If possible I would like someone to start a petition for the change in eBay non-paying bidder policy that I am proposing, or have this proposal forwarded to the appropriate magangment, etc. level within the eBay corporation. As many of you eBay sellers know, various bidders bid on items with no intent of sending payment. In its current state the eBay policy punishes the sellers in the form of certain fees which are non-refundable. Furthermore, non-paying bidders are simply sent "warnings" but may create new accounts at will. My proposal is as follows:

I propose that eBay require bidders to have a credit card on file, and when said bidder does not complete a transaction the fees associated with that auction (i.e. listing and end of auction fees) should be charged to the bidder. This would punish the bidder for non-payment and not the seller, as is the case now. Furthermore, it would promote a positive bidding environment.

Comments and suggestions are welcome.

that doesn't seem too unreasonable. i have to say, i've been pretty lucky in the past, out of the hundred or so things i've sold, i had only 2-3 people welch out, so far. usually it's nickle and dime stuff so my charge hasn't been that excessive and it's usually been more than absorbed by some of the really good transactions so i didn't even bother pursuing it. e-bay customer service can be such a pain to deal with too that i rarely bother contacting them if i can avoid it.
hard to see how this idea of yours could be abused by sellers since there is always the last resort of negative feedback (which works both ways).

sounds like a good idea, i wish you luck getting them to implament it.

I thought you can submit a non-payer form thing and get your fees refunded to your account.

When I created an eBay account I had to put a credit card on file.. but I think that's only if you use a web-based email?

You get the fee for the final auction price refunded, but not the listing fee.

Yes, you can, but his point was not just to get the fees refunded, but to charge these fees to the non-paying bidder as a penalty for not completing the auction. Also, you can't get your listing fees back, just your final value auction fee.

I agree with mijang that this would probably be a pretty good deterrant against non-paying bidders. However, I don't think it will happen. The biggest problem is that eBay does not want to require a credit card for bidder registration. If it's too much of a hassle to sign up an account, people won't join eBay as fast, and they want to continue to increase their user base.

Fortunately, however, they DO require a credit card on file if you open an account with an e-mail address from a free service (like Hotmail, Yahoo, Netscape, etc.), which are far too easy to get. This, I think, has cut down on bad bidders to some extent, and is probably the best we can hope for. I have noticed a good decrease in the amount of non-paying bidders in the last year or so, so hopefully it will continue to improve.


P.S. This is really in the wrong forum. The Store Forum, maybe?

Something I would like to see would be that if you file a non-paying bidder against somebody, something that would prevent them from leaving negative feedback as "punishment".

Wow all of the "DVD Talk" in this thread is making my head spin!

E-mailing a mod is a lot more constructive than comments like that, dentam.

Moving to Store forum.

--Heather
DVD Talk moderator

you will always keep the non payers, but this actually is a pretty good solution, hope ebay sees that as well.....

I whole heartedly agree w/ mijang... so where do we go from here; petition, individual emails, etc...?

Do we need this? Oh yea! I just got payment(May 7) for an item in an auction that ended Feb 15! I tried many times by email to contact this person then, after more than a month I relisted and resold the item. Now they send the $$$. If they/their card were charged from the beginning I wouldn't have to deal with this moron.

-skipper

Same exact thing happened to me this week. I totally agree with the original post. We definitely need a way to charge the non-paying bidder for the fees that we absorb.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Todd B.
[B]Not really... They only ask for a credit card number if it is a well known free web based e-mail (like the ones you said: Hotmail, Yahoo, Netscape...). There are hundreds of free web based e-mails and they can't know all of them. I registered last month using a free web based e-mail and I didn't have to give them a credit card number. With a search engine you can find web e-mails very easily.

Unfortunately this will never happen, because then E-bay accepts some responsibility for the auctions after they are completeted, thus changing the whole dynamic of their site and opening up a whole new can of worms in their legal department. In defense of the buyers, there are just as many crooked sellers out there, what would we suggest to improve this problem? If they misrepresent an item, does E-bay charge their credit card and refund the money to the buyer? No, so unfortunately they will continue to protect the buyer and seller the same way and let user feedback guide you in your transactions.

I would be fine with things remaining in their current state, if eBay would refund the listing fee associated with a non-paying bidder auction. Instead, under the current policy, as a seller I am forced to pay a fee for an item which was not sold. One could argue that I have the ability to offer the item to the next highest bidder, but of course this option is not always available -- especialy in the case of "Buy Now" auctions, if the bidder backs out, the only option remaining is accepting the fees and relisting.

With regard to some of your other comments, eBay does protect the buyer in the case of misrepresented items and such -- all items are protected under the eBay fraud department and insured.


[Edited by mijang on 05-09-01 at 09:43 PM]

I've had two non-payers (and a bad feeling that I'm about to have a third, been two weeks and no payment) Once I had another bidder so I sold it to him for his high bid, the other I just relisted and sold