How long to allow buyer to pay me?

[lostinwales]

Hello lovely ebayers I imagine this has been done before but I had a little look and couldn't see anything similar.

Right anyway, I put four items of clothing on and sold them all for good prices and three people paid very promptly allowing me to post everything away within an hour of the auction ending, very pleasing. I don't know how long to leave the fourth buyer who hasn't contacted me at all since the end of the auction on Friday morning. Was I very lucky with my first ever buyers and it is unusual to hear back so quickly or is Mrs buyer no four being a pain? I noticed she lived in Australia so I have messaged her with the correct p and p to her address (only £3.80 to send something all the way across the world, amazing) and I have sent her a message today asking if all is well and if there is a problem that's fine (pushy of me?). So how long should I leave it?

Whilst I have your attention, cheeky I know, how do you normally pack clothing, I bought some tissue paper to help things not crease but then panicked as it was from a craft shop and I thought it might rub on the clothes and mark them . I put the items in those plastic bag style envelopes from the post office which seemed somehow inadequate. Thank you for reading, any advice would be really appreciated.

As I'm on an Ebay roll at the moment, I thought I'd respond to you!
I always ask for payment within 5 days of auction end but, generally speaking, most pay within a few hours. Ebay rules state that buyers have up to 7 days to pay so your buyer in Oz has a little time yet. Once it reaches the 7 day mark I would message her once more and ask what her intentions are. If she's changed her mind it then depends on how kind you are as to whether you ask her for a mutual withdrawal from the sale or if you report her as a non-paying bidder.

As regards packaging, when selling my DD's clothing individually I do wrap them in tissue paper (never thought about rubbing off!), put a little "thank you" note in (no mention of leaving feedback) and then into a plastic mailing bag (I buy bundles of mixed sizes x 50 off Ebay). Don't get the grey ones though as there's been reports of items smelling of smoke even when sent from a non-smoking household

Hope that helps

Thank you very much GiveMe that is very useful. I'm obviously a bit of a slouch on the packing detail too, though when I got my tissue paper out of the packet it was very bright colours and I just imagined a small hole appearing on the wrapper and a bit of rain getting in and the lovely clothes coming out tie-dyed!

Tuesday now and I still haven't heard from my Aussie friend, if there's nothing by Friday I imagine ebay will be set up for this sort of thing, it can't be the first time it's happened. Working out if I'm mean enough to report someone as a 'non paying bidder'!

To either report as non paying bidder or to cancel, if you look to the right hand side of your item (in "sold items") you'll see a "more actions" drop down. Click on "resolve a problem" and it should take you through the stages. Just thinking about it, if you don't hear from her I'd be inclined to report - I've been taken for a mug so many times where I've just left it but really that's not doing other sellers any favours as they (including me) will have blocks in place for non paying bidders.