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Hack 66 Sending Payment Instructions

How to communicate essential information to
your bidders and avoid misunderstandings.

When an auction ends, it is your
responsibility as the seller to guide your bidders through the rest
of the transaction. Although eBay, by default, will send a
notification email to bidders when they've won an
auction, you should never rely solely on that email or your
auction description, for that matter to communicate all the
information your bidders need to know to send payment.

Instead, send a payment-instructions email to your customers, making
sure to include all of the following:

Thank the customer for bidding on and purchasing your item. Include
the title and item number of the auction (or auctions) your customer
has purchased.

Tell the customer how much shipping will cost (even if
it's already specified in the auction) and explain
exactly which shipping method you'll be using. (Your
customers have a right to know what they're paying
for.)

You can get the winning bidder's location (and zip code if they're in the U.S.) on the Bid History page, allowing you to determine the shipping cost before waiting for the bidder to send his or her street address.

Calculate the total, including shipping, tax, and any handling fees,
and clearly tell your customer how much he or she is supposed to pay.
Don't make your customers do any math, because
they'll most likely get it wrong. In most cases,
you'll have all the tools you need to calculate a
customer's total before you send the email.

If your customer has purchased more than one item from you and
you're willing to ship them together, add these up
as well, and make it clear that you're doing so.

Carefully explain the types of payment you accept, even if
it's noted elsewhere. It's
important to be clear on this point; otherwise, your bidders will
most likely send you something you can't accept. See
[Hack #67] for considerations.

Instruct your customer to email you if he or she has any questions.
(As much as you probably don't need to be bothered
with lots of stupid questions, the last thing you want is for your
customers to leave negative feedback instead of writing you first.)

6.3.1 The Email

Here's a concise
email that does it
all:

Congratulations! You're the high bidder for the Antique Toy Steam Shovel (eBay #3136272129). Shipping will be $4.50 for Priority Mail shipping, bringing the total to $68.44.

The types of payment I accept are listed in the auction description and on my "About Me" page at eBay. Payment can be made in any of the following ways:

If you have a free PayPal account, you can pay with your credit card or with an electronic bank account transfer. Just click the PayPal logo in the auction you've won.

If you'd like to pay directly with your Visa, Mastercard, or American Express, you can use my private, secure server at:

https://www.ebayhacks.com/checkoutl

If you'd like to pay with BidPay, or if you'd like to send a money order or cashier's check (sorry, no personal or business checks), send it to:

Acme Auctions123 Fake StreetSpringfield, 90125

Either way, please send a confirmation email mentioning how you intend to pay as soon as you get this email. Thanks for bidding!

Naturally, the details of your auction and the terms you choose will
be different, but the premise will be the same. Here, the tone is
friendly, and an effort has been made to make the instructions as
clear as possible (separate paragraphs and hyphens as makeshift
bullets are especially helpful).

Note also that the final price of the auction is nowhere to be found
in this letteronly the cost to ship and the total amount to
pay are specified. This is an effective way to prevent customers from
mistakenly (or intentionally) omitting the shipping cost when sending
payment.

6.3.2 Automatic Payment Instructions

A few tools are available to help automate the
payment instructions email:

eBay Invoice. Click "Create an
invoice"
on the completed auction page to email payment instructions to your
bidder. Although this accomplishes the same thing as the custom email
above, in practice it is not any more convenient. It also works only
with eBay's checkout system, which
doesn't allow you to prioritize payment methods or
set certain restrictions. See [Hack #49] for details.

PayPal Winning Buyer Notification. If you accept PayPal payments or, more specifically, if you
only accept PayPal payments, you can instruct
PayPal to automatically send payment instructions to your bidders as
soon as your auctions end.

To set it up, log in to www.paypal.com, and go to My Account
Profile Selling Preferences
Auctions. Your eBay user ID should appear in the list (click Add if
it doesn't). Next, click
"off" or
"on" in the Winning Buyer
Notification column, and you'll see the Winning
Buyer Notification page, as shown in Figure 6-2.

Figure 6-2. Use PayPal's Winning Buyer Notification feature to automatically send somewhat customizable payment instructions emails to your bidders

The Hacker's Approach. See [Hack #74] for some advanced
approaches to automating the payment-instructions email.