Some good eBay selling Karma and a Question

[notoriousRB]

So I just recently started selling my collection on eBay, probably 3-4 months in. I sold a few cards recently where the buyers either didn't pay or requested to cancel the sale. That bummed me out as a newer seller. I followed Resolution center protocol and relisted both items. Wouldn't you know, both cards resold rather quickly. Both for more than the original sales, one for almost double!

Question for the more experienced sellers on here. How often should I expect buyers to not pay or cancel? Is this something that is rare or does is happen much more than believed?

[joey_peapod]

Depends who and what you are selling. It happens more often than not unfortunately. All you can do is open a case after 4 days and let them get dinged for a non paying bidder. I would only cancel the sale on a BIN right after if it was a mistake or whatever. If it went up for auction and they didn't pay I wouldn't cancel

[ToppsCollector1]

I need to learn how to open cases on eBay. There have been a few instances where I've had people just simply decide they aren't going to pay for the item

[Smash322]

Change your settings on who can buy from you. I used to have lighter restrictions and would probably have a 10% cancel rate. Knock on wood I'm probably down to 3%.

[notoriousRB]

Depends who and what you are selling. It happens more often than not unfortunately. All you can do is open a case after 4 days and let them get dinged for a non paying bidder. I would only cancel the sale on a BIN right after if it was a mistake or whatever. If it went up for auction and they didn't pay I wouldn't cancel

The one I did cancel was an auction. What's the benefit of not canceling? Is the benefit simply the ability to open a claim and get the final value credit? What if the buyer decides to pay after refusing to cancel, gets the item, and then opens a "buyer protection" claim against me? Doesn't eBay side with the buyer 99% of the time? Isn't this process also a giant PIA for the seller?

[notoriousRB]

I need to learn how to open cases on eBay. There have been a few instances where I've had people just simply decide they aren't going to pay for the item

Just go to the Resolution Center and open a claim. It's a fairly simple process.

[mfw13]

Question for the more experienced sellers on here. How often should I expect buyers to not pay or cancel? Is this something that is rare or does is happen much more than believed?

Like Joey Peapod said, it really depends on what you are selling.

If you are selling cards of prospects or active players, whose values can change rapidly from day-to-day, then more of your buyers are going to be people trying to flip cards for profit, and you will have more issues.

If you are selling cards of retired players whose values do not change much and/or change very slowly, you should have almost no problems.

[Chicosbailbonds]

Unfortunately it works both ways. I've had a much higher number of dealers not sending or refunding because they didn't get the price they wanted and I won with a min bid.

[shrevecity]

Depends who and what you are selling. It happens more often than not unfortunately. All you can do is open a case after 4 days and let them get dinged for a non paying bidder. I would only cancel the sale on a BIN right after if it was a mistake or whatever. If it went up for auction and they didn't pay I wouldn't cancel

No it does not happen more often than not. If it did nobody would ever sell anything on Ebay. Overall non-payers make up about 2 to 3 % of all Ebay says according to what most sellers will tell you. This month alone I have sold almost 500 items and opened my first unpaid item case yesterday. Last year sold just under 10,000 items and filed 34 cases and gave 12 strikes.

Sites like this tend to make it seem worse than it is. Of course many categories have different types of buyers. Electronics have probably closer to a 10%.

There is one category of dolls that unless you are one of 6 or 7 sellers you will have a near 100% non-payer rate on auctions. Then there are vintage postcards, I have sold over 20,000 of these throughout my time on Ebay and cannot recall one instance of a non-payer.

As far as canceling if they ask me before the strike is open I will cancel, would rather have them just go away than risk them actually paying and causing bigger headaches.

[roc21]

I need to learn how to open cases on eBay. There have been a few instances where I've had people just simply decide they aren't going to pay for the item

You can, and should set it to automatically open cases. You can choose #of days. I have mine at 4 days, then buyer gets 4 more to pay once opened, if no payment, case automatically closes and then just relist(can be auto also). Auto message is sent when case is opened. You don't have to do anything. I don't stress, I don't send any messages, just let the system work it out. I rarely get non payments though, (i think only 2x in roughly 300 sales)..I have had a couple of cancel requests also, I just cancel, relist and keep it moving, no lose to me, why stress and fight it. but I don't sell cards and that category seems to have alot of issues from reading on here all the complaints. GL

[notoriousRB]

So it looks like I'm getting the shaft for the third time in a week. This time another non-payment. Does eBay take any action with against these buyers after a claim is opened? I find it odd that two of the claims I've had to open are against users with 100% feedback scores with 100's of transactions each. Am I misunderstanding how that score is calculated? Doesn't seem like people that don't pay should have perfect scores.

[shrevecity]

So it looks like I'm getting the shaft for the third time in a week. This time another non-payment. Does eBay take any action with against these buyers after a claim is opened? I find it odd that two of the claims I've had to open are against users with 100% feedback scores with 100's of transactions each. Am I misunderstanding how that score is calculated? Doesn't seem like people that don't pay should have perfect scores.

All buyers have 100% since they cannot get negative feedback. Ebay does nothing when a non-payment claim is opened. Once an actual strike is given they will do something. You can set your blocks to stop buyers who have 2 or more strikes. It has been reported recently that Ebay will stop buyers with a few unpaid items from bidding until they either pay for items or 30 days have passed, but seen no confirmation of that.