The Real Deal Blog: Alternative Media

Summer has finally arrived in most of Europe, and it is the time many guys traditionally choose to fly out to meet women or visit existing family. Unfortunately, Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano has been disrupting flights across Europe recently due to its floating ash cloud. Aviation authorities introduced relaxed flight safety rules two days ago to minimize future disruptions caused by the eruptions in Iceland, so those of you with imminent travel plans will hopefully not be inconvenienced

After three days go to “Advanced Search” from any eBay page, then “Find Contact Information”. (You need to have 2 windows open to copy and paste the details from one page to the other — they make it hard on purpose). Then fill it in and you will get an email with their contact info on.

Call the punter up, introduce yourself, make some story about how you are “going away” and want to get all your sales mailed before you do. They are the only one of many who hasn’t paid despite reminders. Be polite. You want to help them to get their item quickly as you are going away. You care about your reputation blah blah……

Expect a bunch of excuses about dead dogs, sick relatives, volcanic ash, relatives bidding on their behalf, broken computers, changed passwords and all kinds of other crap. Laugh along and agree with them and make sure you end the call with a plan of when they will pay. This type usually pay within the hour then.

Some folks have non reachable numbers or permanent answer phone numbers lodged with eBay — assume these are serial non payers and revert to the sub £25 plan then.

The sub £25 and/or after 4 days plan: After four days exactly you go to “Open Unpaid Item Case / Cancel Transaction” from the item listing, select “The buyer has not paid for the item” [if the listing does not let you select that option wait until the time of day the sale ended has passed — it must be 4 days EXACTLY]. From the drop down menu select “Buyer is unresponsive”. Then “Submit”.

Now, we cant expect that all eBayers actually have a reasonable command of English — they simply don’t. Some of them no doubt think this bastardised form of English is trendy computer speak and is acceptable. Its the text message culture spreading onto eBay.

As we know, addresses all in lower-case are hard to read. But addresses all in capital letters are easier to read. So the simple route is to convert the garbled crap they sent you to something we can all read automatically.

The Russian Embassy (Consulate) in London. How to find it and what to expect. First off, they tell you their address is 5 Kensington Palace Gardens, London W8 4QS. That may be their technical address, but when you have walked up and down Kensington Palace Gardens a few times and gotten no reply at the buzzer there, you will learn otherwise. The entrance you want is actually on Bayswater Road. Set your navigation to Palace Court W2. That is the street directly opposite the embassy. You can park there through the day in the resident bays, it costs you £2.20 per hour (the signs are out of date and claim £2). Its a bit of a rigmarole to pay the first time, but its all explained on the signs.

Top of the list of bad eBayers is slow and late payers. Oh, and non payers.

As a seller, we write a nice listing, try to describe it as honestly as possible, we photograph the item, we calculate what we need for shipping and handling to various places, we pay eBay their listing fees, their final value fees and then – when paid – the Paypal fees. That takes time and effort. You don’t think about it, but all those fees often equate to around 17% of the price you pay.

We sit around for anything from one day to ten days for a listing to end and you are the winning bidder. Great! Congratulations. Now you need to pay.

We wait around a day or two. We send you an invoice; we send you a payment reminder or two. These are all sitting in your email inbox – go and look! Don’t be a deadbeat that pays late or doesn’t pay at all. People eBay for all kinds of reasons. Some people run their businesses this way and some just sell off their old crap and there is every variant in between.

Whatever kind of seller we are, we want to be paid. It doesn’t matter if it is £1 or £1000 – we want to be paid, and pretty quickly please. Within 24 hours will be just fine.

The name to block is 2009kclarke which is a user name with only nine feedbacks (need I say more?). His name is Kenneth J Clarke, he lives at 21 Tinagel Place, Berryhill, Stoke on Trent, ST2 0AP. His number is 07933 538 604. His email address is: kenjohnclarke@googlemail.com

Here is the gag he pulled on us: He bid on a listing then completed checkout electing to pay by “credit cards”. He got invoiced followed by a few reminders. Silence. We got his contact details from eBay to call him up and ask if there was a problem. Nobody answers the phone…….