So with the recent crash of silver prices it has brought up a very interesting result in ebay. Because there are multiple day auctions, and there are alot of people who bid on things right when they are listed you basically have 5 days to call the top or cushion yourself from a silver collapse. For example there are 10 oz bars that were listed for $525 a couple of days ago when silver was at ~$49. Right when they were listed someone bid on them. Well today they are up and that $525 bid is still there, even as silver has gone down ~$10. So when you go to sell your silver on ebay, you basically get the highest price silver reaches over a 5 day span. Isn't that interesting? Can buyers just not pay once the auction is up? What steps would ebay take for unpaid items especially in this case?
A buyer can not pay for the item. Most likely, the seller would open a case against the buyer. If the buyer doesn't care about having a case on the record, thats one thing. I don't think ebay can force them to pay. The seller should lower the price for the buyer if he really wants to sell the items. Of course, he is not obligated to.
The system in place for a non-paying bidder sucks. Ebay cannot force them to pay and will not. As soon as that auction ends, your account owes the seller fees on what you just sold, regardless if the bidder pays you or not. You can try opening a "non-paying bidder case" but that goes nowhere, eBay just sends an email to the bidder reminding them to pay. You can try to cancel a transaction, but the bidder can always say "no" for no reason and you're stuck. The process to get a strike on a bidder for not paying takes weeks and weeks and weeks, and at the end it means nothing - it's not like they're not going to be able to shop on eBay.
This is true, but during especially volatile times, most people will be wise to this, and wait till the end of the auction to place a bid for the full value. However, there is a disadvantage to waiting till the end of the auction, or "sniping" the auction. And this is the fact that the earlier bid takes priority. For example, melt price on a certain item is exactly $1000, If bidder 1 places his $1000 bid, any other bidders will have to bid the next increment higher (lets say $100 to illustrate my point). Any other bidders would now have to pay $1100 to win the item.
