Unpaid items disappear into eBay black hole
Having done a full stock check about six months ago my colleague John who trades on eBay as GMDC is rather annoyed to find that he’s got a number of items on the shelf which aren’t listed on eBay. Having tracked down the offending items it appears that many of them were unpaid items.
The trouble is that eBay aren’t particularly good at handling unpaid items, and often times the seller isn’t even aware that the item remained unpaid for as eBay now have an automated system to open and close unpaid items without any intervention from the seller.
Currently the only indication that you have an unpaid item for which the case is closed is to manually check the resolution centre on a regular basis. This is further compounded when you have a mix of stock items which are re-ordered on a regular basis combined with one off unique items which you’ll never have in stock again.
There are a number of solutions eBay could offer to solve this problem. One is to put unpaid items back into My eBay as unsold. For items which were on a multiple quantity fixed price listing the quantity could be automatically adjusted to reflect the unpaid item. If the multiple quantity listing has ended but been relisted then this becomes more difficult – should eBay add the unpaid item to the relisted item or should they add it to unsold items? The danger here is that if you see an unpaid item and relist it you could fall foul of the duplicate listing policy by having two identical fixed price listings running.
Inventory management on eBay has never been particularly good, but to have to do a complete stock check to find unpaid items, or to manually go through your eBay unpaid items in the Resolution Centre isn’t an efficient system.
Over a period of time it’s likely that all sellers will have unpaid items, and if they’re not tracked then the stock will remain on their shelves unlisted. What solution would you like to see put in place to indicate that eBay has automatically opened and closed an unpaid item case and you have inventory available to resell?
Stuart says
1:47 pm on 03/05/2011
Not to have the option of unpaid items would be a good start, you don’t get that problem on Amazon!
This causes us a lot of work, about 30+ a week we have to attend to.
We open the cases ourselves to stop issues and then once we close a case update the stock, but as you can imagine this takes up a lot of time and with 30+ a week we end up loosing quite a bit on listing fees to!
northumbrian says
1:51 pm on 03/05/2011
and this unpaid item assistant is fun
ebay systemcontacts and gives the buyer a chance to pay and after payment the buyer leaves a neg cos there pissed off
Gary says
3:25 pm on May 3rd, 2011
Never received a neg on the back of using unpaid item assistant although I don’t know how this affects DSR’s. If a neg is received then malicious feedback grounds for having it removed.
Surely you don’t loose on fees if correct process used as fees refunded by eBay if non payment strike issued?
Judging by comments I read generally I sense that I operate in a market with a low strike rate record, probably 1 in 300 sales.
eBay should publish monthly figures showing percentage strike rates in various catagories. If a seller is striking 30 of his customers each week then that seller either must have a huge number of sales, offer up vague terms and conditions, or be extremely unlucky!
If 30 of my customers recieved a strike each week I would soon run out of customers!
northumbrian says
7:51 pm on May 3rd, 2011
yep we may get the neg we got from a peeded off buyer removed though were not going to give the patronising pillock at ebay the chance to say no
BigPoppa says
7:59 pm on May 3rd, 2011
lol…I can imagine “patronising pillock” being an official job title at eBay…
Chris Dawson says
11:46 pm on May 3rd, 2011
I want that job title – where do I apply
Gary says
3:30 pm on 03/05/2011
In saying that unpaid item assistant could be improved and speeded up (instant?).
The reasons list for giving refunds does not include “item not received” in the drop down menu. Now given that this is probably the most common reason for refunding it seems daft that eBay don’t include this!
And why is the refund process part of unpaid item assistant anyway?
BigPoppa says
5:23 pm on 03/05/2011
My unpaid item percentage runs between 3.4% – 14% depending on time of year.
Our terms are clear, we only sell new items. The main reason for UID’s is the buyer simply not paying. Sometimes when we request to cancel the trans, the buyer refuses to cancel, duh! That really peeeeees me off.
Hereford United Fan says
5:25 pm on May 3rd, 2011
That really annoys me too. When will the shopping basket be fully rolled out and is it UK only?
Gary says
7:08 pm on May 3rd, 2011
I absolutely only open an unpaid item dispute in any situation of non payment. Why mess about?
Buyers should recieve strikes if they don’t pay. I don’t accept excuses. Everybody here should do the same. The friendly approach of cancelling the transaction more often than not backfires and creates more work. Buyers cannot refuse to cancel if an unpaid item dispute is opened and if they still don’t pay you cannot receive negative feedback.
You are gauranteed to get your fees refunded which now they are a high percentage of the total value is a lot. It is a luxury that few sellers can afford to take chances on not receiving your fee refund.
