Advice needed for selling

slojo

I would like to sell a couple of used mobile phones on ebay due to an upgrade. I have sold a few items in the past with no problems.

However, looking at recent sales of these phones I see that many if not most of them have been bought by buyers with zero or negative feedback; some of these buyers are now no longer registered with ebay.

Presumably these sales never go through and the buyers just re-register under a different name etc. I assume this is some kind of scam or else just kids with nothing better to do than ruin other people's business.

Is there anything I can do to avoid this e.g. set up my sale so that only buyers with positive feedback can bid? Any other advice?

Mandles

These 0 unregistered ebayer are scammers.I gave up listing buy it now for my phones as they kept ruining the auctions.Just be clear, only sell in uk (and say ,NO I DONT ACCEPT POSTAL ORDERS OR SEND TO YOUR AUNT IN NIGERIA!) and have no buy it now price only run as an auction for 7 days and you should be fine.Hope this helps.

finc

It should be ok to add buy it now as long as you set it as immediate payment. That way the auction stays open until payment has been made through paypal. I've sold 2 this way and managed to avoid the scammers but I learnt the hard way!

Only problem is you have to accept paypal as a method of payment.

apples1

You can also block bidders with a minus feedback (i didn't think that was poss until I found out the hard way but there are bidders out there with more negatives than positives sendng their feedback rating into minus figures!) In addition you can block bidders from countries you don't ship to so only UK bidders can bid on your auction. To be even safer only accept paypal and state clearly payment must be made by paypal - if you do not have paypal account don't bid. I would also ask bidders with 0 feedback to contact you before bidding otherwise you will cancel their bid. Should deter some of the scammers. Good luck

Mandles

Thats a good way.

soolin

Mandles wrote:

These 0 unregistered ebayer are scammers.I gave up listing buy it now for my phones as they kept ruining the auctions.Just be clear, only sell in uk (and say ,NO I DONT ACCEPT POSTAL ORDERS OR SEND TO YOUR AUNT IN NIGERIA!) and have no buy it now price only run as an auction for 7 days and you should be fine.Hope this helps.

I like this idea, scammers just hit the phone auctions, especially the BINS, on the basis that for every 100 they hit one seller might not realise they are being scammed. If you make some comment, polite of course, in the auction to make them aware that you won't fall for it they might move on.

I sell phones sometimes and the last few I sold didn't attract one single dodgy bid or email at all.

SOo

Mandles

i only sold about 5 phones but every one was hit by them constantly despite nice mentions that i wouldnt post abroad to your aunt or brother.But they STILL hassled me.I sell Ds consoles now and they still try.I just say how do you sleep at night knowing that you are stealing from honest people & say lets hope there is no karma for your sake!They never reply(wonder if it gives any of them a consiense?)

starlight_xx

Also if you take a Paypal payment ensure you send the phone by Special Delivery. Thats the only form of UK tracking that PP now accept in the event of a chargeback

soolin

starlight_xx wrote:

Also if you take a Paypal payment ensure you send the phone by Special Delivery. Thats the only form of UK tracking that PP now accept in the event of a chargeback

Whatever payment method you use you should post out special delivery as if the parcel is lost you will need to refund the buyer and claim back from the Royal Mail.

Let's not treat paypal payers any better than we treat other payers, if a parcel is lost then the buyer should receive a full refund.

Soo

Bernie

slojo wrote:

I would like to sell a couple of used mobile phones on ebay due to an upgrade. I have sold a few items in the past with no problems.

However, looking at recent sales of these phones I see that many if not most of them have been bought by buyers with zero or negative feedback; some of these buyers are now no longer registered with ebay.

Presumably these sales never go through and the buyers just re-register under a different name etc. I assume this is some kind of scam or else just kids with nothing better to do than ruin other people's business.

Is there anything I can do to avoid this e.g. set up my sale so that only buyers with positive feedback can bid? Any other advice?

...have proved the solution for me.

I have just sold 2 phones on eBay. Both auctions attracted bids from low/zero feedback newbies.

I have a couple of email templates set up for just this situation. These emails explain to the potential newbie winners that due to the activities of unscrupulous people who open ebay/PP accounts in order to obtain goods without payment, I have to take additional precations with newbie winners.

These precautions are simply that I will only accept payment via BACS, electronic tranfer or cheque from newbies. My nicely worded emails to newbie bidders and any newbie winners have been effective in that the eventual winner has understood the way I wish to receive payment and why. All such deals have ended beneficially for the newbie - and for me.

The second phone I sold was to a complete newbie. It took 10 days to completely wrap up the deal but we both benefitted - so it worked!

:beer:

starlight_xx

soolin wrote:

Whatever payment method you use you should post out special delivery as if the parcel is lost you will need to refund the buyer and claim back from the Royal Mail.

Let's not treat paypal payers any better than we treat other payers, if a parcel is lost then the buyer should receive a full refund.

Soo

Good point! I only mentioned PP as many people think PP accept Recorded Delivery as a tracking method in the event of a charge back