An effective way to minimize unpaid items. Feedback to eBay team.

[shrigovindam]

Hello sellers and eBay team!

I wish to drag your attention to quantum of unpaid items on eBay. To all sellers and to eBay, such sales pose unwanted cost and wastage of time. The objective of this post is to start a discussion to minimize unpaid items while maintaining traffic.

The unpaid buyers fall under these categories:

1.Apprehensive first time buyers.
2.Time pass buyers.
3.Notorious buyers.

Of these only first category buyers can be converted to actual buyers whereas rest two must be blocked. While category 2 & 3 buyers need to be blocked, they can not be identified per se. Moreover such blocking will hit traffic adversely.

What could be solution to this problem?

The concept that comes to mind is to impose an Earnest Money Payment (or any suitable name) at the time of bidding as a token, which could be adjusted suitably after end of auction or sale. In this system the buyer would be required to deposit a token amount (say 1% of bid amount, subject to a minimum and maximum) at the time of bidding in their PaisaPay account towards their bid. For winning buyer this amount would be adjusted in final payment whereas for rest of the buyers this amount would be refunded in their account. In this way we would be able to filter out buyers who do not wish to pay from the ones who wish to pay.

The concept could be fine tuned and modified further to suit the platform and a detailed cost analysis could be done by eBay to check feasibility of the concept.

Everybody is encouraged to contribute further.

[amitava123gems]

All items you cant. If the FVF exeeds say 25 bucks, then you may take earnest money. Less than that, just forgive and forget.
Ebay India buyer base is very very extremely poor. That is why I had to list in dot com. Pple say, amitava is an eTRS. Tell you frankly, I am very happy to remain a poor PS of eBay India. eTRS really I dont care. Sellers have a responsibility to make eBay India community viable.
Any suggestion should not affect buyer base.
Or eBay India may automatically cancel transaction of UPI. But will ebay accept that?

[rajelectroniks]

I have been following this thread but did not post my reply as I wanted to see the suggestions of the people to this idea. I had personally suggested the way out of avoiding non-paying buyers to my category manager in the year 2004 but nothing has happened because ebay does not care.

This idea is not originally mine, I have seen this being used on Indiatimes auction and I have used it many times to buy window a/c for my office. They do a simple thing, you can bid only when you have a credit card and you place your bid, if you win then the money is automatically deducted from your card. The same can be implemented by ebay India but why they don't want to something about it really surprising.

Even ebay stands gains by this as no UPI's will be filed so less work for ebay too. ******************
Regards.
Raj Electroniks.

[amitava123gems]

Dear Raj Electronics,
You want to exclude non credit card users.
But is that possible?
About 13% buyers are not using PaisaPay.
And many PaisaPay buyers use debit card.
Thanx,
Truly,
Amitava

[rajelectroniks]

Amitava Sir...

I for one does not to leave out anybody, more the merrier. It is up to ebay to increase the number of bank (again an issue where buyers and sellers have been begging for years to include more banks...read nationalised banks but everything has fallen on deaf ears) and accept more debit cards and more non-bank payment options like ITZ cards etc.

Let us start with something and then scale up, but problem with ebay is that it just does not care.
******************
Regards.
Raj Electroniks.

[amitava123gems]

Dear co sellers,
As far as buying power is concerned, Indian buyers are best.
But if you like Lait Modi or Sashi Tharoor, you got to find a system for Lallu Yadav like people.
US and UK buyers are miser.
Australians have been vindicated by indian press and politicians. They wont buy from us.
Chinese are good buyers but ....
German buyers are most trust worthy so far.
Africa and Russia dont have buyers.
I am in favour of expanding Indian buyer base in our community interest. Nothing like home site.
Thanx,
Truly,
Amitava

[anwarazad]

Though the idea concept is a great one, there are a mainly two inherent problems associated with the method of implementing it.

1. Using a credit card to make the initial payment to bid would mean non-credit card holder wouldn't be able to bid. Which would reduce the number of participants taking part in the auction.

2. There is a cost associated with every transaction, especially for credit cards. The more the number of credits and debits, the more fee the merchant (eBay) has to pay. Which would inevitably be passed on to us (The sellers) through hiked eBay fees.


An alternate solution would be as follows:

1. Just as there is Buyer SMS verification, Buyer Feedback filters etc. eBay can offer an additional Buyer filter of Earnest Money Payment.

2. Under this filter which is optional, buyers can deposit an X amount of money with eBay. This money can be transferred to ebay via, credit/debit card, online transfer, DD, check etc. The money is refundable to the buyer, at any time. Buyers can view the amount they deposited with ebay, on their account page.

3. Sellers can choose to activate this filter on their listing, where buyers account will be deducted, y% of the listed/winning bid price, when the buyer choose to purchase/win the auction for the said listed item. Upon fulfillment of full payment, the y% amount deducted from buyers account will be refunded back to buyer's account. In the event that the buyer does not fulfill payment, the y% will not be refunded to the buyer. The amount or part of it, can be used to pay the seller for loss of time and listing fee.

4. Buyers without the deposit, cannot participate in 'auctions listings' or choose 'non-paisapay payment options for Buy It Now listings', when this filter for that listing is enabled.

This is just an idea. I'm sure eBay with its creative staffs can come up with a better solution to ward off non-paying buyers.

[shrigovindam]

Please refer to my previous post in which I suggested PaisaPay’s role. The buyers who wish to pay by cheque can deposit in the account by cheque.

Further, the Earnest Money Payment and refund process being internal to PaisaPay will not have much transaction cost for eBay. This can become major strength of eBay which competition at present can not offer.

Indian online market is yet to evolve.

[anwarazad]

Oops.. missed reading that post. Sorry about that... 🙂

[shrigovindam]

@anwarazad: your input is really valuable.

eBay team must notice how users are concerned and contributing for development of the system. There are really valuable inputs.

Since PaisaPay account buffer may be used to pay EMP and refunds, transaction cost will be minimum. Remittance is available to buyer anytime upon request. A conditional charge can also be levied for remittance to cover the costs.

[rajelectroniks]

I beg to differ with Amitava sir, India buyers also great misers, if anybody thinks otherwise they are just fooling themselves. This ideas of EMD will not work because no buyer will deposit money with ebay without some kind of safety measure involved in safe keeping of the money. Immediately the question of interest will also come up that if ebay is keeping our money then ebay should pay interest on the amount to which ebay will never agree and they if one wants to close his account then ebay has the headache of making a refund. ebay will never take this headache on themselves. As far as forfeit of EMD payments, I don't think it is legally allowed.
******************
Regards.
Raj Electroniks.