Help !! Bidders paying with no postage :(

[buffykins]

Hi all,
Is there any way I can stop people paying before I send an Invoice. Ebid marks the item as paid but there's no postage on the payment I recieved. I've had a couple of overseas buyers pay straight away for their items without postage.
Apart from putting the postage in the auction so that it's added (Not been doing this as I find NL to hard to work the postage out other than for UK)
Last buyer took a fortnight to pay, after me refunding then sending emails, invoices more emails.
Any help Thanks, Jayne

[suesjools]

Wow, that really stinks. Have you tried adding a notice to your listings to wait for an invoice before paying for items? Not that everyone reads the notices, or even the listings, but it might be worth a try if you haven't already done so.

I can't think of anything else except using flat rate shipping, but if that's not do-able then it's not do-able. Hopefully someone (or several someones) will have some better ideas.

Best wishes for many sales to all,

[Tropical_Trish]

Hi Jayne, I haven't had a problem with overseas buyers paying without postage costs added, because I always put the shipping price into the auction listing.
If you agree to sell outside UK, it is well worth the effort of adding postage costs. It will save you lots of problems, time and work if you do.
You can always do a bulk edit, once your items have been imported by NL.
It doesn't matter if you put a note into your listings asking "overseas buyers wait for invoice before paying" .... doesn't work.
When the buyer sees the invoice, they pay - postage added or not.
(Or in some cases they don't pay - but I've been rather lucky so far!)
Good luck with your sales, and I hope that you manage to get your postage probs sorted soon.

[JaBek1]

I use calculated shipping so that it should appear in the listing. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if being in the UK permits that or not. Of course, if calculated shipping isn't possible, fixed price would have to be calculated by you and included in the listing. This isn't as efficient and result in somewhat higher S&H being charged to some. From the US I'd probably setup one rate for Canada & Mexico and another for the rest of the world. In the UK I suppose it would be best to setup one for European customers or EU customers and another for Worldwide.

[buffykins]

Thanks all for the advice, guess I'll have to work out how to get the shipping prices added to the auctions, laziness on my behalf not doing it and only putting it in the description. Oh well, you live and learn, but on a good note at least things are selling

[selkab]

Just drop a note to the buyer saying "OK the item is yours, you can come pick it up or you can send me $ XX.XX and I'll mail it to you."

[darklisruthven]

I think it is far better to add postage to your listings in the first place. People do not always read notices.

Personally I tend to be put off listings which dont state the postage upfront, as when I am buying something it is being bought on a budget and I need to know if total cost (item plus postage) is going to be within that budget, or not.

[raindropsies]

I think it is far better to add postage to your listings in the first place. People do not always read notices.

People can still pay without postage even if included in a listing, this is a big bug I have with eBid as they do not fix this error

[Oldandintheway]

IMO, it's essential to have the shipping added in the listing, so potential buyers know what they're up for.
I have a notice in big red letters, & yes, some people don't read it.
A polite email stating that the item will be shipped when full payment is received, usually does the trick.
With most buyers its an oversight on their part.

[astral276]

People can still pay without postage even if included in a listing, this is a big bug I have with eBid as they do not fix this error

Can you explain this 'bug'?

There is a user/PayPal issue that stops postage being added when the buyer goes to pay via PayPal - that is not an eBid error.

Once a purchase is made a user is furnished with your details. There is nothing stopping them bypassing eBid and paying directly, which eBid have no controls over - and so is not an eBid error.

So where is the eBid error located?