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.

[onlinejewellerymart]

yes i do defiantely agree with shrigovindam,buyers now-a-days dint pay and just left negative feedback.i think buyer must be asked to enter there credit/debit card or online bank a/c details the moment they enter for bidding.as they bid for and payment should be automatically debited to there a/c and so gradually non-paying buyers are out and also i request ebay to accept other banks like sbi,bob,pnb,dena bank,etc for online bank payment.because lots buyer are having a/c in these banks rather then hdfc,icici or citi bank.
thanks

Everybody is required to comment on this idea for better improvement.

[bhushan.mehta]

@shrigovindam: this is such a good suggestion and a practical one too, rather than the long useless rants that many other sellers like to indulge in. eBay should definitely look into this.

i think the buyer ought to pay 10% of his maximum bid in order to proceed and the balance to be paid on winning the item. if he does not win, the same gets refunded to him. if he wins and does not pay the rest within time-lines, he loses his 10%. that way only serious buyers who mean to pay will bid on the items. -- Signature: I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.

[shrigovindam]

Thank you guys for supporting the concept.

@bhushan.mehta: I'm not sure if we can we forfeit a buyer's money legally. Further, the idea is not to impose any penalty on non paying buyer, but only to filter out notorious and timepass buyers.

Everybody please contribute.

[mobile-phones-etc]

Good topic. here is my little bit.
eBay is a platform where buyers come with confidence and place their trust with them without any apprehension for the reason they know eBay treats buyers as king.

agreed that there are lot of time pass and notorious buyers, but most of UPI are because of Case 1 i.e. Apprehensive buyers. If we ask all buyers to deposit the earnest money first, the whole sense of eBay will be lost. The trust will be gone. Remember 99% people are good and have clear intention, why to make the 99% people suffer for 1% of the bad lot. eBay doesn't charge any set up fee from the sellers as well, there are 1% bad sellers as well. eBay is not making any seller suffer for the same reason, they believe over all 99% of the lot is good and they are ok with 1% of the bad lot.

If this earnest money thing is introduced, I am sure the traffic will be reduced drastically.

Just my little bit.

Regards buy genuine mobiles at unbeatable price.
http://stores.shop.ebay.in/Mobile-Phones-ETC

Change is state of mind..but inevitable.

[amitava123gems]

How to cure DSR madness?????

[shrigovindam]

The percentage distribution of buyers in the three suggested categories is better known to eBay or might be a topic of research. It is quite clear that timepass and notorious buyers constitute a major chunk.

There are some experimenting buyers too, who can be included in apprehensive buyers category. These buyers if treated well may become real buyers.

What fellow seller mobile-phones-etc has mentioned is one of the community values of eBay. We do believe in people, but in a business dealing asking for a commitment is not against any values.

Traffic will not be reduced as there is no restriction on browsing, registering or communicating. Commitment could be asked only when a user enters into a deal. This is not against any ethics but in tune with standard business practice.

Moreover, eBay is a business platform and we should be talking of quality traffic instead of raw numbers. Managing traffic also has an inbuilt cost and it is customer who ultimately pays every cost.

The concept would be beneficial for serious buyers too as the unpaying buyers only increase the item cost and vanish or make an item unavailable to the real buyer.

This is only an open discussion where everybody can contribute. Buyers can also contribute to this. We are all sellers of some things and buyers of all other things at the same time.

DSR madness would automatically be taken care of as only real buyers would transact. The rating itself would become more reliable.

Please help in refining the idea.

[sanjmeh]

Credit card number is a big NO. It will shoo away genuine buyer (I am one). Earnest money is a good idea but the process of remittance/ refund must be quick. Also remember the negative feedback a buyer gets is a deterrent for the buyer to be able to buy future items. What does ebay's statistics say? How many percent bidders back off after winning an auction?

[allurejewels.in]

I think First time buyers are always apprehensive. The suggestion by Shrigovindam is really good. However in other cases, just like DSR, there should be a buyer rating too..we can rate the buyer on the basis of - swift payment, number of unpaid item strikes and our overall experience.. and even sellers should be allowed to leave negative feedback for buyers.
Recently, a buyer has left 3 negative feedback for me, saying that I did not reply to him mails, where as I have sent him the payment information on the same day. He seems to be new to eBay, and instead of waiting for the reply, he has left negative feedback. Community court is helpful in these matters, it takes time..and for those 2 weeks, I will have a lower feedback percentage for no fault of mine. There are buyers who will just look into the feedback percentage, and decide to shop elsewhere. Who is responsible for my loss? eBay needs to educate its buyers too. Otherwise negative feedback will be used as a weapon to blackmail the seller.
Business is two way..and its high time eBay takes an action about it.

[shrigovindam]

I don't think it is allowed by the system to store credit card information. It is big NOOOOOOOOOO.

PaisaPay can play a role here and an automated refund process can be developed. A PaisaPay buffer money account can be opened for the buyers, from which they could pay the earnest money and to which refund could be credited back.