Sending a Payment Reminder to a Forgetful eBay Buyer

If a buyer is slow to pay for an eBay auction they have won, you may need to send a payment reminder. Writing a payment reminder can get sticky. You don’t want to aggravate the buyer, but time is wasting and you could spend this time reposting your item. When writing a payment reminder, you need to be firm but pleasant. Real things can happen in people’s lives. Family members get sick, people just plain forget, and computers can die unexpectedly.

When you honestly forget to send a payment, nothing is more humiliating than someone debasing you through e-mail. So remember that people do make mistakes, and check the winner’s feedback before you send the letter. If you can garner from the feedback that this winner has a habit of not following through on bids, you can definitely be a bit firmer in your wording.

Always set a clear deadline for receiving payment, as shown in the following letter:

Hello,

You won an auction of mine on eBay last week for the Emilio Pucci book. Your payment still has not shown up in my PayPal account. Perhaps sending payment has slipped your mind considering your busy schedule. I know it can easily happen.

Please e-mail back within 48 hours and let me know whether you want to go through with our transaction. I’d like to put the item back up for sale if you don’t want it.

Thank you for your bid,

John Q. Public (j_q_public)

How firm you choose to get with a nonpaying bidder is up to you. Some people who tend to overbid are indeed violating the contract to buy, but legitimate reasons might explain why someone hasn’t followed through on an auction. You must decide which method to take — and how far you want to stretch your karma (what goes around comes around). Assess each case individually, and don’t go ballistic until you know the whole story.

Comments (1)

  1. Posted by weng
    This site is very helpful being a newbie seller in eBay. I will constantly visit this site. Thank you.

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