eBay etiquette

[j4]

I won an item yesterday afternoon, and sent the system-generated email to the seller to sort out payments (they'll only take cheque etc.). Unfortunately the system-generated email insists on you saying "I will be sending payment shortly" etc. etc., but what I actually want to say is "I will send payment as soon as you tell me who to make the cheque payable to" -- I suspect neither "vic" nor "killingfantasy" is likely to be the name on the bank account! So I added this request in the eBay email, but I've had no reply, and I suspect they've glanced at the system-generated email and said "ah yes, payment coming" and not read any further.

On the other hand... not everybody checks their email every 2 minutes like me. Would it be rude to email them again and say "Not heard from you ... please tell me who to make the cheque payable to" etc.?

On the third hand... you'd think if somebody only takes cheques it might occur to them that their buyers need to know who to make the cheque payable to, FFS. And that they might make a point of checking email just after a sale.

Comments

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

I would send a personal email. This happens to me a lot.

I rather miss the courtesy of Ye Olde Dayes on eBay. It used to be that one would exchange emails to say 'got your payment', 'sent your item', 'wow, it's great, thanks', 'left you feedback'. Now it's all automated and that personal touch is lacking.

[perdita-fysh.livejournal.com]

I sold some things on ebay the other day (through buy it now) and one of them went right up to the end of the 7 day window, at which point I was in the throes of a mad busy weekend. The winner emailed me at least once a day for 3 days getting angrier and angrier until I finally got to check my email and found all this shouting and sent him the goods.

If you've done the automated thing, I'd send a personal email saying "Just checking you know I'm waiting for a payee for the cheque" and then leave it a little while *&)

[saraphale.livejournal.com]

I still do that, and I get labelled as a great communicator, both in feedback and in email. It feels a bit weird, but it does mean I've got 100% rating so far.

[ceb.livejournal.com]

Slightly late in this case, but what I always do under the same circumstances is send a mail first asking who/where to send the cheque to, and only go through the automated payment bit after they've told me, then thy won't just see the automated one and assume everything is OK.

In this case, I'd leave it a day or so (maybe they can only check email in the evening and were busy yesterday, or something) and then mail them. No-one will mind an extra mail if it's short and polite. After everything's sorted out, you could send them another polite mail suggesting that they give the information to ebay so that they don't have to be pestered by every single buyer... ;-)

[rmc28]

Usually the automated eBay thing includes a real name to post payment to. I make the cheque payable to that person. So far no-one's complained.

[j4.livejournal.com]

Me too... and I did look for it! -- but in this case the closest thing to a real name that I could find was 'vic'. (Actually to be honest I suspect that for an amount as small as £5.20 you could make it out to Kermit the Frog and still pay it in, but it's the principle of the thing, dammit.)

[rmc28]

Sorry, I should have realised that when you gave two aliases :(

Sending a personal email can't hurt though.

[lnr]

Ah you see I usually go through the automated payment thingy, because that almost always has the full name of the buyer, so you know who to send the cheque to, and then you don't need to send extra mail.

But like everyone says mailing to double check things never does much harm, especially since the automated gubbins sometimes goes astray.