Poll: how long do sellers wait before sending an Unpaid Item Reminder?

[momcqueen]

Just wondering. Because I have Local Pickup enabled for most of my listings, I cannot also do Immediate Payment Required. They are mutually exclusive. 

Usually, I give buyers four days and then an Unpaid Item Reminder is sent. 

With this particular case, the buyer said she'd had problems with processing payment and I can see from the Order Details they did attempt it at one point. https://community.ebay.ca/t5/Seller-Central/This-order-was-not-successful-Payment-for-this-order-has...

The item sold Jan. 21. The buyer wrote to me on Jan 24 saying they'd had problems and were planning to contact their bank. I said, 'Okay!' Nothing for a few days. Then I suggested to them, as per ric's suggestion, that the buyer confirm their shipping details matched exactly their billing details. No reply. 

It's two weeks on this upcoming Sunday since the item was bought and more than a week since they spoke to me about anything. How long should I wait before going the Unpaid route? Or would you suggest a Cancel Order instead?

The buyer ID has a feedback count of three and has been a member since August of 2017. 

I do doubt they are coming back to pay for this, but I don't want to turn them off buying here forever. 

[pjcdn2005]

I'm curious, do most eventually pay?

I find that if someone doesn't pay and doesn't communicate, they don't pay at all. Of course I usually open an unpaid item claim  after about 5 or 6 days. 

[recped]

In theory I send an invoice after 7 days, I say in theory because I haven't had to send one for a long time, definitely not in 2017 where I had ZERO non-payers.

When I was doing more Auctions (thus getting more slow or non-payers) I would send the invoice after 24 hours from the end of the Auction.

[widgetc]

At least a dozen times a year it takes over a week to get paid but only about once a year does payment not eventually come.

[momcqueen]

Interesting. I average 2 to 3 per month. That's not counting actual proper cancellations from buyers, either. A good month, I might have one Unpaid Item Reminder sent. There have been a few months with as many as 20 to 25 but that would be an anomaly where one buyer filled their Cart and Commit to Purchase and then vanished. But Unpaid Items are a steady problem for me, and the strictest Buyer Requirements did not prevent it at all. 

[momcqueen]

As a follow-up to close the thread, I did eventually open a case with the buyer in this example, and it closed without payment or response. 

[zee-chan]

I suppose collectible toys are in an impulse buy category...

[momcqueen]

Yes, sometimes more impulsive than others. Just now I also have a Cancel Order request pending from a buyer who asked the order be cancelled and then vanished without acknowledging it. Another one of the, 'Hello, my son accidentally clicked on this item and bought it. Please cancel, so sorry." More like sorry, not sorry. I don't mind cancelling orders but I find it irritating when the ebay request itself is ignored by the buyer who has, after all, requested it.

[pjcdn2005]

In most cases buyers are not given the option of confirming that they asked to cancel. I’m not sure when they are asked.....perhaps if they had already paid, but it’s been like that for a while. In most cases when I cancel a sale I get an immediate email from eBay saying that I have been credited fvf.

[momcqueen]

The only time I've seen an immediate confirmation that the order has, in fact, been cancelled is when payment was submit and ebay can see the refund went through. Or for Cancel Order requests made in less than 60 minutes from time of purchase. It's a slightly different process, or at least, it was once.

Otherwise, as far as my experience goes, the ten-day delay is for buyers who have not paid.

Also in my experience, buyers who place an order left unpaid for three days who then reappear only to ask for a cancellation are not motivated to come back and confirm they aren't planning to pay for it. Those are left to time-out after ten days 99 per cent of the time.

Unfortunately, this category of buyer is responsible for 99 per cent of my Cancel Order requests. I just don't get buyers who pay and then ask to cancel more than about once per year or once every two years. The rest are 'my finger slipped' or 'my child was shopping' Cancel Order requests. 

[momcqueen]

momcqueen wrote: ..... Unfortunately, this category of buyer is responsible for 99 per cent of my Cancel Order requests. I just don't get buyers who pay and then ask to cancel more than about once per year or once every two years. The rest are 'my finger slipped' or 'my child was shopping' Cancel Order requests. 

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Wait, that's not quite true. This year, it has been higher than ever before. I can think of three times in the past 18 months where this has happened. Order paid and then Cancel Order immediately submit. Otherwise, the other 25 Cancel Orders (average twice per month) are unpaid. What percentage is that? Okay, 88 per cent are unpaid cancellations that take ten-days to die. 

My average Unpaids are probably about three per month since I started selling, utterly unchanged from setting Buyer Requirements from most strict to one step away from the least strict which would be no block at all. My current block is set to prohibit purchase from buyers, I think, who have six per month on record where it always used to be set to block two UIs per 12 months.