Strikes DO work

soolin

This isn't mine but someone asked me to post it, my advice so far has just been to ignore it:

Email received yesterday from a 300+ buyer on ebay:

Hi there, my user name is xx and on xx I bought item xx from you. Due to some unfortunate circumstances I never paid as my mother was in hospital and then afterwards I thought that as you had recovered your fees it was all right with you. It now seems that you have somehow blocked me from buying from a lot of other sellers, no idea how you managed that, haha, but I’m sure you appreciate that with a disabled daughter I need to be able to buy on eBay for my Xmas presents. Ebay say it is OK for you to release whatever it is you blocked me with and please let me know when you’ve done it so I can buy my little girl the things she wants. God Bless

sparkleisshopping

Brilliant! A hospitalised relation and a disabled child - if you were playing eBay excuse bingo you would have got a full house with this one!

Gothicfairy

How can it be released ? Can you take a strike back ?

Crowqueen

Gothicfairy wrote: »

How can it be released ? Can you take a strike back ?

I believe sellers can revoke strikes, but I have never been asked and quite frankly, wouldn't do it if I was. It takes about two minutes to click through the Paypal checkout. If they haven't got two minutes to do that, then they shouldn't be bothering with eBay, they should just go to Amazon or wherever where the process is one click away and they pay automatically when their item closes out.

And no-one needs to buy on eBay. There are plenty of discount retailers out there if you look hard enough. Perhaps you could point her to all the wonderful stuff on this forum.

The only time I've ever been contacted by a former NPB was a nice note about three months after the fact to apologise for what happened and the explanation didn't border on the ridiculous, and she didn't ask for the strike to be revoked, and I think my only reply was short, polite and to the point (not to tell her to get lost, rather just commiserating with her and wishing her luck and so on without mentioning payment or strikes or whatever).

I only hope that she hasn't convinced other people to revoke strikes.

Gothicfairy

I honestly did not know that Crow, I thought once a strike was issued that was it. I wouldn't do it and really don't think it is a good idea that you can take something like that back as surely that leaves the system open to abuse.

Crowqueen

Gothicfairy wrote: »

I honestly did not know that Crow, I thought once a strike was issued that was it. I wouldn't do it and really don't think it is a good idea that you can take something like that back as surely that leaves the system open to abuse.

There might be genuine cases, so it's always good to have a reserve. Also, strikes can be appealed from accounts in generally good standing - once only though, and sometimes, for instance in the case of sellers who accept payment via other means than Paypal then try to make out the buyer hasn't paid and file a dispute which the buyer can't or doesn't want to challenge (which basically means paying again), there has to be a safety valve in the system.

However, if you have so many you are blocked, then that's another matter. I hardly think eBay are going round telling serial NPBs that it's OK to ask the seller to let them bid.

George666

Hi you can remove a strike but it is not as easy as it used to be.
If you check your resolution center you will see the only option on a NPB that has closed is to relist the item.
To remove a strike you must contact ebay and ask them to do this for you and hope that they do.
Personally once I have had a NPB case closed and the buyer gets a strike that is it they keep the strike I would never even consider removing it.
I would always reply to the buyer though saying I will not remove the strike because that is why the system is in place and to remove it would be defeating the whole point of having a strike system in the first place.
The reason I always reply is so that the buyer cannot tell ebay that they tried to contact me and failed and then beg ebay to remove the strike behind my back as they cannot get an answer from me.
If you reply using ebays messaging system then it is there for any ebay advisor to see that you do not want to remove the strike so there can be no mistake and no going behind your back by the buyer to ebay begging for the strike to be removed.

*Scottish*Lass*

Hmm, must be the day for it! I've just logged on to find this message:

Dear xxx
I am angry at the way you have registered an unpaid item against me. The object only ended on the 11th November, I have been in hospital since then. You haven't given me much time to purchase my item.

xxx

Yes, 2 weeks isn't very long at all is it................ lol

soolin

*Scottish*Lass* wrote: »

Hmm, must be the day for it! I've just logged on to find this message:

Dear xxx
I am angry at the way you have registered an unpaid item against me. The object only ended on the 11th November, I have been in hospital since then. You haven't given me much time to purchase my item.

xxx

Yes, 2 weeks isn't very long at all is it................ lol

The word 'hospital' gets you a 5 point bingo bonus for ebay excuses, you need the mention of 'disabled' in there to get a line and a 'disabled child' for a full house though.

I wonder if a lot of buyers have started their Christmas shopping and suddenly found that most of us sellers have found the button to block those with 2 or more strikes.

I look at my logs sometimes on ebay to show many people have not been able to bid, there are sometimes dozens of them.

*Scottish*Lass*

I'm wondering if perhaps I'm not the only person to open a dispute against her over the last couple of weeks and now she's b*ggered for buying off eBay for xmas as you say. As I explained to her, it was impossible for me to know the reason she hadn't paid.

I love the excuses people come up with though! My favourite is always the 'my kid bid on it' one.
My nephew'll be six on boxing day, he's a clever wee thing and reads very well. He loves sitting on my knee while I'm looking at stuff on eBay (if he asks for a toy or something and is told it's too expensive is "can we see if it's cheaper on Bay?" lol) but there's no way at all that he could work out how to bid on it, decide a price to put in and then TWICE click confirm!

soolin

The best one we ever had on here was a ghost bid or suchlike, it was ages ago and I can't quite remember the story but basically some buyer claimed there was no one in the house when the bid was placed but he had noticed an eerie presence around the PC sometimes.