Question: Should I allow on-site pickups?
“On-site pickups” or “home pickups” are instances in which you provide a winning bidder with your home and business address and they come to you to pick the item in question up, rather than having you ship it to them.
Answer: As an eBay seller, you'll receive this question every now and then from prospective bidders on your auctions who have used eBay's custom search tools to find auctions for items in their area. Before you decide to say yes, you should stop to consider the pros and cons of on-site pickups.
Good Things About On-Site Pickups
There are actually a few benefits to on-site pickups that may be enticing to you as a seller, particularly if you're a people person or you don't much like to pack and ship.- No shipping. You save yourself the hassle of having to box the item up for shipment and/or deliver it to a shipping agency.
- Instant payment in cash. Usually buyers that want to pick up on-site are also willing to pay in cash, meaning no issues related to check clearing or PayPal transfers can occur.
- Direct assistance. For some complex or difficult-to-use tools or hobby items, the chance to meet someone face-to-face can mean the chance to demonstrate how a tool or gadget works or is supposed to work, or what makes an item authentic rather than an imitation—the types of things that could have led to a negative feedback if the buyer received the item and couldn't quite figure it out.
Bad Things About On-Site Pickups
With that said, there are also a number of negatives to seriously consider before you agree to an on-site pickup for any of your auctions.- Personal safety. You're agreeing to meet face-to-face with someone you've never met before in person. This is no small thing, especially if you are allowing them to come to and enter your home.
- Fickle buyers. Even though the auction has already finished and the bidder in question is obligated to complete the transaction as agreed, something about on-site pickups can give the impression that the deal isn't actually done yet. That is to say, buyers in on-site pickups can have a tendency to act as though they're “inspecting” an item to “decide” whether to buy it, rather than simply coming to pay for and collect something they've already bought.
- No paper trail. In most transactions, both buyer and seller are left with a paper trail once the transaction is complete—both payment and shipping tend to leave behind documentation like cancelled checks, PayPal transactions, or shipping receipts and tracking numbers. With in-cash on-site pickups, neither buyer nor seller has such protection in the end—something that may be important not only for things like hedging against liability, but also for things like tax documentation.
- Unexpected visits. If your location isn't configured to be a customer service area, giving a buyer the idea that they can come to see you in person can lead to unexpected return visits for technical support help or other similar concerns that you're really not interested in handling.
