Ebay Unpaid Item Case – How I Deal With Non Paying Ebay Buyers

A few months ago I decided to attempt selling on eBay as a means to generate income and not just as a hobby. Eventually, I opened up my own eBay store. However, I noticed quickly that I was having numerous eBay buyers that were not paying after winning an auction style listing or a buy it now with best offer.

Buy it now best offer listings do not require a buyer to make an immediate payment if both buyer and seller agree on a price. This fact of eBayers not paying right away was a bit perplexing to me. Initially, I would manually open up an unpaid item case in eBay’s resolution center.

I started receiving quite a few items not being paid for days after these customers bought an item from me. I wanted to see if I could speed up this process or somehow stop this from occurring. Luckily, eBay has an automated unpaid item assistant.

In your eBay account you browse to “Site Preferences” and then under “Selling Preferences”. You then click on “Show” and then “Edit” to turn it on. You can choose anywhere from 2 to 32 days when a case will automatically become opened.

eBay Unpaid Item Case

Also, automated emails can be delivered for both when a case is opened and or closed. I decided to enable unpaid item assistant with a two day threshold. Now, when a buyer on eBay does NOT pay me within 2 days of an auction or buy it now best offer, then a case gets opened automatically.

That buyer now has 4 days to pay for an item. If they do not then a unpaid item gets recorded on their account. Sellers can then refuse to accept bids from and give offers to eBayers with unpaid items on their account.

Once a case gets closed then all ebay fees are refunded. There is one 30 cent fee from PayPal that does not get refunded. That is a transaction fee that PayPal charges.

From my understanding each buyer that does not pay costs me 30 cents which is not refundable. I have noticed that some buyers decide to pay once an unpaid item case is opened. However, I have had 4 buyers refuse to pay in just a few months of having unpaid item assistant enabled.

Here is eBay’s official unpaid item policy. Want to hear me explain how I deal with negligent buyers on eBay? You can watch my eBay unpaid item case video from my YouTube channel.