Hi.  Non-paying bidders can cause tremendous losses for sellers on ebay.  If you feature an item and add a few extra features, your auction can cost around $30 before final value fees.  If you get a non paying bidder, this can seriously affect your bottom line, because ebay only refunds the final value fees and does not refund the listing fees and additional features.

There is good news because a company called reliabid.com can act as a collection agency for you and will automatically put its disclaimer in your auction similar to squaretrade.  Their website looks easy to use.  Their fees look inexpensive.  And they report to the credit bureaus.  Imagine a non-paying bidder having to pay you a year later so that he can be approved for his car loan.  By adding the appropriate collection agency disclaimer, you can bet that could happen or you could see your non-payers be reduced dramatically.  Remember...  Ebay now requires all users to use a credit card when registering a bidding or a selling account.  Since they have to use a credit card, they have to use their real address and real name.  This is information that becomes available to you if they win your auction.

I have also searched and cannot find any reason why you can't put in your disclaimer that a non-paying bidder agrees to  compensate you a fee that you set forth as part of the terms of placing a bid on your item.  This means that you may be able to add text that states something like "If  bidder does not pay for this transaction within five business days, bidder agrees that he will compensate seller $500, and that all gathered information will be given to a collection agency for collection purposes and the collection agency will report to the credit bureaus."  Maybe you would only rather have the disclaimer tell that you will only need to be compensated for all listing fees, but if you have a business and all you are doing is getting non-paying bidders and recouping your listing fees, you will not see any profit.  So it is best to ensure that there is a restocking fee and/or penalty fee for not completing the transaction and be sure to include shipping and handling fees.

In fact, some non-paying bidders actually pay immediately, and then immediately email and back out of the transaction and demand a refund so that they can't receive non-paying bidder blackmarks on their ebay accounts.  You should add text to your disclaimer that includes bidders who pay and then back out prior to receiving the item.  They should be charged a significant restocking fee, penalty fee, and shipping charges.

If enough people begin to add these types of disclaimers to their auctions, then ebay will be a much better avenue for sellers to earn profits.  If they don't pay, you shouldn't lose your revenue.  They should be laible.  Send them to collections, and bring in the revenue that you deserve.