Can I exclude a buyer with zero transaction history from bidding for my item on ebay?

pulliptears

pgilc1 wrote: »

Its not necessarily even the risk of losing the money, its the loss of time. By the time an auction ends, you get an email asking to ship to nigeria, you decline, you then relist for another week, etc, etc.

You usually find that by searching what your high bidder is currently bidding on/won you can sort out the wheat from the chaff so to speak, remove and block them before the auction ends.

soolin

pgilc1 wrote: »

I put the following at the end of my 'high risk' listings (laptops, mobile phones, etc)

** Ebayers with less than 5 positive Feedback **

Due to the amount of scammers on Ebay, if you have feedback of 5 or less, please contact me in advance, supplying your full UK address and a land line telephone number on which you can be contacted. Failure to comply with this WILL mean your bid will be removed and you will be barred from bidding.

Then if someone does bid with 0 feedback i simply cancel their bids and block them.

Some might say harsh, but i dont have time for scammers or timewasters.

I suppose that might work for someone who sells one thing at a time and who can sit and deal with last minute snipes. Some of us run businesses though and really don't have time to check every single bid we get

Crowqueen

pgilc1 wrote: »

True, however most scams on ebay in the mobile phone arena are committed by people with v low or zero feedback. If you want to risk losing potentially several hundred pounds, thats your perrogative.

Most scammers would know that your blurb would not stop them bidding and make no effort to read it or obey it.

What do you want people to say? Screeds like that are like the line on the American immigration landing card which asks travellers 'Are you a communist or terrorist intending to undermine the United States?'

No-one in their right mind would say 'Yes, I'm a scammer come to turn you over', so by analogy you not only lose genuine bidders but also actually not stop the people who you are trying to hold at bay.

At least Canute knew the waves would not obey him.

Crowqueen

To stop Nigerians etc:

- Block bidders in countries you do not ship to (they are commonly registered in overseas countries), and list as UK postage only (you will have a reasonable home market without needing international custom.

- Don't send to the guy who asks you to send it to the uncle in Lagos because he needs it urgently - report them to eBay and get them NARU, then file an unpaid item to get your fees back.

If it's the loss of time, the first point will protect you perfectly well. I've sold one valuable phone on eBay (the other one I had ended up being DOA) and I'm always amazed how the Nigerians still never register in the UK. I think they prey on the people who think words will protect them - they are the ones who don't often actually do something pro-active like set blocks properly.

- Continued p94.

It really is that simple. There are always going to be domestic NPBs, but using the 'block bidders with 2 or more strikes in 12 months' option will limit problems. If you are consistently getting NPBs on the same item, then make sure there are no nasty surprises on your listing which a sniper or someone coming across the auction with minutes to spare hasn't seen. Put important information concisely at the top of the listing, don't clutter things with aggressive terms, and don't put long ranty stuff below the point where the screen scrolls down because that only means you will get someone bidding in haste then getting cold feet afterwards because they missed the fact you wrote hostile things on your auction, possibly about them.

Do things calmly and professionally and you will get better results.

~~Diane~~

The buyer could have been buying and selling on one account until he opened a new one. Like myself until recently. He could have a feedback score of many 100's on his other account.

When I opened my new buying account the first purchase I made was for £90, a mobile phone for my son, I'd me a bit put out if I thought the seller looked at me as a scammer/non payer.

JUAN8888

Update and question:

The zero feedback buyer won the auction and paid 2 days later. After 5 days of the the confirmed delivery date, he contacted me via eBay to say it wasn't working and asked me to call him which I did.

He went through a couple of issues he was experiencing with powering on and battery life - which were definitely not a problem when it was sent out (I checked it/took pictures etc). However, I didn't get the sense that he was "trying it on" and I gave him a couple of suggestions to try out as this was his first Android phone so he wasn't too sure of how things were meant to work. That was last Wednesday.

Today I got a message from him through eBay saying it's still not working and he wants to return it. In my listing, I did specify no returns, but to be honest, if it's returned in the same condition I sent it, I'd be pretty happy to re-list it as it went for a lower price than it should have, and the same phones (in similar condition) have since then gone for higher prices. (I also want to protect my 100% feedback).

What's the best way forward to arrange for the return/refund so I can get my eBay fees refunded? I also obviously want to protect myself in case what he sends back is in different condition to what I sent him.

[This is why I wanted to avoid a zero feedback seller. This is the first problem I've had in over 40 sales]

macfly

Tell him to put a return request through ebay. Then agree to it.

Del_Astra

From reading the above, it does sound like he has a geniune issue with the handset.

I just hope its not the swap a faulty bit of kit for a good bit. Of course you will be in a position to determine it was the actual phone you sold that is returned. I recall back in 2008 when selling lots of digital camera's, ex display and trade in's. I had one person try it on, they bought a camera and raised a claim, sent back same model but different serial number. Fortunately I was able to fix it and return to them, it was a common fault in this make model, so was only out on postage.

I got a puzzled email a fortnight later asking why they had been prevent on bidding on one of my auctions. Some customers I could do without.