buyer says they're unable to make payment and been advised by eBay to contact me.

[reprobate_99]

I've checked my account and everything seems in order.  I've sold before without any payment issues but I'm not sure how to sort this out.

[m25jet]

Without a bit more information it's a bit difficult to say the least to give you an accurate reason as to why your buyer cannot pay.

If your buyer is a newly registered buyer then he/she will have limits in place on his/her account.  If this is indeed the case then if the buyer has already hit the maximum amount that he/she can purchase per month then the buyer will not be able to make any additional purchases until next month.

Another possibility is that your buyer has picked up two or more Unpaid Item Strikes during the past twelve months.  If the buyer has indeed currently got two or more Unpaid Item Strikes on his/her account from the past twelve months then if you've got your Selling Preferences set up to automatically block buyers whose accounts have been hit with two or more Unpaid Item Strikes during the past twelve months then this would be the reason why the buyer cannot purchase anything from you.  The only way around this for the buyerr would be if you were to add his/her User ID to your exemptions list if this was indeed the case, but there is always the risk that the buyer may mess you around as well with regards to making payment, so think carefully before adding a buyer's User ID to your Blocked Bidders List if you suspect they've been blocked for issues relating to non-payment for previous goods ordered.

In the event that your buyer is an international buyer and lives in a country that you have blocked as one of the destinations that you do not post to then this would explain why your buyer cannot pay.  If that is indeed the case then if you are willing to sell to the buyer go back to your Selling Preferences and deactivate the block on the buyer's country, then save the updates.  By doing this a buyer who lives in a country you'd previously blocked would then be able to pay, so long as you had included an international postage option on the listing.

If none of the above suggestions are applicable in this particular instance then please provide some additional information with regards to what kind of error messages the buyer is telling you he/she is seeing when attempting to purchase something from you.  If you could provide this information then it should make it easier for anybody reading these forums and responding to this thread to provide you with a more accurate explanation as to what could be causing the problem.

[rusticrye]

It's a standard error message - the buyer hasn't personally been told to contact you.

If all is well at your end (no-one else has had payment problems), then just tell the buyer to try again later - it's probably a temporary Ebay glitch (Sunday is Ebay's busiest day at normal times, let alone this close to Christmas).  If the buyer continues to have problems, though, it will likely be a problem at their end. They will have to contact their payment provider for assistance.

@reprobate_99