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!
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:
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:
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:
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.
They probably have bot buyers so that way you will relist your item and and pay the fee again. As you all know for some reason you just don’t get straight answer from deadbeat buyers. They say: THERE IS BUSINESS AND THEN THERE IS BUSINESS WITHIN THE BUSINESS!!
I think ebay (since they own paypal) should in addition to refunding the final value fee
– re establish sellers ability to negative these deadbeats
– require somehow through paypal that a 10% non refundable deposit be held in escrow until the bidding or bin transaction is complete. if they back out – they lose it! maybe that will make these deadbeats act a little more seriously. it should be given to the seller if they oh wait I could have got it $3 cheaper here or oh 4 hours later I decide I don’t want it and will avoid all communication.
These people need to stop acting like an ebay auction/listing is a shopping cart that you can clear at your whim. punish them. some how. any way.
I encounter a non-paying bidder on average once every 2 weeks. I have 3 seller friends that keep implying I am doing something wrong as they have never had a non-paying bidder. I would love to throw a stat/annual non-paying bidder nr. at them. Based on what I read, and my own experiences, they must have been awfully darned lucky.
Think Ebay wants you to file unpaid item strikes? Think again. They continually change the location to report unpaid items. The one pictured above is no longer available!! You must now try and find the resolution center and it is just ambiguous enough to disuade most from ever using it or getting it to work properly if you do use it. Ebay sucks and we all know it. They only care about themselves. Ebay Community?? It’s completely gone. Bottom line = $$$$$$$ to EBAY INC.
Hi,
I just clicked on revengeoftheseller.com and it didnt come up. Is it temporary? Cause I sell on ebay and they are straight abusing me.
I have 100% positive feedback and they keep messing with me.
Are they regulated by the government or are they partying like the guys on Wall st?
Does something like that exist? How can we start something that has the government protect seller?
Please let me know your thoughts man.
Thank you,
Hass
EBAY SELLERS UNITE!!! SLAM THE BAD BUYERS!! I just went through a bad experience with a buyer who took my cell phone, used it for a MONTH, complained to ebay it didnt work, left me HORRIBLE feedback that ebay REFUSED to remove, and then gave her her money back after she sent me my phone back. Here is how I will deal with this. It may be brutish and inappropriate, but EBAY REFUSES to do the right thing.
http://www.revengeoftheseller.com
Thanks!!
oh, and if ya hate it, you can email me and complain to admin@revengeoftheseller.com