Time Wasters - Bidders who bid, win and do not pay - any way to block the bad buyers?

[won't submit]

i guess we've all had them, buyers who bid and win and have no intention of paying. motivations? competition??

what makes it more likely in a recent case of mine is a purchase of multiple items on the same day and no payment. looking into the spoofs personal details i see there isn't even a phone number to call? seen as the account has 0 feedback and was created on the second day of my listing, i have to point the finger towards someone who has got little else better to do.

what is the deal not having a phone number registered to a brand new account? even for buying in the UK it is compulsory these days?

[mrstealth]

If you go into your "preferences" settings on ebay you can prevent this from happening.

It should be under the "buyer requirements" (or something similar) section - in there you can limit the number of items a bidder can bid on of your item in 1 week.

There are a few other settings you can also set to limit Non Paying Bidders - only problem is that sometimes by changing those settings we also block legitimate buyers as well.

[Modee]

Yes there are ways to try and keep the bums out.

Also, I recommend the following settings under Buyer Requirements:

Block buyers who:

• Have received 2 Unpaid item Strike(s) within 12 month(s)
• Have 4 Policy violation report(s) within 6 month(s)
• Have a feedback score equal to or lower than -1

Which is the best you can do. In some cases I would like to block bidders who have zero feedback, but there is no such setting.

If the item you sell is expensive, can also try putting down something about "if you have zero feedback please do not bid before obtaining clearance or your bid will be cancelled," but then as time goes on and the auction gets closer to closing, canceling bids will just leave the price artificially low on your listing and could hurt your selling price.

But, on less expensive items of mine I don’t care if they have no feedback – just on expensive items.

Another rule of thumb I have is to block any bidder who cancels a bid for no reason. I mean, if he bid $4000 instead of $400 that is a legitimate reason to cancel a bid, but if the bid is a perfectly good one that is lower than the expected closing price, I block such bidders for all time. Anyone that wishy washy, I don't want.

So: every time I get an EBAY Bid Cancellation Notice, I go in and take a look and determine the reason for the cancellation. If it seems like a cancellation done for no legitimate reason, I block that bidder for all time.

Also, I was doing some research and it seemed to me that among the trouble makers who caused problems for me later (complained about SHP (shipping, handling packaging) prices, or something else, they were ones that had asked questions prior to close.

Now, I am not saying that every bidder who asks questions causes trouble later; just that among those who caused trouble for me, most had asked questions prior to auction's close. So...what I am doing now is if anyone asks a question that IN ANY WAY seems nit picky or troublesome, I block him too. I have plenty of buyers and I can afford to block a couple by mistake. Better safe.

[won't submit]

thanks for the advice.

anyone know if it a rule to have at least one contact number (landline/mobile) registered to a buyers account?

i am sure you can't buy without having a phone number on your account, in which case buyers who then remove their numbers are up to no good?

[Modee]

Any EBAY (or PayPal) account for which the registered phone number is disconnected or does not belong to the account holder is liable to be suspensed. I've used this "technique" to try and get EBAYers who crossed me suspended in the past. It does not always work, but it is one among many I have in my bag of tricks.

[Modee]

Second winner who did not pay

I'm running an auction for an expensive item. No reserve, starting price a penny.

First guy, zero feedback (which bumps up to +2 during period he welched on me), from southern California wins @ about $1500., emails some silly question that should have been asked before closing, disappears, never pays.

Unpaid bidder dispute opened, he NEVER responds, closed, strikes him out. I email him a couple of emails during the process, tell him I will sue him, which I still might since he is local.

So I am already upset.

I re-list, some new joker - this one from Asia - wins, this time around $1300. (so I am doubly upset at the first guy now), new winner emails me says he made a mistake can I please cancel. And this guy has maybe seventy feedback so he is not a newbie.

I write him:

When you bid on EBAY: You are agreeing to a contract -- You will enter into a legally binding contract to purchase the item from the seller if you're the winning bidder. You are responsible for reading the full item listing, including the seller's instructions and accepted payment methods. Seller assumes all responsibility for listing this item.

You shame yourself with this action. I feel very sorry for you, and wonder how you could show your face on EBAY again after behaving like this.

EBAY has advised us to do an unpaid bidder action, which we will do in order to get our fees back.

I feel embarrassed for you.

Let's see how it plays out...I hold out no hope that he will pay, but at least maybe this will make him realize he is entirely at fault and keep him from trying to slide me a negative, because I am NOT going to let him pass without at least striking him.

