The Unpaid Item Dispute Questions

Sometimes you wonder why you bother! We sold a card at auction for $.99 plus s/h of $1.25 - $2.24 total. The person who bought it did so willingly. He deliberately bid on it and confirmed that he was responsible for buying the item.

That was mid June! The 10th! We sent him an invoice that day and a payment reminded on the 20th when he had not paid. He responded with an email saying he was having PayPal problems and would send a money order. Weeks pass. Finally in mid July, on the 10th, we filed a Unpaid Item Dispute and received our Final Value Fee back.

Now, eBay tried to contact him that whole week to let him know that there was a dispute. He had an additional week to pay. So from June 10th until July 17th - almost five weeks - he had plenty of time to pay.

So, finally, on July 17th he sends us another email - he is irate that we filed an Unpaid Item Dispute for $.99! How dare we! WE never contacted him (not true) and he thought he'd paid already ... wah, wah, wah!

Then he sent another email - please send our address again and he'll send a money order right away. He's having all these problems with PayPal. (same old story!)

Well, what we did was this: We cancelled the UID and ate the final value fee, then blocked him from further auctions and blocked his email from our email.

Is this the right way to handle it? I don't know anymore. On the one hand, he cost us the FVF and we got nothing in return. We'll just relist the item and hope it sells again.

On the other hand, a really lousy customer is out there most likely going to do the same thing to other sellers. Maybe a few of them will have the guts to follow through with the Dispute process and he'll be blocked for good.

All this said, I like eBay and will stay on it. One bad apple doesn't spoil the whole crop.