eBay tell buyers they owe more than they bid

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I received a rather irate email today from a customer asking “My offer was for £15 which you accepted. Why have you asked for £19.99?”

Not too sure what I done wrong I double checked. Sure enough I had accepted an offer for £15.00. Had I added carriage incorrectly? No the item was free post for standard delivery and I hadn’t offered alternatives other than collection in person.

I definitely hadn’t sent an incorrect invoice so was at a loss to work out what had gone wrong until I asked the buyer to forward the email to me.

It turns out that it was eBay’s Payment Reminder email, and sure enough it thanked the buyer for their purchase and reminded them to pay, but it was displaying the full price of £19.99, not the Best Offer price of £15.00 that I’d accepted and invoiced for.

It might be a minor point, and the Payment Reminder email will only go to customers that don’t pay promptly, but it’s still a concern. If buyers think that sellers are trying to rip them off and overcharge it can’t be good for a seller’s feedback and it can’t be good for the overall public image of eBay.

14 Responses

  1. I don’t see why people who buy from eBay don’t pay straight away. DFS offer 0% interest with nothing to pay till 2012 so I can’t see why eBay customers expect the same from eBay.

  2. Buy @ 6pm, & email the next day, saying ‘where’s my stuff’, is about it…..!!.

  3. Buy at 12 midnight and 2 hours later receive negative feedback becuase the advertised combined shipping savings had not been correctly calculated in the 2 payment requests received.

    eBay customer service say they are unable to remove feedback as it reflects how the buyer feels about the transaction. eBay system failures are the fault of the seller in eBay land.

  4. We are having a similar problem, we offer two postage services, next day at £5.99 then various prices under that for 1st class. We also offered collection in person for all items.

    Two months ago ebay started showing the collect in person for free first on invoices so customers would pay no postage and expect it to be delivered. We removed all the collect in person from all listings to stop it.

    Now in the last four weeks it has changed again to showing the next day option first for £5.99 so customers think they are being over charged.

    Contacted ebay support with little help!

  5. The philsophy with eBay has to be to keep it simple and minimalist with no options or best offer arrangements and a single shipping option. And even forget about item specifics as your item will still be found without these (what % of eBayers use item specifics to search?)

    That keeps issues to the absolute minimum.

    I wonder what would happen if eBay gave a fee discount to sellers who only use basic functions without options or item specifics or bells and whistles?

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