Should You Require Immediate Payment?

[wingzrow]

Do any of you notice any sales drop when asking for immediate payment? I'm tempted to just require it for all of my items since I never have people buy more than one item ( all my items have free shipping anyway )

What are your thoughts? As is it I have something like 10 unpaid items every week on rotation from people buying items and never paying for them.

[fluid_matrix]

If you're talking about eBay, then most definitely require it. I rarely use standard bidding auctions anymore, and just use BIN auctions. Requiring immediate payment keeps the tire kickers away.

[Cmo]

I don't but I always seem to have orders very frequently were buyers purchase something then pay 1-2 days later. I would just have to sales lost to this situation, since there isn't any harm or impact for me waiting a couple days. I just have the unpaid item assistant on the shortest time possible so things don't get held up for too long, if I have a non-paying buyer.

[Kitsune Sniper]

Since pretty much all my sales are from BINs, yes, I have it on. Always. It keeps most dumbasses away.

[Cornelius]

I felt like I saw a decline in sales when I tried it out some time ago. And while I was very busy selling at that time (for me), I still wasn't selling near enough to get any useable statistics.

[Zing]

How does immediately payment work with combined shipping?

Otherwise, I don't see how it matters.

[Kitsune Sniper]

How does immediately payment work with combined shipping?

Otherwise, I don't see how it matters.

It doesn't.

However, eBay announced they were working on a new checkout system that would allow combined shipping when purchasing several buy it now items. I got that info on their seller magazine, I dunno when it'll be available.

[drcurtis]

It also matters when you are buying a number of items (from the same guy or a number of people) and then want to pay for everything at once on Paypal, especially if you are going to switch from checking account to credit card, which slows down the process by making you go through several page loads and clickies each time. I know when I decided to expand my complete NES game collection that I was buying a bunch each day and there were very few that stopped me to make me immediately pay, and when they did I groaned.

Is it really a common problem that people buy-it-now and then don't pay?

As a buyer, it also sometimes makes me nervous...why do they need me to pay this second? Am I going to have second thoughts? Is there something weird going on? It's almost like a high pressure salesman that wants you to sign some financial papers then and there. You know you're going to do it, but the pressure of immediacy is a psychological warning system that makes you think twice.

Overall, I doubt it makes much difference either way, but I do find it annoying, personally.

[Zing]

"Second thoughts" aren't a factor once you click the second "buy" button (it takes two clicks to buy something).

Immediate payment should have been required ever since Paypal was enforced as the only payment method.