As a seller, you can take the following steps to ensure that your experience is successful.

Creating and managing your listing

• Represent the items you are selling fairly and accurately.

• State your return policy clearly in your listing.

• Respond promptly to buyers' questions.

• Review your buyer's feedback. Learn how to prevent members with low feedback from bidding on your items.

• Use extra caution with unknown or new buyers and unusual bidding activity. Learn about unwelcome and malicious bidding.

Avoiding Unpaid Items

eBay's research has shown that taking a few simple steps can significantly reduce the chances of buyers backing out of purchases:

• Make it easy for your buyers to pay by offering PayPal.

• Include detailed postage and packing information in the item description as well as the location of the item.

• Use Immediate Payments for fixed-price listings and listings where you use the "Buy It Now" option.

After the listing ends

• Use a postal service that provides a tracking number and insurance. This can help resolve disputes in cases where a buyer doesn't receive an item or receives a broken item.

• Keep your postal receipts as proof that the item was sent.

• Keep any proof of your item's authenticity.

• Verify payment before sending items (including holding cheques until they clear).

• Learn to recognise counterfeit schemes.

• Only send items to the verified billing address on the buyer's credit card account (if applicable).

• Use extra caution with international payments and revised postage information,

If you believe a buyer bought or attempted to buy your item with intent to defraud, please click one of the links on the Receiving Payments page to report the buyer.