First time seller, bidder has placed the highest bid and has won, but is not communicating

[samisark_0]

Dear all, 

I am a first time seller. I have been able to sell my item on ebay and the highest bidder has won the item. This was more than 48hours ago. I have contacted the bidder to share with them the invoice and remind them to pay, but there is absolutely no correspondence back from the seller. What are my options now? What should I do next?

Thank you all so much for your support and advice. 

Regards, 

Sami

[plpmr]

adding to the advice already given -

If the buyer asks for your PayPal details to pay for the phone don't respond as its the start of a scam.

[samisark_0]

Thank you for your advice. I foolishly and naively send my paypal email address without the buyer even asking me as I thought I was supposed to. I am not sure if this will lead into them scamming me.

[plpmr]

OK, so - they must pay through the listing and you then go into your PayPal account and make sure the money is there. Don't just accept an Email saying you have been paid.

[pixiesen2012]

you have sent an invoice and the buyer has 48 hours in which to pay before you can do anything else,

they don't have to 'communicate' with you, all they need to do is pay,

if they don't you can open a non payment case 48 hours after the sale

• Resolution Centre

[m25jet]

If the bidder fails to respond within the next twenty-four hours to either make payment or request a cancellation of the sale then open an Unpaid Item Dispute.  There's no need to send the buyer any reminders to pay - eBay will do this automatically.

If the buyer subsequently pays for the item then the Unpaid Item Dispute will close automatically, in which case you will need to despatch the item to the address supplied to you via PayPal.  Given that the buyer's been problematic so far I'd advise you to use a postal service that provides you with a means of being able to put a trace on the item and find out what's happened to it.  If you were to post the item out using a service that doesn't provide you with any means of being able to track the parcel then you'd lose the case should the buyer start making allegations of non-receipt.  If you have a tracking number and can prove successful receipt of the item to the address provided by PayPal eBay would decide the case in your favour and the buyer would not be able to leave you any damaging feedback.  Any feedback that he/she may have left prior to the case being found in your favour could be successfully removed so long as you got onto eBay quickly enough to request its removal.

In the event that the buyer still hasn't paid you by the time eBay give you the option to close the case don't give the buyer any further time - just close the case down to get your Final Value Fees refunded.  A question will appear on the screen that says something along the lines of "Did the buyer pay for the item?"  Tick the box that says "No", then submit.  You'll get your Final Value Fees refunded in full and the buyer's account will be hit with an Unpaid Item Strike.  If he/she gets two Unpaid Item Strkes within the space of twelve months then the buyer will find it almost impossible to buy anything on eBay, as most sellers have their blocks set up to automatically block buyers with two or more Unpaid Item Strikes on their account during the past twelve months.

Whatever the final outcome of this case, I'd advise you to add this buyer's User ID to your Blocked Bidders List so that he/she cannot purchase anything else from you in the future and cause you any further aggravation.

Finally, if you do have to close the case against the buyer without receiving payment then once the case has been completed you can then make a Second Chance Offer to one of the people who placed a bid and lost the auction should you choose to do so.  If you were to do that and the person you'd sent the Second Chance Offer to decided to purchase the item you could still end up selling the item, and you wouldn't even have to relist it again in order to do so.  The best bit of all, though, is that you would not be breaching any of eBay's selling rules if you decided to do this.

[samisark_0]

Thank you so much for your feedback and your advice. I will follow the steps you have suggested. I will wait until tomorrow morning, and if I still haven't heard anything then I will open an unpaid item dispute. If I do hear back from the buyer, I will post the item using a tracking method to make sure that the item is tracked. I realise that I should have offered that on my item in the first place, but I cannot see an option on delivery options for a tracked parcel with royal mail over £50. Am I looking at the wrong place?

Another question, am I right to say that between July 1st until August 1st you are able to list items without any fees? Does that mean I didn't pay any fees or that I have?

Thank you
Sami

[m25jet]

Hope the information proves to be useful. I remember when I first started selling - I felt as though I'd been pretty much thrown in at the deep end, and there's no fun in having to learn lessons the hard way when it comes to selling on eBay.

With regards to offering a postage option that will cover you for items of over £50.00, if you can't see the option on the listing form then I suspect that you're using the wrong one. Instead of using the basic listing form switch to the Advanced Listing Form - also referred to as the Business Selling Form - and you will find that there are multiple postal options available to choose from, including the option to send via Royal Mail Guaranteed Next Day Delivery 9:00am, and also Royal Mail Guaranteed Next Day Delivery 1:00pm. Both of those options will provide you with a far greater level of cover than either basic First Class or Second Class postage, or even the tracked and signed for equivalent of First Class and Second Class postage. That way if something goes wrong and the item gets lost or damaged in transit you'll stand a much better chance of getting some decent compensation from the Royal Mail, as opposed to the book of stamps you'd probably only receive if you sent an item worth £50.00 or more via a more basic postal option than Guaranteed Next Day Delivery.

One way to ensure that you don't lose out on the postage costs, especially if you're listing the item as an auction, is to include part of the postage costs into the starting price so as to ensure that you don't lose out on the postage. That way you can keep the displayed postage costs at a level which seems acceptable to most people.

With regards to free listings, all sellers are allowed to list a certain amount of items for free without incurring any selling fees. When I first started out (which was quite a few years ago) I had an allowance of ten free listings per month or £100.00 maximum in monthly sales, whichever came first. Once I became more established as a seller on the site eBay increased my listing allowances, which will more than likely be the same case for you if you manage to build up a good run of positive customer feedback.

In addition to the above, once you've had ten positive buyer feedbacks from national buyers eBay will allow you to make your listings available to international buyers as well. Although you may not have many free listings left from this month if you haven't used them all up yet, if you wait until tomorrow (Saturday 1st August at the time of posting this response) your selling allowance will automatically be reset to its current maximum again. If you've still got some free July listings left then you can still use those to list some of your items, then list the rest from tomorrow. That way, so long as you've not used all of July's allowance up, you can list some of your stuff today and the rest tomorrow or after that and you will be able to get more items listed using less of August's selling allowance.

If you choose to select optional extras on the Advanced Selling Form, such as the zoom function which allows potential buyers to get a really good close-up of the photos, then you will have to pay extra for using that option, as well as other options such as adding the Best Offer function to your listings, but other than that so long as you don't go over your free listings allowance you shouldn't have to pay any extra fees for each listing. If I remember correctly I think it's 35p per listing if you go over the maximum free listing allowance.

Good luck with your selling on eBay, and if you need any further advice on anything at any point feel free to post another question up on the boards.