay, but I'll suck it in the interests of revenge, erm I mean fair play.

🙂

Even worse on auctions where you can't escape it and have to wait six days then another 10 day to attract new bidders to another auction.......