Tips For Dealing With A Customer Who Has Not Paid You On eBay

Using eBay can be a great way to make some extra money, or even just to unload some of your old, unwanted stuff. But in addition to being great for selling your items, eBay can sometimes be not-so-great for getting paid for the items you "sold." After all, unlike a regular store - where you are paid first, and then you give the customer the item - you have to wait for a person to pay you after they win the bid; and sometimes, this can leave you waiting for a while!

Customers on eBay have four days to pay, which is important to keep in mind if you are dealing with a customer who has not paid you for an item of yours they won. Although four days can seem like ages when you are waiting for the money, eBay will not accept your complaint unless at least four full days have passed from the end of the auction. If four full days pass without a payment, however, eBay starts to take it very seriously, doing what they can to help resolve the issue.

The first thing you need to do is contact the buyer directly and see if you can work things out with them if they have not paid you. If they are uncooperative or - perhaps even more frustrating - unresponsive, you then need to take things to the next step, which is filing the complaint with the Resolution Center at eBay.

The buyer will again have four days to pay after you file a complaint with the Resolution Center (and will also, of course, be notified of the complaint). Although they are allowed to contact you and try to work out an extension or another arrangement during this time, you are not required to oblige. The item will go down as an unpaid item if it has gone another four days without any payment from the buyer.

This means that you can resell the item (or you can give a Second Chance Offer to one of the bidders who lost), and it means the buyer will have an "unpaid item" on their account. And keep in mind: you can look at people's accounts when they are bidding, and if you run into a bidder with an "unpaid item" on their account, you can block them to keep this from happening to you!