My guess is that you didn't spell it out clearly, or your listing has conflicting information. It's easy to do that. If this is not true, then who knows what their motivation is.
Thanks for your thoughts, shovelhd. I did spell it out in the listing, after I described the item I mentioned payment and specifically mentioned no checks, and again in the payment terms, so it would be clear. Now I've changed my listings and made that a separate paragraph in capitals. I sort of feel that comes off as negative, shouting about my payment terms, but I guess people do not read. I thought when you bid you were agreeing to the payments stated, that was part of the contract of bidding. I often do not bid on things because I do not wish to pay via their accepted methods. So I have no idea what their motivation is/was. They went through checkout and indicated they would pay by money order/cashiers check, so that is what I was expecting.
I don't take checks, and I'm not going to make an exception on this now. It's a PITA for me to make deposits, let alone taking a risk of a bounced check from someone like this buyer. If they had replied after the first email I sent asking very nicely for me to take it, maybe I would have. But after not even replying to three emails, I'm not going out of my way to do them a favor.
I have six auctions ending tonight, and if they are as difficult to deal with as my first batch, I think I'm done with selling on Ebay!
"Other" Laura, I'm sorry to hear about your troubles with the bidder from Ukraine, but I have to say I'm a bit relieved as I was starting to think I was the only one running into these complicating issues all the time! I have no idea if mailing there would require extra forms or something. Did you state a specific shipping cost in your auction? My auctions all say I only ship to US (as if people read, LOL) but I don't really know if it would be a big hassle to ship elsewhere, I've just never done it and I was trying to keep things simple! I also list the shipping costs in the auction, and I'm sure I couldn't ship to Ukraine for the same cost as I can to California, which is what I try and base the costs on.