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Problems Selling on Ebay - Buyers Not Paying!

Nothing on Ebay is "fair" anymore (was it ever??)

Shillers (bidders who purposely bid on certain seller's items to jack up prices)

None selling sellers
None paying buyers

Bait and switch

Fake items (inside or parts)

Worst than described product

and more

This goes doubly true for Craig's List.
 
There is no one magic solution to selling. I use craigslist but always meet in an ATT store where I Live and never negotiate that point. If they wont, then tells me scammer and move on. Ill even discount price to cover gas if thats an issue.

But ebay can work too. I read and see many succesful transactions on this board over the years. Both systems have benefits and downfalls. Its what works for you and really your expierence and your comfort level is. Also, where you live cause craigslist can be a pain cause of size or how many phones are selling at the time. Only you can decide what risk your willing to take.
 
Buy It Now

usually, I do buy it now. Then you can select immediate payment. I always tell my customers to contact me before purchase so I can see how serious they are.
 
3rd time is a charm? I've been trying to sell my iPad 4 for 2 weeks now.

1st auction: Winner asks to pay at the end of the month (3 weeks late). Why didn't she ask before bidding? Ignored me when I asked if I needed to re-list. Opened non-paying seller case with eBay, resolved.

2nd auction: Winner claims they didn't win. Cancelled transaction through eBay, resolved. Offered 2nd chance to 2 bidders. One said he already bought another one. Second person just said no thanks.

3rd auction: 20 hours left. The highest bidder's feedback worries me. Some of the feedbacks are identical. I mean word for word the same.Good buyer, prompt payment, valued customer, highly recommended. And of course, no way to report them to eBay, unless they win.

I'm half tempted to just keep it (don't really want to sell it anyway). My area hasn't been very good for Craigslist either (low ballers and spammers).
 
I usually do a Buy it Now with immediate payment required. I haven't had any issues with this since I don't have to worry about non-paying bidders.
 
bigcstyle4 said:
I usually do a Buy it Now with immediate payment required. I haven't had any issues with this since I don't have to worry about non-paying bidders.
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That may not work so well with an iPad as I would want a certain amount and no one will want it at that price. At least in an auction, there's a chance I'll get the price I want. If I list an iPad 4 at $550 buy it now, no one will bite, but in an auction there's a chance (if they pay :().
 
Then WHY are they bidding? No one is forcing them to type these numbers in their computers. They are doing it on their own. If you don't want it, don't bid.

By the way, this is a 32GB iPad 4 in perfect condition, leather smart cover, and 2 screen protectors. I would assume $400-450 at least.
 
They're putting in high maximum bids because they're not expecting anyone else to bid it up that high and want to make sure they win when other people put in a reasonable bid. The system automatically bids for you up to the maximum if someone else places a lower bid.
 
I seemed to have solved this problem. I had two non payers and then lost second bidders that moved on.

I now post on my listing ' bidder must pay via PayPal within 1hr or item goes to next bidder, or give a very good reason why not.

I explain why I'm doing this. This way everyone knows the rules. Sold two iPhones this way. Even had people email me if the first bidder paid yet. Waiting hours or a day for a payer is too long.

When the bid is won I send an invoice right away with that reminder. One student said they needed 30 min to leave class to pay. It worked out fine.

You can cancel a bid for none payment at any time- if there is no answer, you have tried to communicate with the person.
 
viewfly said:
I seemed to have solved this problem. I had two non payers and then lost second bidders that moved on.



When the bid is won I send an invoice right away with that reminder. One student said they needed 30 min to leave class to pay. It worked out fine.

You can cancel a bid for none payment at any time- if there is no answer, you have tried to communicate with the person.
Click to expand...

Just had to laugh a bit about the student having to wait 30 min to leave class to pay. He was in class not doing the school work, nor listening to the teacher perhaps, but instead was making time to make a bid however. Goodness. That is funny and sad.
 
viewfly said:
I seemed to have solved this problem. I had two non payers and then lost second bidders that moved on.

I now post on my listing ' bidder must pay via PayPal within 1hr or item goes to next bidder, or give a very good reason why not.

I explain why I'm doing this. This way everyone knows the rules. Sold two iPhones this way. Even had people email me if the first bidder paid yet. Waiting hours or a day for a payer is too long.

When the bid is won I send an invoice right away with that reminder. One student said they needed 30 min to leave class to pay. It worked out fine.

