Selling on Ebay.... lesson learned!

The Logical One

The Logical One

Gold Member
Feedback: +67 / =0 / -0
Joined
May 31, 2011
Messages
1,892
So I learned a valuable lesson after 13 years of selling stuff on ebay...... ALWAYS REQUIRE IMMEDIATE PAYMENT!

I sold a knife on ebay on 10/8, and a few hours later the buyer contacted me asking if I can give him until 10/16 to pay for the knife. The guy has 204 transactions at 100% and has been a member since 2005 so I figured it would be alright. I wasn't very happy about it though. IMO it's just bad form to click "buy it now" when you don't even have the funds to pay for it.

I had this iffy feeling about the whole situation but I went with it anyways. Comes to the 15th at 11pm I decided to send him a message to confirm that he'll be making the payment the following day and also to inform him that I can have it shipped out before I head to work if he makes payment before 10:30am.

Next morning I checked email and ebay.... no payment, no message. Noon comes around, still no message, no payment. I sent him another message to ask what's with the delay. Once again no response, so I waited until 9pm to send him a final message to let him know that I will be opening a case by 11pm and leave him negative feedback if payment was not made.

I did some snooping around and saw that he made a purchase on the 14th from a guy that sells high end customs on ebay. I finally filed a claim and found out I have to wait FOUR DAYS before I can close the case if payment was not made. And the worse part was..... I found out you can't leave a negative feedback for buyers.

No wonder the guy has 100% feedback. He could have done this numerous times and nobody would be able to see it. What the guy essentially did was..... he wanted to "reserve" my knife by clicking "buy it now" so that nobody else can purchase it.... while he THINKS about whether he wants to buy it or not.

This whole entire time I could have sold the knife to a serious buyer, and gotten paid a long time ago. Now it's on hold for another four days for this piece of sh*t to give him a last chance to buy it. That makes no sense to me.

For those who have dealt with something like this..... is there anything else I can do? I'm FUMING :mad:
 
The Logical One said:
For those who have dealt with something like this..... is there anything else I can do? I'm FUMING :mad:
Click to expand...

Just be glad you didn't send the item out pre-payment like my dad did. Dad sold something, mailed it out the next day before the guy paid. He forgets about it until a couple days later when he realizes the guy never paid, and sent him a message - no response.

Well, if ebay notices that the buyer didn't pay after a few days, they will automatically open an unpaid buyer claim on the seller's behalf. So, once the claim was opened (by ebay), my dad gets a nasty message from the guy saying that the item wasn't as described and he didn't want to pay for it. Dad tells him "fine," and said to send it back. The guy didn't want to send it back because he didn't want to pay for shipping, but wanted my dad to drop the unpaid buyer claim because he "already had one unpaid buyer strike" and if he got another one it would be hard for him to buy things on ebay because some sellers don't allow people with those strikes to bid.

Dad tells him "tough crap" and figured he would never see the item again. Well, the guy did mail the item back, but he waited too long and got the unpaid strike anyway. I hope he feels like an idiot.

I would just wait the 4 days and take comfort in the fact that 1 of 2 things will happen: A) He will pay you, or B) He won't pay you and he'll get an unpaid buyer strike from ebay. You still have your knife, so you really aren't out anything... as inconvenient as it is.

In the future, you can check the box that says "require immediate payment when buyer chooses Buy It Now option" - that way, the item is still available until it's actually paid for.

Cheers,
Lee
 
You can't leave buyers negative feedback, all you can do is report them as no pay and get credit for your selling fees. After a buyer has so many eBay will kick them off. I had a buyer jump and bid a few knives I had on there way up, then pay slow. Then the same buyer did it again and never paid at all. He was banned by eBay, as he was doing it a lot to others too. Then he comes back under a new account messages me, with a big BS story trying to get me to deal with him again. I just blocked him from bidding and moved on.
 
Last edited:
Yea I am glad that it wasn't a worse situation, but it just pissed me off how the guy couldn't even have the balls to just message me to let me know he's going to back out on the deal. Instead he just ignored all of my messages as if I would just forget about it.

I'm glad to hear there's such a thing as an "unpaid strike". When I checked this guy's feedback, it was all, "Wicked fast payment!", "Super fast payment!". That's why I believed him. I had to exercise a lot of restraint from sending him hate messages using a lot of colorful languages.
 
eBay is full of flakes, I'm sending back a "new" knife today that looked new in the pictures and arrived yesterday with all sorts of use related problems. The good news is, buyers mostly never give me a problem, but I have had to force a few returns on knives that were not as described.
 
jill jackson said:
eBay is full of flakes, I'm sending back a "new" knife today that looked new in the pictures and arrived yesterday with all sorts of use related problems. The good news is, buyers mostly never give me a problem, but I have had to force a few returns on knives that were not as described.
Click to expand...

