Buyer with lots of unpaid feedback bidding on my item

Bootlegger

Hi,

I have just idly flicked thru a current bidders purchase history, and see that they have had comments from other sellers recently saying they did not pay.
I find it odd because my settings and I have checked say I don't accept bids from buyers with more than 2 recent unpaid strikes, so how are they allowed to bid?
I am of course not assuming she won't pay, time will tell, but I don't know why she got to bid at all.
Another gripe of mine is the star system for despatch and postal charges, I have had problems with people leaving 1 and 2 when it's quite untrue.
One of these paid Monday lunchtime while I was at the Post Office for a 99p item, and so it got sent next time it suited me, which was Wednesday morning.She left one or two stars for despatch time, tho its well within my stated despatch time of 3 working days.
Some left 1 or 2 stars for being charged £1 when it costs 70p, and £3 for a package that cost £2.20 to post.
Unfortunately on my low value items I lose a lot of money on PayPal and commission, it's not worth doing unless I charge extra for P&P. I can walk to the post office, but surely everyone can't, so I have seen
sellers say they have 2 charge for petrol as their local post office closed and they have a long trip to the closest one.
If a buyer never sold anything, they don't know about hidden expenses I guess

soolin

Bootlegger wrote: »

Hi,

I have just idly flicked thru a current bidders purchase history, and see that they have had comments from other sellers recently saying they did not pay.
I find it odd because my settings and I have checked say I don't accept bids from buyers with more than 2 recent unpaid strikes, so how are they allowed to bid?
I am of course not assuming she won't pay, time will tell, but I don't know why she got to bid at all.
Another gripe of mine is the star system for despatch and postal charges, I have had problems with people leaving 1 and 2 when it's quite untrue.
One of these paid Monday lunchtime while I was at the Post Office for a 99p item, and so it got sent next time it suited me, which was Wednesday morning.She left one or two stars for despatch time, tho its well within my stated despatch time of 3 working days.
Some left 1 or 2 stars for being charged £1 when it costs 70p, and £3 for a package that cost £2.20 to post.
Unfortunately on my low value items I lose a lot of money on PayPal and commission, it's not worth doing unless I charge extra for P&P. I can walk to the post office, but surely everyone can't, so I have seen
sellers say they have 2 charge for petrol as their local post office closed and they have a long trip to the closest one.
If a buyer never sold anything, they don't know about hidden expenses I guess

sellers will often be too afraid to do a full NPB and leave a false positive instead- so blame those sellers .

As for 1 or 2 * stars, if you have more than a couple in any category then you need to start worrying, check out this thread:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/56895243#Comment_56895243

Unfortunately post and packing should not be used to make a profit, if you are not getting sufficient for your items then you need to up the starting price.

Bootlegger

Thanks, I know what u are saying about the stars, I got three once and had the penalties.
I got out of it eventually, and now I tend to wait until the free listing days and do a higher start price with free Postage so it keeps my score ok.
Are we not allowed to charge for materials and time packing and transporting items?

soolin

Bootlegger wrote: »

Thanks, I know what u are saying about the stars, I got three once and had the penalties.
I got out of it eventually, and now I tend to wait until the free listing days and do a higher start price with free Postage so it keeps my score ok.
Are we not allowed to charge for materials and time packing and transporting items?

There is a difference between what you can put, and what buyers expect. You can put what you like, but ultimately buyers are asked to rate you against other sellers- and if your postage is out of line with others you will be marked down.

bxboards

Bootlegger wrote: »

Are we not allowed to charge for materials and time packing and transporting items?

Yes, you are - it's postage and packaging.

However it appears that many buyers are deceived by 'free postage' - even though the buyer pays more in total if 'free postage' is used.

Many buyers will be happy paying £29.99 'free postage' rather than £20 + £8.25 p&p and would mark you down for that.

Buyers marking sellers down for charging postage and packing are shooting themselves in the foot, as sellers will simply go 'free postage' which removes the buyers ability to rate the postage charges (which they agreed to at the time of the bid) and will need to add the additional Ebay fees, and will likely round up. With 'free postage' the only winners are Ebay collecting more fees and the seller geting a higher price - but the buyer ends up paying more..but they see that postage was 'free' so even though the buyer paid MORE they are happy.

theonlywayisup

Remove the bids, block the bidder and keep an eye on any newly registered bidders as it may be them reregistered.

oldone_2

Bootlegger wrote: »

Hi,

I have just idly flicked thru a current bidders purchase history, and see that they have had comments from other sellers recently saying they did not pay.

This is the likely reason a NPB is able to bid on your auctions. Other sellers, rather than open an NPB case, leave a false positive saying they don't pay. All this does is increase the buyers positive feedback,and opens up the sellers to a policy strike.

Your buyer probably has none, or only one, NPB strike against them, so can happily go on bidding.

If everyone of those sellers who left negative feedback had opened a case, that buyer would be history.

virgil_tracy

theonlywayisup wrote: »

Remove the bids, block the bidder and keep an eye on any newly registered bidders as it may be them reregistered.

I've always wondered this - can you remove bids ? how do you do it ?

zerog

virgil_tracy wrote: »

I've always wondered this - can you remove bids ? how do you do it ?

http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/sell/manage_bidders_ov.html#canceling

http://offer.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?CancelBidShow

bxboards wrote: »

However it appears that many buyers are deceived by 'free postage' - even though the buyer pays more in total if 'free postage' is used.

Many buyers will be happy paying £29.99 'free postage' rather than £20 + £8.25 p&p and would mark you down for that.

I think it's a different sort of buyer who gets attracted by 'free postage', perhaps the type that puts their postcode in lowercase and doesn't realise that there are other ways to sort results than 'best match', or too lazy to do a simple addition and comparison. They also have a higher chance of being NPB or just not caring, taking 7 days to pay then complaining when the item isn't received after 3 days.

techspec

Have you got your block settings right.

2 strikes over 12 months is then tightest setting. A lot of people mistakenly think having it over a month is the tightest - but its not - because it lets them off all the strikes in the previous 11 months.

nobile

theonlywayisup wrote: »

Remove the bids, block the bidder and keep an eye on any newly registered bidders as it may be them reregistered.

Thats what I do. Better to make less than face potential problems with a proven trouble maker