eBay

gulcove · ‎01-14-2015

I have been selling on ebay for many years now and I still can't understand the motivation of deadbeat buyers. They tie up the item for days, they have no intention of actually completing the contract, they loose the confidence of future sellers and they completely waste the sellers time. It makes absolutely no sense to me especially since the easiest thing they could do is simply not bid in the first place. Buyers-- if you are interested in an item complete your due diligence by asking questions BEFORE YOU BID. If you choose to bid and if you are the winning bidder do the right thing by completing the transaction. Don't just ignore the invoice and refuse to communicate with the seller. You will get an unpaid strike against you because I will wait you out. Depending on the controls other sellers set on their accounts, you may be blocked from bidding on future auctions (I guarantee you will be blocked from ever bidding on mine again). It's just into 2015 and I already have two buyers who appear that they will be going sideways on me. If your moral compass is broken find a different hobby. Take up knitting, learn to golf, whatever.........just get off ebay. To my fellow sellers, I wish you much success in 2015.

xtremetech99 · ‎01-14-2015

When i usto to sell different type of items (very competitive niche) i would have atleast a few non paid buyers a week. My guess is they changed their mind last minute. Usually they would ignore you when you tried contacting them , so i stopped wasting my time trying to get them to pay.

Now i rarely have any non paid. I had one last week , first time in 6 months. It was a fairly big order so i just wanted my fees back.

recped · ‎01-14-2015

I've been a merchant for more than 40 years, when I get dragged out shopping with somebody (we won't mention anyone in particular) you can usually find me cowering in the corner while my "friend" is slowly driving the clerk/salesperson/manager/owner crazy with their erratic behaviour.

It's all that much worse because the end result is almost always the same, we leave without spending a nickel and in the car I have to listen to the endless tirade about how bad the store was, how stupid the staff were, how poor and/or overpriced the merchandise was while I just can get it out of my head that my "friend" left after putting two things on hold that they will never go back for (if they did it would be two weeks later and they wouldn't understand why the stuff was put back on the shelf).

This is the cold hard reality of being a merchant of discretionary goods. We put up with it for one reason only......we want their money!

Once you understand that this is the way things are and will always be it's much easier to deal with.

FYI - My "friend" is not a "bad" person, they mean no ill will to anyone (consciously!).

"What else could I do? I had no trade so I became a peddler" - Lazarus Greenberg 1915
- answering Trolls is voluntary, my policy is not to participate.

2014sportsterguy · ‎01-14-2015

People or people, and yes they could bid again with new accounts....keep blocking that is about all we can do.

reallynicestamps · ‎01-15-2015

I hope that you always go for the Unpaid Item Dispute.

As the OP stated, those Strikes make it harder for the deadbeats to bid with other sellers. And Red Green has told us, we're all in this together.

Do you have your own Seller Preferences set to Block bidders with UID Strikes? Very useful, even in my categories of books, sewing patterns and stamps, a customer base of people who by nature read and follow instructions. (Also polite and good-looking.)

gulcove · ‎01-22-2015

I hear what you are saying. The only problem with that approach is that the buyer may not understand that, once they click confirm, they have entered into, what is supposed to be, a contract with the seller. If buyers feel no level of commitment to fulfill the contract the whole concept behind ebay falls apart. I constantly scratch my head about ebay's attitude toward the seller. We pay all the bills and without us there is no ebay yet the scales are heavily balanced in favor of the buyer. Apparently, according the ebay policy, there are no bad buyers, only bad sellers. This was made very obvious when sellers were no longer able to give negative or even neutral feedback yet buyers could still leave negative feedback for items they hadn't even paid for. While I derive a small measure of satisfaction from blocking these type of buyers from future auctions I feel badly that they will just carry on to the next unsuspecting seller wasting time and tying up items they have no intention of purchasing.