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

[Buythatcard]

I have had so many non payers over the years and I am sure that I am not alone. I thought it would be interesting to take a poll to see the most common excuse.

[buymycards]

I have 2 right now. A $2.40 item and a $7.00 item. Both buyers made offers, I accepted, but they won't pay. I just block them and relist. One has feedback of 58 and the other is 100. Both have bought several items and paid other sellers. Neither will respond to messages, invoices, or npb filings.

Too bad there isn't a website where we can list non paying bidders id's, names and addresses, then all of the sellers can block them.

Rick

[ullmandds]

How about..."sorry, I don't have any money?"

[steve B]

I figure if you sell enough you see all of those.

My favorite was from early on, 1999 or so when things were new. I sold 5 or 6 cheap cards to someone. After about a week I sent a gentle reminder.
I got an email from the buyers girlfriend. She had set up an account for him, and apparently one night he bid on well over 1000 items nearly all cards. And won nearly all of them. She said they planned on paying but needed a bit more time as the total was more than he made in a month
I checked and he did have roughly a thousand items at $1-2 each plus whatever the shipping would have been, so probably around 5-6000.

I told them to take their time, just to pay eventually and let me know roughly where I was in line once in a while.
They paid the next week.

Steve B

[bobbyw8469]

I have actually heard more than one of the choices. Is there a way to vote for two?

[Leon]

My favorite one is from an on again off again board member who has had many, many issues with lots of people over paying for his cards. My favorite one that he told me is "I left my wallet in my moms card"......He is in his late 20s.....

good question and subject....

[dstraate]

I left my wallet in my moms car


Guess he had a hard time paying for gas too. Sounds like a guy who needs to get into working as a hobby

[Leon]

Originally Posted by dstraate

I left my wallet in my moms car


Guess he had a hard time paying for gas too. Sounds like a guy who needs to get into working as a hobby

I don't want to go into the whole thing but he does have an ok reason not to be working (there aren't many but he has one). However, there is no excuse for doing a ton of deals you can't pay for.....none whatsoever. He isn't really a bad guy either.....just someone that can't follow through

[Buythatcard]

I was not able to include my favorite one in the poll because of the offensive language. There was this one buyer who won about 50 of my items in a 1 week period. When several weeks went by without a payment, I politely sent off a reminder. Their response came back with every curse word that you could imagine. In between the curse words, they mentioned that they didn't bid on any of the items.

I didn't bother answering because this person was definitely missing a few marbles. I just forwarded all the eMails to eBay. I am sure that this person still has an active account.

I wish that I saved the User name so that I could follow their activity.

[bunst]

"Sorry, my son used my ebay account without permission and bid on the lot."

[dog*dirt]

Originally Posted by bunst

"Sorry, my son used my ebay account without permission and bid on the lot."

I have had this one used on me a few times over the last year.

[Jantz]

I voted "No excuse" because that was what I mainly got from buyers or no reply at all.

My favorite excuse though was years ago, before Paypal, I had a college student send me a personal check. I contacted him and told him that his check had bounced. His reply was "I'm a college student and I don't have a lot money" to which I replied "When I turn you in for writing bad checks and mail fraud, your going to be an inmate with no money".

Funny how the payment showed up the next day in an overnight Fedex envelope.


Jantz

[thetruthisoutthere]

Almost every non-payer that I've dealt with had the same excuse of "I changed my mind." Then they would ask me to "cancel the transaction" and I always reply "no."

[Runscott]

???

I hate to see a thread like this, as most buyers are great. However, I recently had a very odd ebay situation: I had auctions end on several day, and one particular buyer was sending messages regularly - very friendly, very excited about all the cards, wanting to pay at the end after all the auctions had ended. He even sent me a note after they all ended, thanking me for making so much stuff available, and asking for an invoice with shipping totals.

He ended up winning $550 worth of cards, mostly low-cost items, so a lot of inventory to deal with. He never paid. He ignored all communications. I checked his feedback and he has been doing this to a lot of people: aserri022011 I have nothing against him, and not trying to call him out or anything, but he apparently doesn't really care much about the integrity of that particular ebay handle anyway, so it shouldn't matter to him, and I think it might be interesting to read his feedback.

