posted on February 18, 2003 03:29:00 PM new
After being a seller for 5 years on ebay I have received my first $ 60.00 bounced check! I can't believe it - the person I dealt seemed extremely nice - even to the point of emailing me with how happy she was with her item when she got it!
I can't even leave negative feedback because she contacted me after the auction had closed. She even got me down on my price, begged me for "extra time to pay" - why go to such extremes if your check is no good anyway??
Any ideas of how I can at least exact $60 in karma???
posted on February 18, 2003 03:34:28 PM new
I would first contact the bidder - I've had perhaps 3 bounced checks in thousands of transactions, and all made good on the check.
If they do not make good, you have options. There is a good collections agency online called madagency.com that I have used successfully for non paying clients (not ebay though) - You could also threaten to file a claim with the USPS for postal fraud, and their local authorities. Some places allow you to get something like 3x value of check if they do not make good on it.
posted on February 18, 2003 03:38:32 PM new
You haven't mentioned if you tried contacting her and if so what was her reply if any.
Does she have good feedback with ebay?
Could this have been an oversight on her part and she is willing to send you the money?
You havn't said, could you tell us?
Because this does happen sometimes and the person is sorry and then does send the money, not everyone keeps good checking account records.
This same situation of yours has happened to me, and my customer never sent me the money, but she became an unregistered bidder, so I was out the money.
But a few other times it was a mistake on my buyers part and they sent me the money and my bank fee.
posted on February 18, 2003 03:42:50 PM new
some seller has luck checking her bank account balance and then resubmit the check.
but it could be your buyer has a cashflow problem,so i would talk to her first.most would pay for your bank fee.
posted on February 18, 2003 04:11:43 PM new
It was a knee jerk reaction to come to the boards and post. Thanks for the great ideas. The buyer has been on ebay approx 1 year, uses this i.d. only for bidding - no selling & has 726 positives 0 neutals 0 negatives. I will try to contact her & will let you know of her response. She is from a Major U.S. city, so contacting the police is probably not an option.
posted on February 18, 2003 06:28:09 PM new
This happened to me once, and I contacted eBay, and one of the options they gave me was to file for mail fraud. I kept the letter, here is the section.
If payment or the merchandise was sent via the United States Postal
Service, you may wish to file mail fraud charges. I would encourage you
to review the information on the Postal Service Web page about Fraud on
the Internet. At that time, you will have the option to file Mail Fraud
Charges. This information can be found on the following page:
http://www.usps.gov/websites/depart/inspect/
When I told the buyer what I was going to do, I got an immediate response, after getting no replies to my messages before, and a money order quickly followed. So if you don't get a favorable response from your buyer, that is an option.
posted on February 19, 2003 02:07:17 AM new
amber, that is not a good option here since the item was sold off ebay...they wouldn't be a bit happy to hear from the seller.
posted on February 19, 2003 09:45:16 PM new
My bank advised me last week that check for $47 had bounced and also advised I'd be charged a bank fee of $15.
This was the background:
- Payment was for multiple auctions which closed in November. This was someone who had bought from me before and e-mail communication was pleasant.
- Payment never arrived and in late December buyer said he was mailing out a replacement check.
- I waited 2 weeks. No check. Before contacting him, I checked eBay and discovered he'd been NARU'D! No negative feedback though.
- So, I took a deep breath, decided not to mention the NARU and simply sent him a courteous e-mail to say that the check hadn't arrived. He confirmed he had mailed it.
- On January 18 I received the check and mailed out the items - this was 2 months after the auctions had closed!
- I'm in Canada but deal with an internet-based bank account in New Jersey. Three days later I included the check with my weekly mail-in deposit. It probably reached the bank at the end of January.
I was floored last week when I found out that the check had bounced and, considering the fact that the buyer was NARUD, wondered if I'd been had.
I thought very carefully about it and then decided I'd have nothing to lose by trying a polite approach first. If I'd been scammed, then rudeness in e-mails wasn't going to get me my money back. If I was polite and it was an honest mistake, then I would have a better chance of getting my money back.
So, I sent an e-mail saying that I was in shock because the buyer's check had bounced and that I was also being charged a $15 bank fee on top of that. I asked simply - "what are you going to do to fix this."
I was mildly surprised when I got a prompt e-mail back from the buyer who was very distressed about the bounced check and was anxious to make good (he even wanted to send me cash!) and was also contacting his bank to find out what happend.
I e-mailed back to say how relieved I was to know that I hadn't misjudged him. I sent him images of the returned check and the letter the bank had sent me. I suggested that perhaps cash wasn't the way to go as the transaction seemed jinxed.
The next e-mail I received was from the buyer's business partner. He said that he was handling the situation as the buyer was very distressed about it. The partner asked if I took paypal. I said I did and also communicated that I did understand that mistakes happen. An hour later he had PayPaled the $47 plus the $15 to cover the bank fee. I e-mailed a thank you.
The partner expressed in his e-mails how much he appreciated the courtesy I was showing in all my communications.
So, a happy ending.
I hope this story helps someone. Being courteous can pay off.
posted on February 20, 2003 08:07:58 AM new
Good News!!!!
Thanks for all who have posted with success stories of recovering funds. I tried to call the bidder last night - got an answering machine message, "I'm on the computer".
Immediately, I emailed a nonconfrontional but firm message with an expectation of payment by money order or paypal within 7 days. Received a quick response & apologoy with a promise to pay. Received paypal payment to my account this morning.
So Happy. I'm currently working very hard to turn a profit on ebay & this bounced check would have hurt. This incident has caused me to rethink my payment terms, but for now I will still accept checks.
I do anticipate things getting tougher on ebay & possibly more bounced checks in the future. As we have heard in other postings people are buying on the edge, anticipating funds from other sources that just aren't panning out!
Thank you to all who posted with suggestions, it helped.
