At 8:15 AM Saturday morning, I get this email from eBay:

Yeah, I sold my old Sony Discman for $15. Don’t judge. 😉

In this email, eBay is nagging me to ship out my item that very day (in this case yesterday, November 20th). I got this and panicked a little. I always get stuff out as soon as I’m paid. How could I have missed this? How late must I be on shipping this out that eBay had to nag me in email form like this? They’ve never nagged me before, I must be insanely late with shipping this! *freak out*

I immediately go to My eBay to ship this out. Funny story:

I haven’t been paid for this item yet! It’s an eCheck payment that won’t clear for quite a few days yet.

What makes it even funnier is the big yellow warning on the PayPal transaction details page. “Don’t Ship Yet! We recommend that you don’t ship items until you receive payment!” cries PayPal while eBay would rather I ship this item out a full 3 to 6 days before I actually get payment for it.

How many inexperienced sellers fell for the eBay nag email and shipped this out in a panic without realizing they hadn’t been paid for their item yet? If I had shipped this out the 20th, with Priority Mail, the buyer could have conceivably received their item before the eCheck even cleared and canceled the transaction on their end before I ever got the money.

Here’s all I’m asking, eBay. If you must nag me, how about you don’t nag me with terrible, terrible advice, such as shipping out items before I’m paid for them, hmm?