I’m attracting all the twonks at the moment and I’m not sure why. I’ve had several buyers in the past 2 weeks not paying upon completion of an auction or after having had a ‘best offer’ accepted by me (happened to me twice in quick succession on the same item too). eBay gives buyers a few days to pay. Ends with me cancelling  the sale and relist, but wastes a few days in the process as well as losing anyone who had it in their watch list. There’s no penalty to the non-buyer either with no option to leave negative feedback as no sale took place, but I do add them to my ‘blocked’ list.

Part of me wonders if it’s folk selling something similar/identical to me and is taking my item out of the running while they advertise those, but I’m probably beign waaaay too paranoid!

Or is it just typical of eBay in general? Saying that, I’ve sold a fair amount (900+ feedback) and rarely experienced this in the past.

Not an issue with Buy It Now where I tick the ‘immediate payment required’ box, but that’s not an option for an auction or ‘best offer’.

Other than listing everything I sell as Buy It Now without any Best Offer or auction option, are there ways around this?

All my stuff is Buy it Now with immediate payment required. Can fall down if you accept offers, but less problematic than auctions IME.

On the last point, you can put a note in the description asking folk to message you offers. You can then change the price of the item if you want to accept their offer and they still have to pay straight away.

As above. I also find this can help eek out a few extra pounds as it’s there for the taking, no auction faff.

I actively avoid auctions as a buyer, the only caveat is I haven’t sold anything as an auction for ages so perhaps it would go higher than I expect!

Ta, good point re adding a note in the description about offers via message.

I quite enjoy auctions at times, but certainly prefer to sell as Buy It Now! I like to think I’ve got a decent comprehension of market value on stuff I list but with the speed some stuff sells and how long other stuff hangs around for, I’ve got room for improvement!

Also, do the report buyer bit, my ebay is set to block anyone who’s had two of those in the last year (it won’t let me set it to one ever unfortunately)

I enjoyed auctions more but switched entirely to buy it now with instant payment required a while back, for just this reason.