Negative feedback for non paying bidders

[tkheatrocks]

Do anybody feel that the negative feeback feature should put back in place for non paying bidders?

[rose-dee]

"Pierre's approach and require immediate payment on all single items"

I do not.  I do not believe on the "immediate payment" concept. I think it is wrong.

I'm sorry, Pierre, entirely my mistake.  I see you said you end the items once the available number gets down to one (I'm fighting off the 'flu today, and not working on all brain cells). 

I can't do this on most of my items, which are one-of-a-kind, and I really can't afford to always carry 2 or more of every item in my antique pattern line, so I feel I'll have no choice but to require immediate payment or take the risk of offending a buyer. 

I hate specifying "immediate payment", but I think it would be worse in my case for a customer to choose to purchase a unique item then have it snapped up by someone else.

I'm feeling despondent.  This, of all the changes in the past 2 years on eBay, may finally drive me to give up and go to another venue to sell my one-of-a-kind wares. 

[rose-dee]

A system like Etsy uses makes much more sense.

i*m-still-here -- I'd be interested to know what your experience with Etsy has been as compared to eBay, not only in terms of fees, but also sales.  What sort of category were you selling in there?

[pierrelebel]

"I see you said you end the items once the available number gets down to one"

Actually I wrote "I have ended all my fixed price listings..." 

That means just that: no fixed price listings if the quantity available is only one.

Those items, if listed on eBay, will be listed using the auction format starting at the same price as the fixed price would have been.  It is not an ideal situation as the auction format limits duration to seven days compared to thirty days for fixed price listings.

Hope you get over the flu soon.

[rose-dee]

Those items, if listed on eBay, will be listed using the auction format starting at the same price as the fixed price would have been. 

I hadn't considered going back to "pure" auctions.  I'll have to reconsider auctions as a possible way out of this conundrum.  I stopped running auctions a few months ago because I found they were more expensive in the long run - the fees seemed to get out of control easily and the listings had to be managed so much more.  

Perhaps with the new arrangement  -  free listings for subscription stores -  it might be more affordable.  I hadn't checked to see if free auction listings were included in the 150 free listings for a Basic store, because I like GTC listings so much. 

I'm so used to eBay after all these years that the thought of having to start from square one on another venue is not very encouraging.  At this point I really don't know what I'm going to do.  

I'll take Scarlett O'Hara's approach, and think about that tomorrow.  For now I'm going to curl up on the sofa with some herbal tea, watch a movie and try to chase away the 'flu.  Thank you for the kind thoughts (and suggestions).

[i*m-still-here]

rose-dee...............

I don't sell on Etsy.  I buy there.   I'm there almost as much as I'm here, and it's changed and grown and evolved in a really good way recently;

Especially this past year.

I'm very close to opening a store there now because it looks like the time is right.

It used to be kind of a girly homie hippie site, but not any more.

Go buy a few things and I'm pretty sure that you'll like the atmosphere.

Check out sellers in your category and you can see their sales.

Some are very respectable.

It wouldn't surprise me to see that in certain categories it may well surpass eBay sometime in the future.

Maybe not today......... but not that far off either.

A lot of the issues between buyers and sellers are much more subdued there.

It costs 30 cents to list an item for 3 months and I believe FVFs are about 3-4% (not sure).