Why would Ebay block payment to me for 21 days for an item I sold?

[mijaco8xpr]

Why would Ebay block payment to me for 21 days for an item I sold? Technically the buyer has paid, and I should deliver, but... we're talking about €1000+ - what guarantee do I have that I will receive the money in 21 days? I could risk losing a precious item...

[plpmr]

these are the UK boards and you are in Italy, best log into your designated site -   https://www.ebay.it/

[john1297576]

I expect rules are similar in Italy, but with all the Postal Delays it is worth thing about ebay's estimated delivery date.

Buyer can open a NOT RECEIVED CASE one day after the estimated delivery date and seller has 3 days to refund. In present circumstances this isall to easy to happen, and if you don't refund ebay will.

While the item can still turn up you have no way of forcing the buyer to pay again. Result no item, no money.

A m25jet says ebay is a very risky place to sell high value items.

[m25jet]

The most likely answer to your question is that you have only had four recent sales during the past year.  Payments are normally held for a period of twenty-one days for all new sellers, as well as those returning to selling on eBay after a long break.  Therefore, eBay are holding the money as a security measure, and you should receive your money after twenty-one days if there are no problems with the transaction in the meantime.

Although you are registered in Italy, the same rules are likely to apply to Italian sellers as sellers from the UK in that if you were to post your sold items out using a postage method that provides full tracking then you would stand a higher chance of getting your money released into your account sooner.  This is because if you use a tracked postage method and can prove that the item has definitely been received by the buyer then there would be no reason for the payment to be held back, and the funds from the sale would then be released into your own account.

With regards to selling an item costing 1,000 euros the best rule to remember when selling anything on eBay is "Do not list anything for sale that you cannot afford to lose."  If you lost an item that you had only sold for a very small amount of money it would still be annoying, but nowhere near as bad as it would be if you sold something for 1,000 euros and then ended up losing the money and the item because the buyer opened an Item Not Received case and eBay refunded the buyer's money in full.