Completing the Sale

This section discusses transactions and how to work with them during the processing that occurs after a winning bidder is determined (for auctions) or a purchase is made (for basic Fixed Price and Store Inventory listings). This section also discusses the major activities a seller is concerned with upon the completion of a sale. These activities are partially or wholly supported by applications. Some aspects of some of these activities cannot, or are not, performed with an application and instead must be done on the eBay site.

Transactions are a basic building block of the eBay system (see Transactions (End of Auction)). A transaction contains the information about the sale of one or more items by one buyer from a single listing (see Transactions (End of Auction)). Transactions embody the data for the sale of an item, and the data for a transaction assists in some post-auction operations, including in shipping and in buyer payment.

Applications retrieve whole lists of transactions for a particular seller using GetSellerTransactions. Retrieving the transaction data for just a single item or a single transaction is done with GetItemTransactions. It is usually more efficient to use GetSellerTransactions to retrieve a list of transactions for a seller and than to use GetItemTransactions multiple times. Using GetSellerTransactionsCall, you can save on the number of calls made by your application (calls are limited on an hourly, daily, and monthly basis). It also reduces total online time spent communicating and interacting with the eBay site.

One reason an application returns a group of transactions for all the seller's recent sales is to display the transaction data in a visual report. An end user can use this report to take various actions, such as contact some buyers to send them information.

Another reason for retrieving groups of transactions is for processing the data outside the context of a user interface or human intervention. For example, an application could retrieve a list of the transactions for all of a particular seller's recently sold items to assess activity, and only alert the seller if a predetermined condition exists (e.g., a buyer requests the total amount to pay, including shipping and insurance).

In addition, if your membership tier supports eBay Platform Notifications, and your application is certified for Production use (see Compatible Application Check), you can have eBay send certain kinds of transaction data to you immediately. See Options for Retrieving Transaction Data for more information.

After an item is sold, the seller must send (that is, ship) that item to the buyer. The buyer and seller should leave each other feedback. Applications submit feedback with LeaveFeedback or CompleteSale. To retrieve feedback for a user, use GetFeedback.

Working with Transactions

Retrieving the Transactions for a Single Item

Retrieving the Transactions for a Specific Seller

Understanding Buyer Payment

Holds on PayPal Payments

Handling Non-Paying Bidders

Shipping the Item

Leaving and Getting Feedback

Making Second Chance Offers for Items

User-Contributed Notes