What is the excuse that a buyer used to not pay for an item?

[GoldenAge50s]

I think far & away the most common excuse is----NO RESPONSE--to direct EM's, EBay EM's, NPB reports---nothing, just dead silence, as if they are pretending they don't exist all of a sudden and are hoping you'll just give up & go away!

[barrysloate]

The dog ate my paypal account.

[mrmopar]

I had a weird one a long time ago. I rarely sold, but had listed some posters and someone in Florida won 2 Dwight Gooden posters. My listing clearly stated money orders only (this was before PP became all the rage). The person who won claimed to be a relative of Gooden who was in some sort of nursing or retirement home. After invoicing her, she insisted on sending me a check rather than the MO I required, which I said I wouldn't accept. Then she claimed she had no way to get to a bank or PO to get a money order, because she was unable to drive?

I think she eventually left me negative feedback because I was a difficult seller.

On the flip side, I did back out of a deal at one point (also many years back) and I actually still feel bad about it and I also regret not completing the deal for myself. I won a signed 1952 Topps Hi number Bobby Morgan for around $50. It was really a nice looking card. However, I had run into some financial difficulties at the time involving existing debt and minimum payments which had exceeded my income, but had not fully realized the extent of the problem at the time the bid was placed because I was basically denying my addictive buying habits as the payments slowly caught up to my monthly take home. I was not a big ticket buyer, but this was higher than I normally spent per card and I asked the seller to please excuse me from the obligation, which he did. I put buying on ebay on hold and worked out my money issues and later returned to resume my normally stellar buying reputation. I needed every dollar I had at the time, but wish I somehow would have been able to make it work and get that Morgan card! I'm sure just getting the card alone to have signed would now cost me 2-3X what I could have got the signed card for.