You can cancel a bid for none payment at any time- if there is no answer, you have tried to communicate with the person.
Click to expand...

Pretty sure that is against ebay rules. Ebay gives them a min amount of time to pay. Dont like it? Dont sell on ebay. Thats unreasonable (1hr). EBay will eventually bite your bum if you do that to people enough. You wont get your ebay sellers fees back from the original sale, thats for sure.

If all of this has changed (Im a seller) then boy will I be a jerk when selling my jailbroken 4s when the times comes.:D

EDIT: I was wondering why I would see phones selling for so much...IM looking to buy an iPhone 5 and have been watching people go pay $500 for a used one or $435+ for cracked ones.

Heres another: Whats up with all the bad ESN phones? SO fricken many on there going for hundreds$$$
 
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not defending the "not paying buyers" and I never did this. But there is also another side to this. And the OP in some way is an example.

As a buyer you look for an iPad and you see that the fair market price for the model you want is say $300-350. You think that you would be willing to pay a few dollars more to be sure to get it.

Then you start to bid at an auction with a starting price of $300 just to find out five days later that the buyer had set a totally unreasonable reserve of $450. So you wasted five days for an auction that you would have never entered had you known about the above market price reserve.

A lot of sellers do this and relist the item over and over until they find someone willing to pay way above market value. And in the process they waste the time of many buyers who couldn't know that there is an unreasonable reserve set.

The consequence is that many buyers start bidding on five iPad's at the same time because chances are that only one doesn't have a unreasonable reserve. And in the process they waste the time of many seller who couldn't know that they were bidding on more than one item at the same time.

I personally only use "Buy it now" auctions from larger sellers or ebay shops and I pay within one minute. And I expect fast shipping in return and they usually do ship very fast.

I only use auctions on items (like parts for repair or accesories for old electronics) that are not available in any other way.
 
andiwm2003 said:
not defending the "not paying buyers" and I never did this. But there is also another side to this. And the OP in some way is an example.

As a buyer you look for an iPad and you see that the fair market price for the model you want is say $300-350. You think that you would be willing to pay a few dollars more to be sure to get it.

Then you start to bid at an auction with a starting price of $300 just to find out five days later that the buyer had set a totally unreasonable reserve of $450. So you wasted five days for an auction that you would have never entered had you known about the above market price reserve.

A lot of sellers do this and relist the item over and over until they find someone willing to pay way above market value. And in the process they waste the time of many buyers who couldn't know that there is an unreasonable reserve set.

The consequence is that many buyers start bidding on five iPad's at the same time because chances are that only one doesn't have a unreasonable reserve. And in the process they waste the time of many seller who couldn't know that they were bidding on more than one item at the same time.

I personally only use "Buy it now" auctions from larger sellers or ebay shops and I pay within one minute. And I expect fast shipping in return and they usually do ship very fast.

I only use auctions on items (like parts for repair or accesories for old electronics) that are not available in any other way.
Click to expand...

I won't waste my time on reserve auctions unless they come with quite a bit more, like AppleCare PLUS.
 
Mrg02d said:
Pretty sure that is against ebay rules. Ebay gives them a min amount of time to pay. Dont like it? Dont sell on ebay. Thats unreasonable (1hr). EBay will eventually bite your bum if you do that to people enough. You wont get your ebay sellers fees back from the original sale, thats for sure.
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No it's seems to be fine. I found nothing in the rules against this. You are allowed to cancel any bid if you feel the person is untrustworthy. Likewise you can can cancel a winning bid if the buyer doesn't meet the requirements or respond to you. No legit buyer is going to complain if they communicate with you and you allow them a reasonable excuse. A buyer telling you he's needs a few days or even 12 hours to gather the money up is BS and unreasonable. You only should only ever bid when you have the $ now. You know when you win and it's just a matter of hitting the PayPal button on the invoice which you get seconds after winning. And I follow up with my own email via eBay.

Every buyer knows my requirements and shouldn't bid if they are not ready to abide by them. .

What is BS and against ebay rules is a buyer placing bids multiple items and cherry picking the best one and you waiting days to relist your hot item and losing the best price. I had one buyer say they bought another phone and didn't need mine. Meanwhile the 2nd and 3rd buyer were uninterested. That was before my new policy.

I've had NO problems from eBay with this. I've lost no fees and eBay gets their fair share.

I think it scares away the bum buyers almost completely at the onset.

