Smitty8 - Did you include in your ebay listing a "must receive Payment by" date? Ususally you stipulate that payment must be received in so many days or bid in rejected. Check your listing. If he's outside your window, cut your losses and sell to the person who wants it.

I never, ever sell to someone from anywhwere other than the US. And while I don't like paying Paypal fees, in the long run it saves as I've never been burned. It's nice to see payment minutes after an auction ends and before I ship.

Since you said "will sell to US only," you can reject the top bid and sell to the second highest.

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The Dude abides.

Since you state that the 2nd bidder really wants the frame, I am assuming that you have been exchanging e-mails with him? If that's the case, give the originaly bidder a hard deadline for completing the transaction. If he doesn't pay by that date, tell him it's cancelled. You ought to be denote that the winning bidder failed to pay on eBay and avoid your final sale fees on there. Then simply sell it to the other dude on the side and save yourself quite a bit on eBay fees. Are you able to accept credit card payments? For bigger purchases it's a bit of a hassle with just a standard PayPal account that cannot take credit cards...

p.s. here's the official eBay "what if a buyer doesn't pay" answers.
http://pages.ebay.com/help/tp/unpaid-item-process.html
http://pages.ebay.com/help/tp/questions/nonpaying-buyer.html

Unfortunatley, I didn't include that verbiage. What is standard time for payment?

What is the process used to sell to the 2nd highest bidder and documenting it properly?

Good policy - we're all evil;-)

But seriously... depending on the item I would highly recomend US sellers to offer to ship small stuff international. Reason being US is often the cheapest place in the world to buy consumer goods - chances are someone overseas will be prepared to pay that much more for an item than a local buyer.

I am being stung a bit at the moment by a seller of a pair of Rudy Project glasses in the US who stated on the auction will ship internationally - "allow 12 to 15 days for delivery". I win the auction, pay immediately and request that he send me a quick email when he ships the item. A week later I send him a polite reminder. To which he replies that he orders direct from Rudy and he has to wait for the glasses to get to him before he can send them on... he said that he would email me as soon as he sends them - it is now 21 days since I paid for them and he hasn't put them in the post yet. So much for his allow 12 - 15 days more than likely 4 - 6 weeks!

Still I got them incl postage for $130 aust versus aust RRP of $240 so shouldn't complain too much.

What he did is against ebay policy. All items sold on ebay MUST be on hand and available to ship. I would drop ebay an email and copy his message in it.

I might do that after I get them - trouble is at the moment he has my cash, I don't want the hassle of trying to get a refund (I have no reason to doubt that I will eventually get the glasses) If I piss him off by complaining I have nothing to gain and will just end up with no glasses and maybe a refund.

Thanks for the tip though and I will certainly keep his emails.

You can sell things on eBay if you don't have them on hand as long as you state it's a "pre-sale" and state that you will be able to ship them within 30 days...

Any idea where to find these rules on ebay? - I decided that I might send the guy a friendly email to let him know about this but want to make sure I have the details correct - have been searching the ebay pages but haven't found this info yet.

Cheers

Adam

True. My guess is in this case it was not stated.

Email the seller and tell him if he doesn't pay within 48 hours that you'll leave negative feedback and file a non-paying bidder report to Ebay. If he doesn't pay, file the NPB and leave him negative feedback. Offer the bike to the second bidder.

there's a link to eBay help right on the front page of eBay.com They do a pretty good job with that section of their site. I imagine they get flooded with questions constantly.