EBay for Dummies (54 page)
Authors: Marsha Collier
Tags: #Electronic Commerce, #Computers, #General, #E-Commerce, #Internet auctions, #Auctions - Computer network resources, #Internet, #Business & Economics, #EBay (Firm)
Stepping things up a notch
If you don’t hear from the winner after a week, your next course of action is to contact the winner by phone. To get the contact information of an eBay member for transaction purposes only, do the following:
1. Click the Advanced Search link, which is next to the Search box on the top of most eBay pages.
You arrive at the Advanced Search area.
2. Click the Find Contact Information link, which is under the Members area in the left side link box.
3. In the Contact Info box, type the user ID of the person you’re trying to contact and the item number of the transaction in question.
4. Click the Search button.
eBay e-mails you the registered contact information of the person with whom you want to be in touch and
also sends your contact information
to that person.
Wait a day before calling the person. I like sending a last-chance e-mail after seven days that says you want to put the item back up on eBay if the buyer is no longer interested. Also mention that you want to apply for any credits you can get from eBay due to an incomplete transaction. If enough money is involved in the transaction, and you feel it’s worth the investment, make the call to the winner. eBay automatically sends your request and your information to the bidder, and that may be enough of a nudge to get some action.
If you do get the person on the phone, keep the conversation like your e-mail — friendly but businesslike. Explain who you are and when the auction closed, and ask if any circumstances have delayed the bidder’s reply. Often, the buyer will be so shocked to hear from you that you’ll receive payment immediately, or you’ll know this person is a complete deadbeat.
Other Possible Auction Problems
I’m not quite sure why, but where money is involved, sometimes people act weird. Buyers may suddenly decide that they can’t purchase an item after they’ve made a commitment, or there may be payment problems or shipping problems. Whatever the problem, look no further than this section to find out how to make things better.
The buyer backs out of the transaction
Every time eBay members place a bid or click Buy It Now, they make a commitment to purchase the item in question — in theory, anyway. In the real world, people have second thoughts, despite the rules. You have every right to be angry that you’re losing money and wasting your time. Remind the buyer that making a bid is a binding contract. But, unfortunately, if the winner won’t pay up, you can’t do much except apply for a final value fee refund and lick your wounds. Jump to Chapter 6 to find out more about buyer’s remorse.
Keeping your cool
By all means, if the buyer of your item tells you that the transaction can’t be completed, no matter what the reason, remain professional despite your anger. For one thing, at least such a would-be buyer has the heart to break the news to you instead of ignoring your e-mail and phone calls.
A seller’s nightmare
I was on Facebook messaging with some other eBay sellers (feel free to find me on Facebook — all my readers are my friends!) and one was bemoaning a recent transaction. A seller always wants to sell a product, and a cooperative buyer makes the entire process pleasant. This particular seller was having a problem receiving payment from a buyer. Here’s what she said:
“The buyer first said her boss opened a PayPal account for her under his e-mail address and she couldn’t access it and now her daughter used her credit card so she can’t pay me. I tried to tell her she can add another e-mail address to the PayPal account and make it the primary but . . .”
Is this fair? I recommended to the seller that she offer to mutually close the deal through eBay so she’d be free to resell the item to someone else. A buyer has a responsibility to carry out their part of the transaction as seamlessly as we expect service from the seller.
When Plan A fails, try Plan B, or even C — Second Chance Offer
You have several options if the winner backs out:
You can make a Second Chance offer: Offer the item to another bidder from the auction.
eBay offers a little-known feature called Second Chance offer, which protects buyers just as if they were the winner of the auction. This is a great feature that turned the previously eBay-illegal practice of side deals into fair and approved deals. You can make a Second Chance offer to any underbidder from your auction (at the amount of their high bid) for up to 60 days after the auction’s end. The steps that follow this list detail how to make a Second Chance offer.
You can request a full or partial final value fee credit and then relist the item and hope it sells again.
(I give you more information on requesting a final value fee credit and relisting your item later in this chapter.) Who knows? This bidder may actually
earn
you money in the long run if you relist the item and get a higher winning bid.