Not saying its perfect and if there is a problem down the road, well it's mostly a win for me instead if the other way around. After two losses in a row, I've had two wins in a row all with iPhones.
 
viewfly said:
What is BS and against ebay rules is a buyer placing bids multiple items and cherry picking the best one and you waiting days to relist your hot item and losing the best price. I had one buyer say they bought another phone and didn't need mine. Meanwhile the 2nd and 3rd buyer were uninterested. That was before my new policy.
Click to expand...

This is why only sell with Buy It Now and pay immediately.
 
I dunno, most people can't pay one hour after auction end. If I'm at work, I'll be damned if I risk getting caught doing that on our network just to pay an impatient seller.

eBay gives 7 days for a buyer to pay once a seller opens a dispute. Also, eBay makes you wait a few days to even open one. I used to sell regularly and had plenty of these issues.

I'd neg you if I won and had to relist or resell because I didn't pay you within the hour.
 
bigcstyle4 said:
The terrible thing is that the only feedback you can leave for a buyer is positive.
Click to expand...

That's the most annoying thing about eBay.

It would be so much easier for sellers if they were given a little more power. The way it is now, sellers are left with their pants around their ankles with no way to pull them up.
 
bigcstyle4 said:
The terrible thing is that the only feedback you can leave for a buyer is positive.
Click to expand...

no clue why they changed that.
but if you need money fast ebay can be silly fast. put my 4s wit ha bad power button on ebay for 200 and in 15 seconds it sold and was paid for within a minute.
 
steve knight said:
no clue why they changed that.
but if you need money fast ebay can be silly fast. put my 4s wit ha bad power button on ebay for 200 and in 15 seconds it sold and was paid for within a minute.
Click to expand...

I heard somewhere they changed that because the sellers gave retaliatory negative feedback all the time. The sellers would email me if I leave less than perfect feedback they would leave negative feedback.

If a seller has 1000 good feedbacks and you as a buyer have 5 good feedbacks then the seller can easily threaten you because your 1 negative feedback doesn't mean too much for him. But you getting a negative feedback when you have only 5 means you are screwed.
 
I used to have rival sellers buy my stuff just so they could neg me. Took a few negatives that way...I report to Ebay but ebay would explain their hands were tied.:rolleyes:

Id even have people refund me just so they could file non paying bidder against me. (Id buy from my rival sellers to return the favor).

Ebay can be a nasty place to do business, but the exposure is GREAT!

I think that sellers need to realize that buyer are going to do whats best for them, and since most bidders do a shotgun bid, they must as well. Know what sucks more than being a seller having to relist? Watching somone get an iPhone for $80 less than you because their auction got overlooked or someone got the sudden craps and didnt bid.

At least the seller can recoup the fees and relist...The bidder? They pay much more than the next dude. Thats why I always find the average selling price and then list mine a little lower.
 
Problems Selling on Ebay - Buyers Not Paying!

Mrg02d said:
I dunno, most people can't pay one hour after auction end. If I'm at work, I'll be damned if I risk getting caught doing that on our network just to pay an impatient seller. If you have reason to suspect a winning bidder is not legit you CAN remove them. You CAN just decide not to sell too.

eBay gives 7 days for a buyer to pay once a seller opens a dispute. Also, eBay makes you wait a few days to even open one. I used to sell regularly and had plenty of these issues.

I'd neg you if I won and had to relist or resell because I didn't pay you within the hour.
Click to expand...

Not true. That's the part you are missing. No sell no neg. posting. Part of my eBay ad clearly states my conditions. Just like I won't sell outside of USA. Still a guy from Mexico will bid. I just remove them. eBay rules that I can remove you if you don't abide by my conditions.

And the REALITY is that this has worked great because legit buyers are happy to pay on time. It takes NO effort to do so. One click from your phone, tablet or whatever email/ Internet. You know exactly going in when the auction ends. If you write to me and say you will pay a few hours when you get home I will honor it. But if I don't hear from you AT ALL, most likely you are a deadbeat and then I will lose. I will be flexible with reasonable people and is the key. Legit buyers are reasonable because they know EXACTLY where I'm coming from just like the people on this thread. Everyone has had a bad experience. I even take first time unrated eBayer unrated if they sound good in the email exchange. Everyone appreciates prompt payment- except deadbeats that thrive on the opposite.

Believe me the odds are in your favor to have successful eBay results and weed out the deadbeats.
 
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