This situation sucked because I had to open cases for about 15 individual items, wait several days to put back into my inventory, by which time I had lost the advantage of selling as part of a large set of ebay auctions (which had been my intention when originally listed), and who knows if ebay will refund all of my costs - they might, but their software is so f'cked up, that it's impossible to tell what they are doing right vs wrong.

So to answer your question: no excuse - just dead silence.

[sycks22]

My favorite was a guy about 2 months ago. He bid on my card on ebay and won it for around $1600 then wrote me a message saying he'd be willing to offer me $1350. I checked the guys' feedback and he apparently did it to 2 other people. It was confusing to say the least. I asked him why he bid on the card for $1600 and he didn't have a response.

[Runscott]

Here's a good one: I sold a very rare baseball team tintype that had a black player in it - very clear image, nice piece. I paid around $1K for it and started the bids a little bit below that price, thinking it would bring maybe $1,500. The winner got it at the low opener and immediately notified me that it was a forgery and he wanted his money back.

Clearly he was having buyer's remorse due to the cost. I told him that he got a very nice piece for a bargain price, but if he had simply said he had changed his mind, I would have gladly given him a refund, but since he accused me of selling a forgery and was very insulting about it, he could keep it.

I regretted the decision a day or two later, but it made me feel good in the short run. I did get a few more choice emails from him, and each time enjoyed telling him where he could stick his forgery.

[barrysloate]

I blame society for my inability to pay.

[Runscott]

Originally Posted by barrysloate

I blame society for my inability to pay.

And thus began the 'Occupy Net54' movement.

[hangman62]

I also feel strongly that society is to blame !

Ral

[T2069bk]

Originally Posted by dog*dirt

I have had this one used on me a few times over the last year.

the future of our collections...the next generation is already bidding-just not paying!!!!

[novakjr]

I never sold much. A few years ago, I had my dad list a handful of severely trimmed Collin-McCarthys BIN for me.. Made sense, because I had no seller feedback, and he sells a bunch of cards.. Clearly in the listing it said $3 shipping, $1 per additional item. Some guy bought 7 of them, and upon being sent and invoice, messaged that he was refusing to pay because $9 s/h was outrageous(despite him knowing it would come out to $9 when he bought the items)..The sale price was how much I wanted per card, we figured $2 for padded envelope and shipping, and the extra buck was to cover my dad's paypal and listing fees. Simple enough. We just ignored him and he eventually payed...

[John V]

This falls in the "Other" bucket.
After several polite messages to a non-payer, the guy sent multiple long rambling messages apologizing for his inability to pay due to involvement in a matter of national security. Since he had to travel to an undisclosed and dangerous location, he would not have time to make payment, and so on. In each message, his nonsense went on and on, giving me the creeps.
I forwarded the craziness to EBay and they refunded my fees.

[WhenItWasAHobby]

I recall auctioning a card on eBay about ten years ago and it sold for about 5X it normally does ($125 as opposed to $25) and was elated I made that big of a sale. As it turns out the buyer (who was medical doctor by profession) stiffed me stating that he accidently bid the wrong amount.

[skelly]

I can't even bring myself to sell on ebay anymore as a result of all that has been posted above. When I have cards left over from lots that I have purchased I just look to eventually matriculate at a yard sale / flea market somewhere to move the cards. Basically I'm selling mid-grade vintage cards at about 10-20% of book value just to avoid dealing with ebay.

[mets41]

I had a winning bidder on a 1969 Transogram full box with statue (about 1 month before the 9/11 terrorist attack) who kept giving ne the runaround with excuses. Finally he said something like "bear with me because of the terrorist attack". He lived in Minnesota.

In another sale (1961 Nu Card Scoops Mantle), after waiting a resonable time started an ebay report of non paying bidder. After leaving a negative feedback for the guy (back in the good old days) he contacted me. He said he mailed the check right after the auction ended. That may well be, but the envelope never got here. Two days later he sent me an email "I got my checking statement today and the check hasn't cleared". This was the last I ever heard from the guy.

In another sale (2 1962 Topps includinf Frank Robinson), after waiting a resonable time started an ebay report of non paying bidder. After leaving a negative feedback for the guy he contacted me. He asked me to remove the negative feedback. I said "I'll do that after you pay for the cards". This was the last I ever heard from the guy.

I've since resold all the cards.

[mcap100176]

"Sorry, I don't want to pay because I was planning on relisting the card for a profit but it looks like that was a fair price so I am not going to pay."

Got to give points for the honesty.....

[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.