How to deal with problems that arise from eBay sales

Some people don’t want to get involved with selling on eBay because they have heard about nightmares of doing deals online where someone didn’t pay when they should have. 

First of all, there is no way anyone should send any item to someone to any buyer who has not paid as yet.  That is sort of an eBay custom, if not a rule.  Yes, this does put them in a position where the buyer sends their money with a chance of never seeing their items again, but hey, in eBay, everyone is vulnerable to some form of swindling. 

If you have a person who does not pay, there is a ResolutionCenter for that.  The site has a particular place where you can report on when someone does not pay.  The ResolutionCenter will say that you should maintain communication, but that doesn’t always happen.  If you report this non-paying person to the ResolutionCenter, then eBay will contact them.  If this person insists on not paying for this item after a certain amount of time, then eBay will send you back the Final Value Fee.  As far as I know, I don’t think that the buyer gets penalized for this.

Try to avoid situations on eBay when getting the item to that person is your fault.  For example, the other day, I was about to send an item to a person, but there was an address that was “Unconfirmed”.  I didn’t know what to do, so I contacted the buyer to send me a confirmed address.  Unfortunately, that buyer did not contact me.  Eventually, this buyer did contact me, and this buyer was angry as if I had made a mistake. 

You may have problems with sales because something went wrong with the shipping.  I once had a problem with an item that didn’t ship, and was sent back to me.  I’m glad the product itself was not damaged, or I may have had to give the customer a full refund. 

Truth be told, it is important to keep your buyers happy.  In the case that I stated before, I actually paid to have better and faster shipping to this Buyer because I didn’t want to hurt my Ebay sales.  You do want to have negative Feedback.  When a buyer wants to approach you for a potential sale, thenyou want to make certain to keep your Feedback level high. 

Pleasing potential buyers is tough as sometimes things happen that are “no one’s fault” but you still need to pay for them as if they are.  Sometimes you might have to pay to re-ship goods, or send the customer a full refund.  Some have even suggested that it is better to buy the item elsewhere and send it to the buyer.