Possible Solution to eBay Nonpaying Bidders
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If you are making money on eBay, then chances are that you will eventually have a buyer who doesn’t pay for the item that they purchased from you. These nonpaying bidders can be very aggravating, to say the least. About the only way to avoid them is to only list with the Buy It Now feature and require immediate payment. Good luck limiting yourself to this option! 
Yesterday, AuctionBytes published an interview with Steve Grossberg, President to the Internet Merchants Association. Steve threw out some interesting statistics regarding nonpaying bidders.
Steve mentioned that 6% off all eBay transactions end up with non-paying bidders. eBay puts their daily listings at 7 million on eBay.com. This translates to 420,000 nonpaying bidders per day on eBay’s US site alone!
Steve goes on to state that if you assume an average listing fee of $0.70, there is almost $300,000 per day in revenue for eBay just for these listings that end up with nonpaying bidders. Or, think about it this way: That is $107 million in revenue per year for eBay from sold items that never end up being paid for.
It is those that sell on eBay that suffer, not eBay itself, because of these nonpaying bidders. Yes, you can recoup the listing fee if you go through the nonpaying bidder process, but that is a royal pain in the butt! And we wonder how many sellers actually carry through with this. In other words, how much of that $107 million ends up lining eBay’s pockets?
Steve goes on to offer a solution to the problem of nonpaying bidders. He suggests that eBay should collect payments for those who sell on eBay. In other words, PayPal would become the automatic processor of all eBay transactions.
Steve doesn’t elaborate on this, so we will give our opinion of how this might work. PayPal would become the required payment method for all eBay transactions. This means that you could pay via credit card, e-check, bank transfer or PayPal balance, but it is all done via PayPal. One would assume that eBay would withdraw the funds from the associated PayPal account immediately once the auction is over.
This would really piss some people off! Think about how all of those that sell on eBay that have a thing against PayPal would react. If they are thinking of going on strike over the current eBay changes, they would all have coronaries over the thought of only being allowed to accept PayPal. This would definitely be the straw that broke the camel’s back for a lot of the small time eBay sellers.
However, if you are currently happy accepting PayPal, you probably think this is a wonderful idea. After all, who wouldn’t want guaranteed immediate payment once the item is sold? Think of all the headache and heartache this would prevent.
This is an interesting idea. Not that it is ever going to happen, yet still interesting. If you are one of the many that sell on eBay, what do you think of this idea? 
Image: FreeFoto.com
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