Payment blocked by eBay

[d50wood]

I sold an item on eBay 10 days ago. The buyer paid by PayPal. According to eBay, because I was a new seller the payment would be witheld until the item was delivered. Can they do this?

The item was delivered about a week ago and my payment has still not been received. I have had extensive correspondence with the buyer, who insists he has paid and his paypal account shows it as 'pending'.  In the meantime a non-payment issue was instigated with eBay and subsequently closed. The seller now has an unjustified black mark against his name for non payment (and he has the item). How can I get this black mark removed, because it's an issue between eBay and PayPal?

I can't believe how badly eBay has handled this. You can criticise everything and everone online except eBay itself.

Can someone out there tell me how to to get my payment? And how to remove the unwarranted black mark against the buyer?

Dave Wood

[pixiesen2012 · Accepted solution]

when you sell the money goes to the email address that auto filled the payment field when you created the listing,

if you use a different email address for paypal you have to change it when creating the listing

click on 'sell similar' to see what email address is in the payment field

the buyers payment went there,

you cannot undo the non payment strike, but you can apologise to the buyer,

the buyer should be able to appeal the strike as they have proof they made a payment

[rusticrye]

Oh dear. You've made a right old mess of this, from beginning to end...

First of all, PayPal's 21-day payment hold does not prevent the payment from reaching your PayPal account. Nor does it show as 'pending' in the buyer's PayPal account. It simply puts the payment on hold in your account when it gets there. In the buyer's acccount, it will show as 'completed'.

If there is no sign of that payment in your PayPal account and you never received a payment confirmation email from PayPal, then that is because you included either the wrong PayPal email address on the listing, or it's the correct one but has a typo. That means the buyer's payment is floating around in the ether with nowhere to go, hence it showing as 'pending' in his account. As such, he will be able to see an option to cancel the payment.

However, he may not have to do that. Go to the sold listing in your Ebay account. Choose 'sell similar' to put it in edit mode. Scroll down the page to see what email address you included. If it's a valid one, add it to your PayPal account and the payment will pop through. If it no longer exists or contains a typo, tell the buyer to cancel the payment in his PayPal account. Then cancel the Ebay transaction, and relist the item with the correct email address so that the buyer can buy again (if he wishes - after all this, he may decide that he's entitled to a free item, and I wouldn't blame him...!).

Ebay didn't open an Unpaid Item case against the buyer. You did (read on to see why). You then went on to mark it as 'unpaid', and that gave the buyer an Unpaid Item strike.  Ebay couldn't care less whether a buyer pays or not - they get their selling fee the second an auction is won or an item is bought, not when the buyer pays. It seems you have your account set to automatically open UI cases after a set number of days, so change that if you wish (in Site Preferences in your Account) so that you can open them manually in future.

You cannot get a black mark removed from another member's account. Ebay cannot discuss any account with you except yours. The buyer will have to contact Ebay themselves.

@d50wood 

[d50wood]

Thanks. My first sale for some years now and made a right bollox of it!