The auction was for a phone, it ended Saturday Lunchtime and I sent the winner an invoice, I have had still not had the payment or any communication whatsoever.
I emailed them 9am Monday morning to let them know that the phone was packed ready for sending and please could you forward payment but haven’t heard anything from them.

What is the best course of action from here?

What is the best course of action from here?

look at ebay rules – unless you put a limit in the ad then the standard time will apply (2 weeks?). After that limit expires you can flag them as non paying bidder, make a second chance offer to next lowest or get fees refunded and relist.

2 or 3 days isn;t that long – particularly if they used sniper software to bid.

ok I’m being impatient then!

just checked it is 7 days, I always pay immediately if ever I win stuff on ebay!

Re-invoice adding a note, asking if there is a problem – but not until tomorrow.

In a nutshell.

a) wait a day or two more, drop them a message/invoice politely checking if there’s a problem

b) end of the week, put in a non-payment claim – it’ll take 2 weeks while eBay wait in case the buyer does cough up then it’ll refund your fees. If the buyer does click on the button to admit non-payment then it’ll be quicker – rarely happens

c) Put buyer on your blacklist of people you won’t sell to

d) relist

e) Sigh and huff a bit.

Not much else you can do. ‘Technically’ I’m sure someone will probably come along say you can take them to small claims court for non-payment blah blah blah.

It’s annoying when people don’t pay promptly. I usually give them a day or two then send them and invoice letting them know that they have seven days to pay from the close of the auction. That usually does it. A couple of times I’ve either just heard nothing back or they claim they have trouble with their account or some such.

In that event, report them to Ebay. They will put an “unpaid item strike” against their name. The problem with this is that most sellers don’t know about it – Unpaid item strikes prevent people from bidding if the seller has selected “do not accept bids from people with unpaid item strikes” but sadly, I think this is off by default so it makes little difference really.