"It looks like you need to pay for some items"

[what-does-your-watch-say]

A bidder wants to bid on my listing but keeps getting this message:

It looks like you need to pay for some items. Go to your cart or My eBay to pay for your items at checkout.

He doesn't have anything in his cart and can't figure out why his bid won't work. He contacted me about this but I have no idea what the issue may be.  Any ideas?

[momcqueen]

Do you have a block on the number of items per week that you allow bidders to place with you? It's under Site Preferences. 

Or [perhaps they have Unpaid Item disputes. Or their account is too new to do a whole bunch of bidding, ebay places some sort of restrictions on new accounts at first.

Check your Site Preferences and Buyer Requirements setting first. 

Buyers who may bid on several of my items and not pay for them

[momcqueen]

But if it's not you and your settings, it might be your buyer. You could ask them to call ebay Customer Service for insight on the reason their account has been hobbled.

[reallynicestamps]

I've never worried about low feedback buyers, but it is interesting that sellers actually can Block bidders with low feedback under some circumstances.

[momcqueen]

Nor do I. The Guest Checkout buyers are some of my best.

This setting lets you limit the low feedback buyers like Feedback score of zero to as little as one item per ten-day period.

My block had been set to 10 items for quite awhile until an international buyer wanted to place an order of 12 and hit the wall. Then I fixed it to 25. A month later, I had a Canadian buyer like 23 items in one setting... and then pay for none of them.

When you plug one hole, you open another. Personally, I find low feedback buyers too timid to cause much trouble. It’s the ones between 50 and 99 that get cocky.