Uneducated buyers!!!!!!!

[westernstargifts]

There seems to be a new trend happening with new buyers.

Last week a 0 FB buyer purchased 3 identical items, separately, from one FP listing (she did not select 3). The she emailed me and said there must be an eBay "glinch" (her spelling) and that she really only wanted one.

I agreed to let her out of the other 2 since she is new but told her that she must have clicked on the Buy It Now three times.

A day or two later I had another newbie buy 2 identical items but from two separate listings. She also emailed me saying she only wanted one. She blamed it on PayPal. I agreed to let her out of the 2nd transaction as well.

Now tonight I had an email from a buyer who purchased and paid for 2 items and then purchased 2 more but did not pay. I invoiced her for those and told her I would ship her combined order together when she was finished shopping. So I get an email from her saying that she only wanted the other items and that she thought she had "deleted" the other two. I explained that you can't delete something and that when you click on the "Commit to Buy" button that you agree to do just that. I have now asked her to agree to "not complete the transaction".

This is such a time and money waster and a big pain in the butt. If I hold them to the purchase I am likely to receive negative feedback.

Maybe it is time to switch to "Immediate Payment Required". I don't have time to educate newbies and correct their mistakes.

Anyone else running into this and ,also, would you have handled it differently?

[recped]

Tis the season.....lots of newbie and/or inexperienced buyers out there.

Doesn't help that eBay works completely different than almost all other "traditional" ecommerce sites.

Think about it....everywhere else the "button" means "add to cart", on eBay it means it's yours right now! Sure you get warning screens that you are actually committing but still it's no wonder some newbies screw up.

[westernstargifts]

You are right recped. On other sites they have the option to fill the cart and then change their mind and "delete" it. It is natural for some to assume that it should operate the same way on eBay.

On the other hand, I was a newbie once myself and understood fully from the word go that "commit" meant I bought the goods. But not everyone thinks alike and some don't bother to understand what they are doing before they take the plunge.

There seems to be a lot of newbies buying this week.

[cgcgraded]

Hi Judy. I have 6 unpaid items from the last 2 weeks and were all from 0 to 1 feedback buyers. These items total over $700us. I have had excuses like... "I didn't mean to buy these but now I am being forced to",and "My husband just got put in jail last Saturday and I don't know when he will be out."
I have never seen as much yellow on my screen because of unpaid item disputes.
As recped said, Tis the season!

Cheers.
Andrew

[coxengines]

Tis the season.....lots of newbie and/or inexperienced buyers out there.

Yup, we get a few every month.

Take it in stride and file for "mutuals". They are usually genuine, bona-fide, buyers who are still learning the eBay way 🙂

Treat them well and they become repeat customers.

Xena

[westernstargifts]

"I didn't mean to buy these but now I am being forced to",and "My husband just got put in jail last Saturday and I don't know when he will be out."

Maybe the husband was put in jail for forcing the other buyer to buy those items....lol:^O

[protectedcanada]

I had one girl email me and told me she wouldn't be able to pay for the item for another 3 weeks! She forgot it was in USD and not CDN. 😐

What a waste of time...

I think eBay needs to allow Sellers to leave Negative Feedback again for those who receive Non Paying Buyer strikes.

[cgcgraded]

Well, surprise surprise... I got paid for over $500 worth of unpaid items!

Take it in stride and file for "mutuals". They are usually genuine, bona-fide, buyers who are still learning the eBay way

I have tried to file "mutuals" in the past with new buyers. Unfortunately many don't respond. I had one buyer who answered that he disagreed with the mutual, however he said that once again he made a mistake and did not read what was on the screen in front of him.

I have taken a stronger position on getting paid... especially after I let customers off the hook with over $1000 worth of items last month.

I think eBay needs to allow Sellers to leave Negative Feedback again for those who receive Non Paying Buyer strikes.

I think ebay should leave a note in a buyers feedback when they receive a strike for non-payment.

By the way... It is 16 degrees here in Newfoundland at 9am. What's up with that?
Winter Wonderland???? I don't think so! LOL

Andrew

[gifts_of_elegance]

I have had it with non-paying bidders. I am slowly revising all my listings to "Immediate Payment Requered".
There are three kinds of non-paying bidders:
1) never answers so you have your item tied up for 2-3 weeks
2) answers with some feeble excuse then turns around and gives you negative
3) after you let him off the hook and file for mutual release he does not agree or posts some lie about you

[westernstargifts]

I have tried to file "mutuals" in the past with new buyers. Unfortunately many don't respond.

I have 3 of them now, all newbies. I finally got it across to one of them regarding what she had to do and she did go through with it and I got my FVF back.

I can't seem to make the other 2 see that it is in their best interests to do so as well.

after you let him off the hook and file for mutual release he does not agree or posts some lie about you


I don't like the way eBay has this system set up. Why do we have to close the dispute before the buyer has checked the mutual box? They could easily have it set up so that both seller and buyer had to check it off before the dispute was closed. That would eliminate the risk of having the buyer do the opposite to what they had agreed upon.

[crazyjayscollectables]

Hi,
To be honest, I think you should consider blocking buyers with less than 5 feedback. After 5 transactions thay should get the hang of things and understand policies better. I know this could hurt you in your potential customer growth but it will help you greatly in avoiding this situations. I have just decided to switch to this in the new year because of a bad experiance I had. I had a customer (0 feedback) buy 23 items from me to un-register the next day because he/she did not have a paypal account, they could have asked me to cancel but I think they didn't know about the option. It was a hassel going item by item to get fvf's back. just a thought.

[jerseypros]

I think you should consider blocking buyers with less than 5 feedback.

How do you plan on enforcing this? There are no setting within eBay that will allow you to do this.

[snoopwiz]

I think you should consider blocking buyers with less than 5 feedback.

And if buyers were to "block" sellers with less than 5 Feedbacks, you would be where now? Sure, some need a bit of hand holding. Reach out to them, work with them and hey, you may earn your self a long term buyer. On and off eBay. Peace.