You can make a Second Chance offer in two ways. Just follow these steps:
1. Go to the completed auction page.
2. On the top of the page, you’ll see some transaction-related links, as shown in Figure 13-3. Click the Make a Second Chance Offer link.
You’re taken to the Second Chance Offer page, which has the auction number already filled in.
3. Click Continue.
A page appears showing all your underbidders and their high bids.
Figure 13-3:
Once an auction is completed, you will find a bunch of handy links on the page.
4. Select an underbidder (or more than one underbidder if you have multiples of the item) to offer the item to and then click the Review Second Chance Offer link.
When you make a Second Chance offer, you can give the recipient one, three, five, or seven days to take you up on the offer. You are not charged a listing fee for the item, but you are responsible for final value fees if the transaction is completed.
5. Check over the offer and then click Submit to send it to the underbidder.
Alternatively, you can go to your My eBay Sold area and click the drop-down menu next to the item listing on the page. Choose Second Chance Offer, as shown in Figure 13-4, and you’ll arrive at the decision-making page from there.
Figure 13-4:
Here’s where you may get out of a difficult situation by offering your item to one of the underbidders in the unsuccessful auction.
Leaving feedback after an imperfect auction experience
If the buyer never materializes, backs out, bounces a check, or moves slower than a glacier to send your payment (but wants the item sent overnight from Boston to Khartoum at your expense), you need to think about how you want to word your feedback. As a seller, you can no longer leave negative feedback, but you can still write in a comment for other sellers to read. But if you do, remember to stick to the facts and don’t get personal. You can always leave no feedback.
Here are a few feedback tips:
If the transaction was shaky but everything turned out all right in the end, go ahead and leave positive feedback, depending on how tough things went.
If a blizzard stopped planes out of Chicago for three days and that’s why it took a long time to get online to pay, take a deep breath, blame the fates, and leave positive feedback with a fair comment.
If the buyer was a living nightmare, take a long break before getting nasty — and have someone you love and trust read it before you send something into the virtual world that you can’t take back.
For more information on leaving feedback, check out Chapters 4 and 6.
The item you send is busted — and so are you
Uh-oh! Could it be true? Could you have sent the wrong item? Or is it possible that the crystal vase you thought you packed so well is a sad pile of shards at the bottom of a torn box? If so, read Chapter 12 as soon as you take care of this catastrophe so that you can get some hints on packing and insurance.
It’s time to do some serious problem solving. If the buyer met his or her end of the deal, you need to do your best to fix the problem. Your communication skills are your number-one asset in this situation, so get to work.
Picking up the pieces
No matter how carefully you pack an item, sometimes it arrives on the buyer’s doorstep mangled, broken, or squashed. News of this unfortunate event travels back to you fast. The buyer will let you know in an e-mail in about 30 seconds how unhappy he or she is. (Sometimes they’re not very polite, but stay calm.) Tell the buyer to locate the insurance stamp or paper tag that’s attached to the package as proof of insurance and then take the whole mangled shebang back to his or her post office.
Here’s what happens at the post office:
If the item is insured for less than $50.00, the buyer immediately gets a Postal Service money order for the value of the item.
If the item is insured for over $50.00, the buyer fills out a claim form, and you’re contacted to fill out additional forms. You need to show your insurance receipt to the good people at the post office. You have to wait 60 to 90 days for the paperwork to be processed before you actually get paid.
Of course, the post office won’t refund the postage. Hey, they delivered the item, didn’t they?
If a package is lost, you’ll know it because the delivery confirmation never comes through, and the buyer tells you the package is a no-show. You need to go the post office from which you sent the item to file for insurance. Then the Postal Service checks around. If your item isn’t located in 30 days, it’s declared lost, and there’s another round of paperwork and processing before you get your money. And no, you don’t get a return on the postage either.
If you have private package insurance the process is much simpler. You don’t have to contact the shipper; you merely have to contact the insurance company and place a claim.
Lots of eBay sellers seem to think that if a buyer doesn’t pay for insurance and the package gets lost in transit, than it’s not the seller’s problem. They couldn’t be more wrong. The Federal Trade Commission has a strict rule covering mail order merchandise delivery. The short version is that if your item doesn’t get to the buyer within 30 days, you must refund the payment. The long version can be found at the FTC Web site: