How To Deal With An eBay Customer Who Has Not Paid

Using eBay can be a great way to make some extra money, or even just to unload some of your old, unwanted stuff. 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, 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. At least four full days must pass after the end of the auction, and although this can seem like ages when you are waiting for a payment, eBay will not take your complaint seriously until this point. 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. 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!