I've almost never gotten a knife that was "as described", especially with the high end customs. They are always described as "brand new/mint" and they arrive looking like they've been carried.... or in some cases.... carried a lot.

I usually just let it go because it's just so hard to find those particular knives. Beggars can't be choosers, but I just don't understand why they can't be upfront and honest about it.
 
I wasn't to happy about not being able to give negative feedback either, which isn't right. I'm guessing eBay did that because of retaliatory feedback issues but leaves the door open for unscrupulous buyers.
 
If you aren't happy with a purchase and send it back, or give the seller negative, would you want them to have the option to leave you negative?
 
Make sure you let the unpaid item case run its course and don't close it early if the buyer leaves a response. That way ebay dings them for an unpaid item and they can't leave you feedback. I recently went through something similar. It was a pain in the rear and the buyer was deliberatly being a jerk.
 
The issue with Ebay is that it's 100% buyer oriented. Sellers are considered a necessary evil to Ebay, in my opinion. I'm convinced that if Ebay could, they'd remove the sellers from the equation altogether. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if at some point in the future, Ebay changed their entire model around. Maybe something like, the seller has to pay to ship the item to some sort of Ebay facility, where Ebay employees go over the item and THEY decide what it's worth, and THEY sell it, and then just send you some BS like, 60% of whatever they made. As a buyer, that would be awesome. As a seller, that would suck, because if you have ten people standing there, you have ten different sets of standards. That vintage whatever you have, that you know is worth $5,000? Yeah, sorry, Ebay thought it was worth $1,000 and so they sell it for that (free shipping!!!! Yay!), and take $400, and send you $550 (sorry, you had to eat the shipping!). And sorry, the item's gone, you can't complain. Price of doing business, guy!

Another thing that supports my theory is Ebay sucking profit for the seller out of the deal absolutely everywhere they can:

- Offer free shipping, or Ebay takes a percentage of what you charged for shipping.
- If you use Paypal, they take an additional percentage of the sale (and the shipping, because it's one lump sum in PP's eyes)
- Fees are charged differently according to different goods being sold.
- If a buyer is crappy, too bad, sellers can't leave negative feedback. (This results in buyers tending to be super snooty in communication, while you, the seller, have to be 100% courteous and polite, because the threat of your 100% positive feedback being ruined by this rusty starfish just because he decides you had an attitude is always looming over the transaction.)

The absurdity of it all is this. Sellers are constantly looking for Ebay alternatives because they're tired of getting dicked by dick buyers, but on the other hand, buyers won't use any of the Ebay "like" sites out there because they don't get the absolute royal treatment that Ebay gives them.

In an ideal world, you'd buy on Ebay, and sell on one of the other sites, like eBid. The catch-22 of that, is that the buyer base for you to sell to just isn't there.

Ebay is a huge racket, and it's never going to be fair to the seller, nor is it ever going to be knocked off its perch, unfortunately.
 
Last edited:
El_Toro said:
Make sure you let the unpaid item case run its course and don't close it early if the buyer leaves a response. That way ebay dings them for an unpaid item and they can't leave you feedback. I recently went through something similar. It was a pain in the rear and the buyer was deliberatly being a jerk.
Click to expand...

Yea I'm definitely going to let it go all the way through. I just have to wait 3 more days at this point before I can put my knife up for sale. The guy has resorted to just completely tuning me out. I don't think he even read any of my messages. Probably just closed his eyes with his fingers crossed hoping I would go away.

Crazy thing was when he messaged me to ask for an extension on the payment, it was 3 days before the California knife show. He lives 20 minutes from where the knife show was being held so I KNEW he was going to be there. I thought to myself how crappy would it be if he doesn't pay me for the knife he bought, but he goes to the knife show and sees something else he likes more and uses the money for that instead. That's what he essentially did but with a different buyer on ebay.
 
I agree 100% with all this ^^^^^. Its unfortunate, but its the biggest single audience you have. If you can't sell it there it's probably not sellable, unless Ebay prohibits the sale of said item.
 
