Increase in eBay Non-Payers

[Buythatcard]

Has anyone else been experiencing an increase in non-payers lately? I use to average about 1 non-payer a month out of about 350 transactions. But, over the past several months that has gone up to about 6-8 a month.

In addition, I have also experienced a big increase in the number of people who retract their bids. In the past 3 weeks alone, I've had 22 bid retractions.

When will eBay wake up and start protecting the seller?
Has the time come in which we list these non-payers on Net54?

[buymycards]

Howard, you are correct. Most of my items are low dollar items, with a BIN w/best offer. People will give me a $3 offer on a $6 BIN. I accept it, then I wait for a week with no payment. I file a NPB claim, then I get paid. In the past it happened once or twice in a couple of hundred sales. Now it happens 2-3 times in 20 sales.

I can't figure out why someone would purchase a $3 item and not pay for it until a NPB is filed. These aren't all low feedback new ebayers. Some of these people have feedbacks of 700 or more.

Rick

[sb32]

I don't sell that much on ebay, but I'd say in the last 6 months, I have had an issue with about 10% of transactions. After a week, I send a reminder email that if I don't hear back or receive payment by a certain date, I will report it. Usually I don't hear back. Every time, within a few hours of reporting the non-payment I get paid. Amazing. I'd say almost every problem has been for $25 or less.

I understand things come up and delays happen. I've worked with people in the past when they claim something unexpected happened since placing bid (job loss / storm damage) but I haven't gotten any explainations recently.

I also have found that it isn't necessarily bidders with low feedbacks

[t206hound]

I haven't had any non-paying bidders in the last 6-12 months. I did have one person ask to cancel his winning bid for some reason, but he sent me a message within 24 hours... I didn't play the waiting game.

Just curious based on the last few posts. Typically I don't sell any item under $25 on ebay; it's just not worth the time/effort to do so. Are these non-paying bidders typically for lower valued items, or are they people who put in max bids of some astronomical value in order to win, and then decide the winning price was too high? Or is there no pattern?

[caramelcard]

100% yes. Use to have very few and now a ton.

Rob

[vintagetoppsguy]

I really feel for you guys. That's a bunch of crap! I don't have that problem as I've only sold 10 items in the past year (although I used to sell a lot). I posted this question in another thread, but I didn't get any responses. Have you guys tried using BINs with immediate payment required? It seems like that would be the only way to stop this.

[sb32]

Erick,

Is all fair prices. I originally thought it may have to do with the economy leading to buyers remorse, but I would have expected people to try and cancel. Oddly, no one tried to get out of the purchase.

It also has been a mix of vintage and modern (the last remnants of a former collecting life). More of the problems have been on the modern side, but there has definitely been an increase in problems in both segments.

Scott

[thetruthisoutthere]

This subject was written about in another thread but I will add my two cents here, too.

I've been having problems with both buyers and sellers. Winning bidders who don't pay and sellers who don't ship. It really is getting ridiculous on Ebay.

As a seller, if the buyer doesn't pay, I take the offensive and I don't give a hoot about the winning bidder threatening to give me a "Neg." If the winning bidder doesn't eventually pay, he will get a "Unpaid Strike." I don't fall for that "Please just cancel the transaction" request.

As a buyer, I am presently waiting for three items that are all two weeks overdue. When I finally do receive the item, I give it to them on the DSR's. This has been going on frequently for the past few months.

As a buyer I always pay with 24 hours if not immediately and as a seller, I ship the next day after I receive payment. I don't know what the problem is with these people.

[slidekellyslide]

I occasionally get the please cancel the transaction I've had ...I will almost always cancel, but one guy bought a lot of vintage GI Joe stuff from me for a couple of hundred dollars...I waited a week with no payment before trying to contact him...he ignored me until after ten days I filed the NPB...he asked me to cancel because he had some unexpected bills...I went and checked his feedback and saw that he had bid on other GI Joe stuff and actually paid for it AFTER he had already won my auction so I refused to cancel the transaction...I got a profanity laced threatening email from him and turned it over to ebay...ebay apparently did nothing because he's still buying on ebay.

