How long do I have to wait for my Ebay winner to pay?

April 29, 2009 10:22 AM

How long do I have to wait for my Ebay winner to pay?

I sold something on Ebay but it's been 3 days and the buyer hasn't paid or responded to any emails. Someone else who bid is willing to still buy it.

How long do I have to wait before I can sell it to the second guy?

posted by Marsha to computers & internet (5 comments total)

You have to wait 7 days to open an unpaid item case.

You could always sell to the second guy through the second-chance offer system, but you're opening yourself up to negative feedback from the original buyer, even if you specified in your auction terms that you expected payment (or at least contact) within that 3-day period. eBay explicitly states that you shouldn't sell to the next-best bidder until you've taken additional steps to get payment from the original high bidder.
posted by holgate at 10:37 AM on April 29 [1 favorite has favorites]

You can look it up on Ebay terms of use here.
posted by jerryg99 at 10:39 AM on April 29

Yeah it sucks waiting around for people. Always put "Payment MUST be received within X amount of days unless arrangements are otherwise made" in your auction notes and "end of auction" notifications. That sort of helps.
posted by jerseygirl at 10:47 AM on April 29

Are you selling other items? Perhaps your buyer is waiting so that they can combine shipping. I do this all the time--though I usually email the seller to tell them.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 10:57 AM on April 29

As someone who bids on items days before they end, then generally ignores emails from ebay (and sellers) until I get around to logging in and paying for stuff in batch I can say that three days isn't enough time for me and probably other buyers as well.

It's not that I'm deadbeat bidder, it's just that I now buy a lot of things from ebay and I frankly don't have time to stop what I'm doing and log-in and pay every time an auction ends.
posted by wfrgms at 11:20 AM on April 29