Quiet is right. Ebay is totally geared toward the buyer. For this reason a seller needs to exercise every right one does have. This means enforcing the payment time period rules. After two days open a case. I recently had to do this and the buyer paid right away. Fyi, it has been more than 6 years since you as a seller can leave negative feedback. Like with any situation it is important to know the rules and circumstances one is in. Knowing what you can and cant do is the only way the OP could have avoided this situation. A red flag should have gone up the second defered payment was requested. At that point you should have opened a case the very second you were allowed by the rules.
 
craytab said:
Quiet is right. Ebay is totally geared toward the buyer. For this reason a seller needs to exercise every right one does have. This means enforcing the payment time period rules. After two days open a case. I recently had to do this and the buyer paid right away. Fyi, it has been more than 6 years since you as a seller can leave negative feedback. Like with any situation it is important to know the rules and circumstances one is in. Knowing what you can and cant do is the only way the OP could have avoided this situation. A red flag should have gone up the second defered payment was requested. At that point you should have opened a case the very second you were allowed by the rules.
Click to expand...

You guys are definitely right about that. Red flags did come up but I disregarded them because this particular buyer has quite a stellar feedback history. At the time I was unaware that sellers could not leave negative feedback so I assumed he would be good on his word.
 
jill jackson said:
If you aren't happy with a purchase and send it back, or give the seller negative, would you want them to have the option to leave you negative?
Click to expand...

That is the whole inherent problem with all feedback systems, they works perfectly when everyone has common sense and follows the rules. Sadly, it doesn't go that way because people love their retaliation over accountability.
 
eBay decided to stop letting sellers leave negative, because if you paid for the item, what else is there for a buyer to do? That doesn't make sellers happy when they don't get paid, but at least the unpaid item strikes will get the ones not paying banned after a few times.
 
Unfortunately, this is a story that has hit home quite recently to me as well. To the OP - sorry you had to deal with such shysters. The same happened to me about 4 weeks ago. Guy does a buy it now and I send him invoice after 2 days, nothing. His record is 100% and with recent transactions nonetheless. So I send him kind reminder everyday for two more days. Finally, knowing about the no negative feedback for buyers' rule, I put in an unpaid claim. It was such a hassle and time waste and totally discourages the Ebay seller experience. I knew immediately once Ebay implemented this "no negative feedback for buyers policy", the fairness scale had tipped. It essentially leaves way too much openess for abuse. I guess it would be kind of like, "Well, we won't seal our borders along this section of the Texas border for fear more retaliation from the drug cartels. When illegals come over, we will kindly swat them on the hand and waste our own time and gas money to bring them back. We will do this two times and mark a note on them saying they are never allowed back." Well, what do you think that will encourage?

Finally last sale, the guy hit Buy-it-Now and I sent an invoice 1 day later. I messaged him the next day kindly and still no response. Again, 100% perfect feedback. So, this time I didn't wait for a response as I saw him purchase another non-knife related item a day after mine. I just immediately re-listed the item. Two more days pass and I open a claim. In the end the buyer never paid and I guess got a negative strike? Big whoop. I ended up having to re-list the item and it didn't sell until after 2 relistings and for a lower price than it was definitely worth. This really hurts because it also sends a silent message to the whole Ebay buyer community that 'hey, the winning bidder changed his mind and so perhaps this item is not as good as the seller claims'. This is just a theory of course but why would Ebay implement policies that already put the sellers (their main source of income) at a disadvantage?

Rightly so, I will be contacting Ebay about this and giving them my thoughts on how the 1-way street of negative feedback policy harms Ebay. If many people do the same, Ebay will have no choice but to revert its policy back to the original.
 
UrFrndlyNebrhoodS said:
If many people do the same, Ebay will have no choice but to revert its policy back to the original.
Click to expand...

Sadly, this will never happen. Again, Ebay has made their decision. They wanted to be a place where the buyer has all the power, and all of their policies reflect this. And as I've mentioned, the seller really has no choice, because what's his other alternative? Amazon? Craigslist? One of the non-Ebay auction sites that no one goes to? All of those have more on the Sellers' Pro list than Ebay does, but the one entry in the Con list trumps the entire Pro list: all the buyers are on Ebay.
 
I don't see how it's possible to abuse the rating system as a seller. If the buyer pays you right away, positive. If the buyer lags but eventually pays, neutral. If the buyer flakes out and doesn't pay, negative.

I think the feedback system is more open to abuse with buyers. Sometimes people buy something and they have unrealistic expectations or they have buyers remorse and want to get a refund after playing with the item for a few days. So far as a seller I've had mostly good luck, but I've experienced a few incidents where you ask yourself..... "Seriously??"
 
If you don't like the way things work on ebay DON'T BUY OR SELL THERE. It's as simple as that.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top