And this gets back to the bottom line, which is that we sellers are just helpless against these buyers who do not perform, unless we want to take the time for Modee techniques to get them suspended, and who has time to do that every week? Ebay should never have removed our power to NEG them.

This is odd, I rarely have a non-paying bidder and now this auction is 2 for 2.

[Arctic Badger]

Ebay should never have removed our power to NEG them.

QFT. I got (another) non paying muppet a few weeks back & took ebay to task over it. Their reply included, amongst other things

"it takes the fun out of it"

Make of that what you will.

[Modee]

EBAY made that response? Or the non-paying bidder?

[Arctic Badger]

EBAY made that response? Or the non-paying bidder?

No, unbelievable as it may seem, that quote was actually in the body of ebay`s reply.

[Arctic Badger]

Just tried to find the message but I`ve deleted it. It went something along the lines of ebay not wanting buyers to be too scared to leave negative feedback for fear of getting the same response as this would stop people being honest and take the fun out of it.

I kid you not.

[Modee]

Well, this is the response EBAY gave me when I complained about a deadbeat bidder and the fact that I could no longer give a buyer a NEG:

I understand your frustration about the changes to feedback, however, if
you will give me a moment to explain the logic that lead us to make
these changes, I am sure that it will be understandable for you.

The reason we made the change to not allow sellers to provide negative
feedback was actually to benefit the seller community that are a
positive part of eBay, like yourself. We were losing our pool of buyers
because of the threat, or use, of negative feedback as a retaliatory
mechanism by some sellers, (negative feedback to buyers had increased by
nearly 8% a year.) Further sellers that were using this practice were
masking their poor ability to provide buyers the items that they were
looking for to the detriment of good sellers that truly had those items
and would be able to deliver in the manner promised.

Further, our marketing showed that as with any retail business, the
buyer must be king to our sellers. No retail store can grow that
criticizes it's customers in public. Our sellers are retailers, and
their customers are the buyers. We realize that sellers need a means to
be critical of buyers and we are here to assist our selling community
with their concerns and have increased the severity of our penalties
against buyers that negatively impact our community. As such, we
encourage our selling community to file unpaid item disputes for all
transactions that are not completed.

Since our policy has gone into effect on May 19, 2008, eBay has seen an
overall increase for it's sellers of slightly less than 20% in sales.

Also, if you don't want to relist your item, you can make a Second
Chance Offer to a non-winning bidder. The offer contains a Buy It Now
price equal to the non-winning bidder's bid amount. There's no fee to
make a Second Chance Offer.

To learn more about making a Second Chance Offer, go to:

Security Measure

If you need further assistance, or have any other concerns please don't
hesitate to reply to this email and let us know. Thank you for choosing
eBay.

Sincerely,
________

eBay Customer Support


What he said might be true to some extent in some cases, but where the buyer simply does not pay - sellers should be allowed to NEG.

Also, now that sellers cannot NEG ever, the "no feedback" rule should be absolute - where a buyer has not paid, that buyer should not be allowed to leave any feedback, period even if he has responded with some nonsense to an unpaid bidder dispute.That's the way I see it anyway.

[Arctic Badger]

Another aspect they neglect to mention is when a buyer clicks on but it now & then doesn`t see it through. Unpaid item strikes are all very well but I have had one instance where the buyer called me up about a vehicle and asked if he could click on buy it now. I asked him if he used paypal. He said yes. I said ok click, pay me and then you are welcome to come up in the morning (Saturday) and collect.

He clicked, closed the auction, didn`t pay me and then called up Sat a.m. p*ssing and moaning down the phone about some minor detail about the van. I said you haven`t paid via paypal as promised. He said he didn`t use paypal. I protested. He hung up. End of.

I have 95 positive feedbacks on my (for now) one and only account and only one neg. The neg came from another vehicle sale, buy it now at 995 GBP. The buyer clicked and then turned up to collect before haggling and offering me half the cash. I told him to go away in short jerky movements. He went home negged me.

Nice idea ebay.

My usual tactic with BIN is to entice them round by listing a mobile number and then nailing their hat on after they have viewed. Then I pull the listing. I would sooner give a nice cash paying customer a few quid off than pay the goons a final value fee any day of the week.

[Modee]

True. This is what EBAY has come to. It is definitely biased towards the buyers.