14. Dealing with Deadbeats and Disputes
In this chapter, you learn how to deal with potential problems when selling on eBay.
→ Dealing with Nonpaying Buyers
What do you do when someone buys something from you on eBay but then doesn’t pay? What if someone doesn’t like the item they purchased? Or if it doesn’t arrive or arrives damaged?
If you’re selling on eBay, you will eventually have to deal with complaining customers and deadbeat buyers. Is the customer always right? It all depends....
Handling Buyer Complaints
Although the majority of eBay sales go off without a hitch, you might occasionally run into a buyer who has issues—some of which might be legitimate beefs. Even if you pack and ship an item with utmost care, it’s possible for the item to get damaged in shipment. Maybe an item never arrives at all. Maybe the item wasn’t exactly what the buyer thought he was getting. Maybe the buyer is a loud, complaining, major-league son of a rutabaga, for no reason whatsoever.
In any case, if you have a complaining buyer, you need to do something about it. Most dissatisfied buyers will let you know about it, either via private email or eBay’s messaging system. If you receive a complaint from a buyer, here are some of your options:
• Ignore the complaint. If you specified “all sales are final” in your item listing, you don’t technically have to do anything else at this point. Of course, complaining customers tend to leave negative feedback, and might even complain to eBay about you, which is why I don’t really recommend this option.
• If the item never arrived, put a trace on the shipment with the shipping service, if you can. (In other words, make the shipping service—USPS or UPS or FedEx—pay for their mistake.) Know, however, that if you didn’t pay for tracking or insurance, there might not be much the shipping service can or will do.
• If the item was insured, you can initiate a claim for the lost or damaged item.
• Negotiate a lower price for a damaged or disappointing item, and refund the difference to the buyer.
• Offer to refund the purchase price if the item is returned to you. When the buyer returns the item, you refund the price paid—either with or without shipping charges included, your choice.
• Offer a full refund on the item, no questions asked, no further action necessary. (With this option, the buyer doesn’t have to bother with shipping it back to you; this is the way Nordstrom would take care of it.)
Most important are those complaints that escalate to the eBay level. Under either process, a buyer can file a dispute if he doesn’t receive his merchandise within 10 days of payment, or if the item is significantly different from what was described in the item listing. (This last eventuality would cover any damages during shipping.)
Fortunately, nothing major happens immediately when the buyer files a dispute. When a dispute is filed, eBay notifies you (the seller) of the claim and asks for a response; no formal action is taken until 30 days after the end of the listing. If, at that time, the buyer hasn’t received the item (or the two of you haven’t communicated and worked something out), the buyer has the option of escalating the dispute into a full-scale claim.
At that point, eBay can get involved and refund the buyer’s money and take further action against you as a seller. That action could result in a formal warning, a temporary suspension, or being kicked off of eBay completely. Of course, it’s also possible that eBay could evaluate the situation and take no action against you. The outcome depends on the facts presented.
Obviously, if you’re doing your job right, no complaint should escalate into a payable claim. If you do find yourself on the wrong end of a dispute, make sure that you get in touch with the buyer and tell him how you’re going to respond. The key here is communication—and trying to work out what’s right for both parties in this specific situation.
Dealing with Nonpaying Buyers
When you sell a fixed-price item, you don’t have to worry about buyers not paying. They have to pay when they click the Buy It Now button, or they don’t buy the item. Which means, of course, that you always get your money.
It’s different with auction listings. When the auction ends, the high bidder is notified that she won the auction and should go online to pay. Most auction winners pay immediately or shortly after the end of the auction. But a select few high bidders don’t pay immediately—or at all.
What do you do when you have a nonpaying buyer—sometimes called a deadbeat bidder—in one of your eBay transactions? Because you don’t ship an item until the buyer pays, you still have that item—you’re really not out anything, other than your time and (perhaps) some eBay fees. Still, you need to notify eBay about the issue, and then decide what you want to do with the item that the nonpaying bidder ended up not buying.
Follow Through on an Unpaid Item
When you have a high bidder not pay within a reasonable period of time, here’s what you need to do:
1. Contact the nonpaying bidder, via eBay’s messaging service.
2. Open an unpaid item case in eBay’s Resolution center, to get your fees refunded.
3. Close out the dispute to receive a final value fee credit.
4. Relist the item in a new auction.
Contact an Unresponsive Bidder
As the seller, it’s your responsibility to contact the high bidder in your eBay auctions. Of course, eBay notifies the high bidder at the end of the auction, but you should also send this person an invoice for the item, which you can do from the My eBay console.
If the high bidder hasn’t responded within three days, send him an eBay message reminding him of his need to pay. This message should also give the buyer a deadline (two days is good) for his response.
If another two days go by without a response, send a new message to the buyer. This message should inform him that if you don’t receive a response within another two days, you’ll be forced to cancel his high bid and report him to eBay.
If a full week goes by and you still haven’t heard from the buyer, you can assume the worst. Which means it’s time to bring eBay into the picture.
Open a Case in the Resolution Center
The way you notify eBay about a deadbeat bidder is to open a case in eBay’s Resolution Center. You can file a case as soon as two days after the end of the auction, up to 32 days after the listing ends. (You can file immediately if the buyer has closed his eBay account.)
Go to eBay’s Resolution Center, located at resolutioncenter.ebay.com.
Go to the Resolve a Problem section, and then to the I Sold an Item section. Select I Haven’t Received My Payment Yet.
Click the Continue button to display the next page. Select the item for which you haven’t been paid and then follow the onscreen instructions to complete your claim.
How Long Does It Take?
After open your case, the buyer has up to four days to make a payment. Of course, the buyer can also contact you separately to make other arrangements or ask for an extension, none of which you have to grant.
Close Your Case
After you’ve opened an unpaid item claim, eBay sends a message to the bidder requesting that he pay for the auction item. If the buyer pays within four days of when you opened the case, eBay registers the payment, notifies you of such, and closes the case. You can then ship the person the item he purchased.
If the buyer does not pay within four days, you have to manually close the case to receive a refund of your eBay fees. You have up to 36 days after the end of the auction to close the case and receive your refund. (If you don’t close the case within 36 days, eBay automatically closes it and does not refund your fees.)
To close a case, go to the Resolution Center and click the link for the case in question. When eBay asks if you’ve received payment from the buyer, click No and, when the next page appears, click Close Case. eBay credits your account for the final value fee for this listing.
Fee Refunds
eBay credits your account for the final value fee due on any successful unpaid item dispute. eBay does not credit or refund any listing fees paid. Instead, eBay lets you relist the item without an additional listing fee—which is kind of the same as crediting you for that fee.
Relist Your Item
When a bidder doesn’t pay, he effectively backs out of the auction. This leaves you stuck with the item you thought you had sold. Assuming that you still want to sell the item, what do you do?
The simplest approach is to try to sell the item again by relisting it. See Chapters 9, “Selling Commodity Items at a Fixed Price,” and 10, “Selling One-of-a-Kind Items via Auction,” for more details on how to relist unsold items.