Sold items but buyer not paid

[Bakingnovice]

Hi

Miraculously I managed to sell 4 of the 10 items I hastily listed last weekend. However, on each item it says buyer has not paid. Should I contact them and tell them I will post item once they pay?

Also, is it better to list items for 10 days?

Finally, as I'm a new seller it looks like I've overestimated postage. Will the buyers go mad? As a buyer myself I never question postage as it is what it is. If I dont like it I don't buy.

[fergoose]

just send an invoice, then in 4 days if they haven't paid open unpaid item cases. Really no need to tell them you won't post until they pay, that is kind of a given really.

If they pay, once posted if you have over-estimated the postage you refund the difference via paypal. Yes, you could keep the profit but it is against the rules and you are likely to get low stars and poor feedback for it.

[Bakingnovice]

It's saying payment pending for one payment. I've asked the buyer to check the email address and send me it. I've logged into my account using the email so can't see why it won't work but can't think of another reason why payment would be pending?

Should I be setting up PayPal to accept payments? If so how do I do this? Also, how do I add another email to the account?

Many thanks! I never would have got this far without your advice fergoose.

[fergoose]

wrong email address on the listing then? You need to add the wrong email address to your paypal account to accept the payment. Click on the order details for the item, it should show the email address there.

[MirandaWest]

Do you have PayPal?

[Bakingnovice]

It appears that I needed to verify my account to accept payments. All done. Thanks for helping this eBay idiot! Re the postage, if the overestimate is by 20-30p should I still refund or put this down to material costs? Do PayPal charge for refunds? I'd rather refund but I'm so bad at all this I would have to find out how to do a refund first!

[heronsfly]

I purchased, and paid for an item a little while ago, shortly afterwards i got a message from pay pal saying the payment wasn't being accepted,I contacted the buyer and we sorted it out between us, it was a problem with his pay pal settings, very similar to what you are describing,so maybe they have attempted to pay,you could maybe send them a polite message ?

[fergoose]

you just log into paypal, click on the payment, scroll down and then enter the amount you want to refund.

30p I wouldn't bother, but much more than that I probably would.

[Bakingnovice]

Thank you everyone. Hopefully next time I will know what the hell I'm doing.

[lljkk]

Should I contact them and tell them I will post item once they pay?

Invoice them, some people just will not pay until you invoice.

Also, is it better to list items for 10 days?

I suspect 10 day listings are only best for rare unusual items. 3 -7 day listings better otherwise. Most of my listings are 5 day.

I've overestimated postage. Will the buyers go mad?

In my experience, buyers do not give a toss. Will not neg you, will not expect a refund, may even be confused if you offer a refund, will not mark you down stars: just as likely to give you low stars on postage if you had badly undercharged; plenty of the regular sellers on here say that happens to them a lot.

But agree it depends on amount overcharged, e.g.: £5 overcharge & you are running a high risk of complaints; I overcharged £5 once & had a quite nice set of feedback, though, was still a bargain buy otherwise.

[MirandaWest]

Overcharging £5 would be much too much - as a buyer I would get in touch and ask for a partial refund at least. If I'd overestimated by up to 50p I'd leave it but above £1 I would definitely refund. Otherwise it could be considered fee evasion as you don't get charged eBay fees on postage.

[Bakingnovice]

Lljkk - where can I find an invoice to send them?

Postage was overestimated by 20p so will just leave it.

[lljkk]

To invoice Look for an option called "Send payment details".

You get charged paypal fees on postage, and paypal is just a branch of Ebay, so I humbly submit that Ebay does get a % of postage after all. Better than getting charged final valuation fees on postage, that really gets my goat.