Last night I had a new one...I sold a bunch of modern relic/autograph cards and a guy won a Frank Thomas from me...he sent me an email after it ended which asked me to call him...I had never had someone ask me to call them before on ebay so I gave him a call..he was at work and told me he forgot to bid on two Mike Piazza cards and asked me to cancel the transactions with the person who won them and sale them to him. I told him there was no way I would ever do that. I don't think he took it too well.

[Buythatcard]

I recently had one buyer who won about 15 items over a 3 week period. He then decided to pay for only a few of the items. He refused to pay for the rest. He must have thought that he could bid on all the cards he was interested in and then decide a few weeks later which ones he still wanted.

I've heard excuses form many of the non payers and people who retracted. They had a death in the family, lost of job, Tsunami hit their house, etc,etc. Yet, in many of these cases, they were still bidding with other sellers at the same time.

It didn't matter what the cost of the item was and how many feedbacks they had.

The only solution is to allow sellers to have the option to leave negative feedback.

[t206hound]

Maybe I'm different, but I don't take it personally if someone doesn't pay. I'll get my fees back, and I'll relist the item. Again, it's not worth the time or trouble to hound (pun intended) people to pay. I use the unpaid item assistant (http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/unpa...ant.html#setup) to automatically open up the case after 4 days.

[slidekellyslide]

Originally Posted by t206hound

Maybe I'm different, but I don't take it personally if someone doesn't pay. I'll get my fees back, and I'll relist the item. Again, it's not worth the time or trouble to hound (pun intended) people to pay. I use the unpaid item assistant (http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/unpa...ant.html#setup) to automatically open up the case after 4 days.

The last item I listed that ended up not being paid for sold for $62 the first time...I relisted and it sold for $29. Sometimes it's worth it to hound the deadbeats.

[hunterdutchess]

I sold a 53 Bowman Mantle for $1,200+ and the buyer never paid so I re-listed it and it for less than $700 I think the other bidders above the $700 from last time thought that I might be shilling. BIN with immediate payment required is the best way to go.

[peterose4hof]

I guess I have just been lucky becuase I have sold 300+ items the past two months and only had one non paying bidder.

[jbsports33]

yes - I have seen an increase for the last two years. Before it was only a few times a year, now it seems like once or twice a month.

Jimmy

[Gradedcardman]

I've seen an increase on eBay and for the first time had a non- responsive non- paying Net54 member for the first time !! Yikes !!

[Ladder7]

Sorry Adam, After looking closely at the image of the coffee pot. I just could not imagine the thing atop my kitchen counter

[jbbama]

yep......had one last week, a $6 card. (i know ouch).........this is really getting ridiculous

[vintagecpa]

My favorite is when somebody wins an auction, then almost immediately is no longer a registered user.

[brianp-beme]

Isn't it about time all of us vintage bb card collectors decided, en masse, to move away from Ebay? Everyone is complaining about their regulations and fees and service. Stop complaining and do something. There is a viable and horribly underutilized option that was presented to us last year...Grand Slam Bids. Currently it hss devolved into an exclusively fixed price outlet for cards, but all it needs is our collective decision to stop perpetuating the Ebay madness and switch our focus to their site.

So lets get this thing started. I am a lower condition collector who has hundreds of cards that I plan on listing on Grand Slam for auction at reasonable (at least I think so) opening bids. I plan to start in about a month, when I have scanning and listing time available. Come on everyone, let's screwbay!

Brian

[grundle20]

I think it's awfully clear why we are all seeing an increase in non-payers. EBay has ended the ability for you to give negative feedback to a buyer. I mean, that basically spells it out right there. It gives you incentive to simply bid on stuff you really don't want that bad or stuff that you can't afford. There is no REPERCUSSION to not paying or paying ridiculously late.

EBay should realize how ridiculous it is that buyers are exonerated from having a big, huge, red negative mark in their feedback column. This is the real issue. Right now, I can go bid 100K on a vintage car, win it, and simply never have to pay and nothing is going to happen to my perfect feedback.

[vintagetoppsguy]

Brian,

I would love to buy on GSB and take the business away from eBay, but here is one of the problems. A lot of the cards on GSB are the same ones on eBay at the same price.

