How To Deal With An eBay Customer Who Has Not Paid

With eBay, you can make some extra money on the side of your job, or you can get rid of stuff you no longer want. But while eBay is great for selling your items, it is not always great for getting you paid for the items that you "sold." After all, on eBay, you do not get paid first and then give the customer the item - the way you would in a regular store - but instead, you have to wait for the person to pay you after they win the bid, and sometimes they can leave you waiting for a while!

If you are dealing with a customer who has won a bid but has not yet paid you, the first thing you should know is that they have four days to pay. 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. At the same time, however, eBay usually takes these matters very seriously if the four full days have passed without the payment.

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 you contact them and find them to be uncooperative or, worse, unresponsive, you will need to take the next step, which is filing a complaint with eBay's Resolution Center.

The buyer will be notified after you file a complaint with the Resolution Center, and they will again have four days to pay. During this time, they are allowed to contact you and ask for an extension or try to make other arrangements, but you do not have to agree. If it goes another four days and they still have not paid, this item will go down as an unpaid item.

At this point, you can list your item again, or you can provide a Second Chance Offer to anyone else who bid on your item and lost; this also means that the "unpaid item" will go on the buyer's 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!