No More Unpaid Item Cases On Ebay

No I didn't find a wonderful solution to the annoying problem of the dead beat bidder! ebay has changed the process and now if a buyer hasn't paid within 4 days you can cancel the sale and relist it for free and get your final value fee refunded.

This is probably a result of Managed Payments because under MP ebay doesn't get their Final Value fee until the payment is received so all of a sudden it's important to them. The problem I see is that about 80% of the time the buyer pays after the Unpaid Item case is filed and all is well. Now they'll just be cancelled and I see this creating bad will and raising lots of questions.

What do you guys think?

Yikes. 4 days is pretty extreme IMO. Should be at least a week before any kind of auto-cancellation.

And I'm sure the email the buyer receives will leave the implication that the seller is the one who cancelled the sale, not ebay.

The seller choses when to cancel, as long as it's within 30 days.

My bad, I interpreted it as ebay would automatically cancel if not paid within 4 days.

As long as it's at the seller's discretion to not cancel, then it's all good. I typically give 1-2 weeks.

Me too depending on who it is, strangers or people from NJ get less.

This is just a nuisance to stamp and cover sellers who sell less expensive items which is in the buyer's best interest (and therefore the seller's too) to group together several to many purchases to save with combined postage. It does force more communication with messages such as this, "I just won blah and have 18 pending bids which will close in 6 days. Can we wait for these to close and handle a combined invoice then? Please advise if this is not acceptable."

That said, I do buy a few items which are not philatelic and am tired of the, "I am ready to ship but can't until you pay. When do you plan to pay?" messages being set out within 6-18 hours of the item's close even though ebay sends out a 24 hour reminder for the now normal pay within 48 hours expectation.

I recently won an auction on ebay where the seller contacted me less than 24 hours after bidding ended asking me what my intentions were. Did I want the lot or should he offer it to the next lower bidder. I ignored the first email but then he contacted me twice each on the second and third days asking for a "decision."

Perhaps the new payment method on ebay is the cause of this weird interaction, but it annoyed the stuffing out of me. It seemed quite awkward and inappropriate.

Well, since you ask, If I won an item on ebay and hadn't paid for it for some reason for four or five days, let's say because I was suddenly ill or injured and in the hospital or I had to go somewhere to take care of a sick family member or some other perfectly understandable reason, and when I eventually checked my ebay "wins" and found some of them had been cancelled in less than a week (or so), I'd be pretty upset. Most sellers in the Real World accommodate buyers who don't pick up their items right away and are willing to trust them for at least a short time. What ebay is doing is assuming that any bidder who has a non-paid item is a deadbeat after four days. That's pretty harsh even if individual sellers could let it ride longer than that. To begin with, I'd make the time period at least one week. Maybe longer. I've had items I've purchased not sent to me for many weeks and I'm still willing to accept them if they do get shipped. How is a slow seller any different from a slow buyer? We're not all on our computers 24/7. The world is forcing people to accommodate technology when it should be the other way around.

Not if I read it correctly.
The Vendors can cancel after 4 days, the bay cancels after 30

This new ebay feature cancelled 3 large sales within hrs of purchase. It looked like I had done this. The buyers were very hostile towards me. Had to work through bad accusations from the buyers about my motives. Impossible to continue the sale through ebay. Salvaged the 3 sales out side of ebay. The sales totaled over $2,000.

Was sent an email from ebay apologising for their technical glitch.

It is fine IF the seller wants to cancel and move on, but IF they want the sale to go thru and can't file an unpaid case to not so gently nudge the buyer, then this is a step backwards. A big seller friend of mine got wind of this a few weeks ago and was bent out of shape. His handler told him to cancel a sale and when he checked on doing this the options for why you want to cancel the sale did not include buyer hasn't paid. So instead of getting an unpaid strike, bad buyers get off free now.

Quote:
What ebay is doing is assuming that any bidder who has a non-paid item is a deadbeat after four days.

Not if I read it correctly.
The Vendors can cancel after 4 days, the bay cancels after 30

I think you've misunderstood what I wrote. It is possible for a seller to cancel an item after only four days. That means ebay is sanctioning a policy that after four days, a seller can consider a non-paying buyer -- for whatever reason -- to be a deadbeat who isn't going to pay. As I also said, "That's pretty harsh even if individual sellers could [meaning "might'] let it ride longer than that." I'm not talking about what a seller "might" do. I'm commenting on what ebay permits them to do, and that's cancel a sale after only four days. Not good.

If I'm missing something here, let me know.

Serendipity
PS: I didn't cancel, the bay did.

Cancelled my first sale over the weekend using this new procedure. 2 weeks no payment or communication. Relisted item and I already have bids for more than the cancelled order - go figure Jaded seller setting in though.

Rich

I have not signed up for managed payments,
awaiting the due date.

Hi Rod

Started managed fund changes in Jan this year. Have got rid of all the ebay glitches for you Rod. You should have a clear run at being forced to register for managed payments.