Take this E-104 Collins for example. I can buy it from Shoebox Cards on eBay for $2250 and get $45 back in eBay Bucks along with eBay's Buyer Protection,

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1910-E104-1-...item5199ca8750

or I can buy it for the same price on GSB and get nothing but the card. If it's costing sellers less to list and sell on GSB, why can't they pass the savings along to the customer? Makes no sense!

http://www.grandslambids.com/auction...tion_id=145032







Here's another example. Card listed on GSB for $825

http://www.grandslambids.com/auction...tion_id=108259

Or I can buy the SAME card from the SAME seller on eBay for only $375

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1910-E99-Bis...item20bc5f862c

Let's see, which one should I buy?

[rdixon1208]

I would love to start using GSB as well, but there's never any auctions.

[egbeachley]

Originally Posted by grundle20

I think it's awfully clear why we are all seeing an increase in non-payers. EBay has ended the ability for you to give negative feedback to a buyer. I mean, that basically spells it out right there. It gives you incentive to simply bid on stuff you really don't want that bad or stuff that you can't afford. There is no REPERCUSSION to not paying or paying ridiculously late.

EBay should realize how ridiculous it is that buyers are exonerated from having a big, huge, red negative mark in their feedback column. This is the real issue. Right now, I can go bid 100K on a vintage car, win it, and simply never have to pay and nothing is going to happen to my perfect feedback.

Nope. That Ebay policy is already a couple years old. The OP and others have seen this problem arise in just the last few months.

[chaddurbin]

ebay's been great for me (besides the fees hike). i've bought and sold around 1000 items never had a deal go wrong where i lost money.

counting today i've had 3 deals gone bad in the bst where i lost money...in about 70-80 dealings. bst right now is still way better than gsb in term of eye balls, and it's free.

[Leon]

Originally Posted by chaddurbin

ebay's been great for me (besides the fees hike). i've bought and sold around 1000 items never had a deal go wrong where i lost money.

counting today i've had 3 deals gone bad in the bst where i lost money...in about 70-80 dealings. bst right now is still way better than gsb in term of eye balls, and it's free.

You lost money on the BST?.....How did you manage that? If someone ripped you off I would like to know about it. As far as more eyes on the BST than GSB, no doubt, for now....that will (hopefully) change with the paradigm shift in the future.

[Doug]

I had plenty of slow or non payers back in the day, but now I usually list everything on eBay with as a Buy it Now listing and I just select that option where the bidder has to pay before they can purchase the item. No more problems and most of the time everything sells in a day or two instead of having to wait for a week long auction to run its course.

[Bridwell]

If you relist the items on ebay, be sure to mention that you had a 'non-paying bidder'. Otherwise, it might look like you were shill bidding your own items. When I see an item that just sold and was relisted I get suspicious of the seller. You don't want your buyers to get the wrong idea.

[Exhibitman]

On bid retractions, I just pulled one the other day. Decided to buy another example of the card for a better price that I found later on. Bid retractions are just part of the Ebay system--no point in getting all bunged up about them. After all, until the sale closes there isn't a done deal anyway. BTW, you can also retract your bid with nearly any auctioneer. They don't want a bad sale either so if you have a good explanation they will usually accommodate rather than have a NPB. You just have to jump through some hoops to do it.

As for nonperforming buyers, I don't sweat it. I make a NPB report so I can get back my fees but I don't chase goobers who bid on cards and then don't buy them. Not worth my time and energy. And if someone bids and later comes back and says they want to renege, I let them. Again, not worth a pissing match with some yahoo.

Life's to short to get stressed out about cards.

[Orioles1954]

I kicked ebay to the curb last week. I don't have problems with pre-war bidders but a lot of the modern guys are serious nut jobs.

[bcornell]

I had a friend who worked at eLoan before they were acquired a few years ago. They ran mortgage ads on almost every ecommerce site in existence, including eBay. He told me that eBay users had the lowest average credit score on any site they ever used. This was all before the economy went deeply wrong, so it could only be worse now.

I stopped selling on the site a long time ago.


Bill