Warren says
9:21 pm on 03/05/2011
Buy it now items should only be removed from sale when the buyer pays for them. Most sellers on eBay don’t sell via auction anymore. eBay should update BIN sales as this will benefit sellers as well as buyers who change their mind. Is this a good idea or what?
menyon says
10:29 pm on 03/05/2011
Can’t keep track of inventory?
Fault of seller.Stop blaming Ebay.
Chris Dawson says
11:45 pm on May 3rd, 2011
Very easy to say that and in part you’re right. However when eBay automatically open and subsequently close and unpaid item there is nothing anywhere on eBay (other than the resolution centre) to indicate that the stock has gone missing.
Short of daily checking the resolution centre just in case an unpaid item case has been closed there’s no way to track the stock and that IS a short coming on eBay’s part.
BigPoppa says
11:51 pm on May 3rd, 2011
The problem with tracking inventory on eBay is a unique one. In every aspect of retail both online and off, a sale occurs when a buyer chooses to purchase and pays for an item.
On eBay this isn’t the case, a buyer can choose to buy an item and also choose to NOT pay until they decide to. eBay classes the sale as final once the buyer has chosen to buy NOT once that buyer has paid.
This daft process goes back to a time when eBay was mostly an “auction” website, a buyer bids, they win then they pay within a given time….
Unfortunately eBay decided to use the same “buying” process for BIN sales too, this should never have happened.
A sale is when a buyer pays for a product/service, only on eBay is it something else.
Warren says
1:12 am on May 4th, 2011
I think the problem is that eBay is still acting as an auction site. BIN listings shouldn’t be treated the same as an auction listing. eBays buying process is out of date with the way they have developed, as they have really moved to a BIN marketplace (for most of us). They should be more like Amazon.
BigPoppa, in the interests of SEO, what is the best amount of related products to be added to each listing on a website product page? I’m not sure of a figure myself and as you are more knowledgable on SEO than me I wondered if you had a recommendation?
BigPoppa says
8:38 am on May 4th, 2011
I wouldn’t think of it as a certain/ideal number of products. More like an amount of content.
For example, how are related products displayed on your product page, does it show just the product titles or a bit of the description as well, perhaps price also?
What we do is have 10 related products showing on each product page,only displaying the extra titles (no desc or price).
We also have it setup so that the related products change on each page refresh, keeping the extra content new but related.
Warren says
12:24 am on May 5th, 2011
BigPoppa, thank you for the reply. Mine shows the picture, title and price. I’m still trying to figure out SEO as according to one website I have 1200+ pages in Googles index, but according to Google I have 150 urls in there index. I’ve read that there may be an issuse with dupicate content but I can’t figure out why I would have pages indexed nearly ten times if I had duplicate content? The same site says that you should have the same amount of indexed pages you actually have. Can’t work that one out?
whirly says
8:07 am on 04/05/2011
OT
Anyone else unable to leave feedback at the moment?
I’ve got 20 to leave but just get “Sorry, an internal error occurred and we were unable to retrieve your sales record(s). Please try again.
“
Gary says
9:10 am on 04/05/2011
Can this be cleared up please.
For eBay are we saying that if an item is placed in the basket then stock numbers are reduced at this stage before a payment is made (I take it the answer is yes).
And that if an item in the basket remains in the basket and remains unpaid for and is never paid for, then the stock numbers in live listings with stock are subsequently not topped up when the item is removed from the basket by eBay as a result of non payment?
And that if you only have a listing with a quantity of 1 for sale then that listing is not automatically relisted for free if the basket item is never paid for?
If all this is true then I am bemused!!!
ebuyerfb says
1:54 pm on May 4th, 2011
From my understanding stock doesn’t decrease until the buyer pays because checkout via cart doesn’t let the buyer pay later. But as far as I know the cart is not yet mandatory hence it is still possible for unpaid fixed priced items to exist.
Gary says
11:17 am on 04/05/2011
eBay use an argument that buyers need to pay quickly else the item may no longer be available if others add item to basket and pay first. (ie item still available for sale until paid for and cannot be “reserved” by simply adding to basket)
How does this eBay argument stack up if stock reduced before buyer pays?
Really I am totally confused by all this.
fx says
11:46 am on 05/05/2011
But the new shopping cart is arriving no ?
So the unpaid items will be a bad memory… we hope.
John pemberton says
8:51 pm on 07/05/2011
I am sure gtc items also dont relist sometimes
Christian Braun says
3:25 pm on 11/05/2011
I follow the discussion with interest since we are very close to launch our marketplace for vintage and collectible toys (Chris was so kind to give some advice). It will have auctions (3 days payment window for buyers) and BINs (will go through check out which needs to be completed within a few hours otherwise the items go back on the “shelf”). That should get those NPB down!