payment... when?

Recently, I've been selling a fair old bit of stuff on e-bay.

Now, usually what happens with most auctions is that people pay really quickly. Even to the extent that perhaps two-thirds of my auctions the person pays on the day the auction ends - many within hours of it ending.

I guess people do this because they feel it's payment that seals the deal - I've paid you, so you can't go back on the deal. Which is fair enough, although technically it's the end of the auction when things become contractually binding.

However, it's always been the case that occasionally some people take a long time to pay.

This is a horrible pain in the arse.

I mean, it's okay if they take a while to pay because they're sending a cheque or postal orders. Indeed, I much prefer these payment methods because then paypal doesn't take an unreasonably large slice.

No, the problem ones are the people who clearly bid but don't actually have the money to-hand.

I've got one at the moment who even though the auction ended at the beginning of the month, couldn't pay me until the end of the month when he got paid. Why the hell is he even bidding if he can't afford to pay for it in a sensible timeframe?

What makes this one worse is that he also clearly hadn't factored in postage and when payment time came he couldn't actually pay anyway due to some problem or other.

I'll be seriously miffed if he ends up not paying at all.

But he's not the only one - I seem to have gotten a glut of them at the moment, to the extent that I'm owed well over £200. Considering a big motivator for me to sell is my need to realise capital, that's not a fun stat to have kicking about.

What I think isn't helping matters is my whole use of the "courier" option to get around the new (retarded) e-bay postage policy. For some reason, the system actually allows people to pay without the courier charge included.

Quite why it does this points to yet more retardedness on the part of e-bay, but has also flagged up to me that people aren't reading the item description.

I mean, I've gotten several messages asking me how much postage is for items when it's clearly stated down the bottom of the item description. So maybe it's not surprising some people who win are among those who've failed to read the description, but the point is I find that whole behaviour staggering.

Who bids on an item without reading the whole item description? It could literally say anything and you didn't bother reading it? Weird :/.