Industry guru Dave Taylor answers free tech support questions about a wide variety of business and technical topics, including blogging, Google AdSense, MySpace, Sony PSP, Apple iPod, Mp3 players, management, Linux, SEO, Mac OS X, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Microsoft Windows.

Dealing with a non-paying deadbeat buyer on eBay?

It happens to everyone who sells products on eBay, someone wins your auction but never pays. You can kvetch about it all you want, but there's an official mechanism for filing a complaint and receiving a refund on the transaction fees that's a critical step to really resolving the problem fairly!


Dave's Answer:

First off, give it a week or so before you conclude that the buyer is a deadbeat. Ya just never know what might have happened in their lives, from a car crash to a sick relative, to a business trip. Some buyers say "you must pay within 48 hours of winning this auction", but I think that's unreasonable, personally.

Once you have decided that they're a deadbeat non-paying buyer, however, your first step is to go to the eBay Dispute Console, where you'll see two basic types of reports you can file:

eBay deadbeat buyer dispute console

As you might expect, you'll want to click on "Report an unpaid item". At that point you'll want to know the Item Number of your auction, which you can easily obtain by opening up a new tab in your Web browser, going back to your "My eBay" area, and looking at the number in parens immediately next to the item description:

eBay deadbeat buyer dispute: transaction number

So you can see what I'm talking about, here the Item Number is highlighted: 220147820764.

Enter that and detail that they haven't paid as of yet. Then you'll have an open dispute, which will doubtless look like this one I am dealing with currently:

eBay deadbeat buyer dispute console: View dispute

Give it a few days -- or longer -- and, if you really never hear from them (most likely) or they have some story about why they can't pay and you indeed need to just cancel the transaction, come back to the Dispute Console and click on "Close Dispute".

Now you'll get to pick what happened: either the transaction is completed to your satisfaction, you've given up and want to cancel the entire transaction, or you and the buyer have agreed not to complete the transaction.

In the latter two cases you have to wait a week or longer for eBay to make that option available, and you will receive a Final Value Fee credit for the costs of your closed eBay auction. You can then relist the item and try again.

I have to say that I have sold a couple of hundred things through eBay and only twice experienced a non-paying buyer, once because of a money order that was "lost in the mail" (in the days before Paypal!) and once because they simply vanished and never responded. Don't write off auctions because of the chance of a deadbeat, though; fact is, being able to sell your stuff through eBay is actually great fun and can be quite profitable too.



Help others find this article at Del.icio.us, Digg, Netscape, Reddit, and Simpy.

Subscribe!

Never miss another useful Q&A article again! Subscribe to AskDaveTaylor with Google Reader.

Comments
Rather amazingly, there are no comments on this article yet.

I have a lot to say, but ...
Starbucks coffee cup I have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but most of all I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a chai!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!









Remember personal info?


Please note that I will never send you any unsolicited commercial email. Ever.

While I'm at it, please note that by submitting a question or comment you're agreeing to my terms of service, which are: you relinquish any subsequent rights of ownership to your material by submitting it on this site.









Search
Find just the answers you seek from among our 1700+ free tech support articles by using our Lijit search engine.


Help!





Subscribe to
Ask Dave Taylor!

Add to Google Reader
Add to My Yahoo!
Subscribe in NewsGator Online

RDF   XML

Free Updates!
Sign up and get free weekly updates and special offers on books, seminars, workshops and more.


Recent Entries
Join the List!
Join my author info mailing list, where you'll learn about my upcoming books, speaking gigs, and more!


Book Links
© 2002 - 2008 by Dave Taylor. All Rights Reserved.

Note: This web site is for the purpose of disseminating information for educational purposes, free of charge, for the benefit of all visitors. We take great care to provide quality information. However, we do not guarantee, and accept no legal liability whatsoever arising from or connected to, the accuracy, reliability, currency or completeness of any material contained on this web site or on any linked site.

[whiteboard marker tray]