 eBay Looks to Speed up Deadbeat-Bidder Claims Process
 Deadbeats bidders and buyers are the bane of an eBay seller's existence. It can take 2 months to resolve a case and get credit for fees on transactions that have never been consummated. All the while, sellers' inventory is frozen until the claim is resolved. To add insult to injury, sellers complain that shoppers who fail to pay for an item can leave them negative feedback if they file a UPI claim against the shopper.
Now that eBay has moved to an electronics payments only system (it banned checks and money orders last fall), it has been looking at ways to speed up the UPI ("Unpaid Item") process - under certain conditions.
eBay is considering implementing an automatic UPI process for payments for fixed-price items for sellers who accept PayPal or ProPay and use its checkout system. The automatic UPI system would take days, rather than weeks. A manual process would apply to all formats and payment methods, and would have a timeframe of about 2 - 3 weeks. And ultimately, sellers' feedback would not be dinged by non-paying customers.
Additionally, eBay would block sellers from filing a UPI claim when the buyer has paid via PayPal or ProPay.
Note that eBay currently has an Immediate Payments option for sellers who wish to require buyers pay immediately, but the option only works with PayPal payments and does not allow the seller to offer combined shipping for buyers who purchase more than one item.
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