How To Block Bidders With Less Than 5 Feedback

Ms-Money-Penny

Just noticed on ebay that we can now block buyers with less than 5 feedback
and without a paypal account.


Yippee -hopefully this will beat the nigerian phone scammers


http://pages.ebay.co.uk/services/buyandsell/biddermanagement.html

Jellicle

- I don't see how this will help, except to stop them from bidding on your relisted auction..

"Selecting Buyer Requirements enables you to block buyers who:
...Are the winning bidder on 1-100 of your items in the last 10 days. (Note: This block will apply to all buyers, regardless of their feedback score, or you can choose to only apply this block to buyers with a feedback score of 0-5 or lower.) ..."

Ms-Money-Penny

If you can block buyers with less than 5 feedback then the scammers can't just open an account and bid

LongDongDave

Ms-Money-Penny wrote:

If you can block buyers with less than 5 feedback then the scammers can't just open an account and bid

Scammers can buy 5 positives for 5p and 5 minutes of their time.

Davidboy

What about people like me... I have only three positive feedbacks, why, cos I have just started to buy and sell from Ebay, I am not prepared to buy feedback. But that does not make me a bad person. I agree there are cons out there, equally there genuine people...like me!!

D

soolin

Davidboy wrote:

What about people like me... I have only three positive feedbacks, why, cos I have just started to buy and sell from Ebay, I am not prepared to buy feedback. But that does not make me a bad person. I agree there are cons out there, equally there genuine people...like me!!

D

Quite right, everyone has to start somewhere and not all new buyers are scammers.

Anyway, if you read the actual blocking terms and conditions it isn't as simple as just blocking bidders with 5 or less feedback. You *can* block buyers with 5 or less feedback but only if they bid on more than 1 of your items in a 10 day period and are either the current highest bidder or an outright winner. So this won't help against scammers anyway as they tend to use quick hit tactics, opening a new account BINning a few items and then moving on to a new account when ebay suspend the first one. It won;t stop them all it will stop is a malicious bidder or a competitor acting maliciously by bidding on lots of your items to stop others buying from you.

Currently the option to block a single bid from a seller is set up as blocking bidders with minus feedback only.

EDIT: Sorry Jellicle I didn't see you'd already posted the actual terms outlined above.

Soo

*Emily*_3

I thought you could block those buyers anyway?

soolin

*Emily* wrote:

I thought you could block those buyers anyway?

You can block bidders with negative feedback scores from bidding at all. You can only block zero feedback bidders with the added terms and conditions as outlined above.

Soo

Cat72

I have all the blocked boxes ticked. However a lot of people dont have big feedbacks or just join ebay and their enthusasim makes them going buying crazy .This can look suspicious but usually isnt. I must admit that sometimes I get a bit edgy when I see new members bidding highily on my items but when I think about it most of them pay brilliant and their have only been a few bad apples. In fact recently a lot of my sales have been boosted by new enthusastic bidders.
I do check their bidding history if I suspect suspicion and if I am really concerned may email them saying hi etc. However the majority of the times I just leave it to fate and my old newbie phobia has calmed down a lot .
Probably all in all if ebay had the facility to block bidders with less than certain feedback i would have probably shot myself in the foot.
However probably it should be allowed for members to make up their own mind by limitingbidders with low feedback, and a lot of electrical sellers etc do have a problem with fake bidders- but maybe this should be more tackled in the registeration policy.

motorguy

Ms-Money-Penny wrote:

Just noticed on ebay that we can now block buyers with less than 5 feedback
and without a paypal account.

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So we're concluding then that you CANT stop people with 0 or more feedback bidding, unless they're bidding on lots of your items. So we're back to square one then.:doh:

Hintza

Here is a list of my last weeks sales:-


5 Buyers 4 with zero feedback 1 with 70+. Results so far two successfully completed sales with mutual +ve feedback (one UK one France). One no sale; buyer has bought elsewhere and doesn't want to complete (French buyer). One awaiting delivery in France, one awaiting delivery in UK. all these items have sold for £100.

I have recently started selling in France and can not afford to give the non payer a -ve feedback just yet...I only have one french +ve and do not want to put buyers off. Once I hace accumulated a few more positices he will cop it.

Anyway my point is that without newbies a lot of my stuff would acheive much poorer prices or not sell at all.

The precautions I take for newbies:-

1. If in UK check voters roll/phone number on 192.com
2. Pull contact details for all buyers to check addresses etc all match up.
3. E-mail the seller and ensure that they are who they say they are

OK this is not a foolproof method but if I feel buyers are open they tend to be honest.

Slap too many restrictions on buyers and folk will go elswhere. I know I do. If I see a list of do's and don'ts I tend to move on and buy elsewhere.

Many of my successful sales will come from buying on e-bay from sellers to lazy to list correctly, in the wrong category and who describe their items badly. I will buy them write a good description with lots of pictures and list correctly. I will have of course researched my market thoroughly and will know what the item normally sells for +/- 10%. It will be listed at around the lower end of the range with a buy it now at the highest I have seen them sell for in the past fortnight or so. It is the newbies that virtually always pay the top prices.

The item I sold today was bought for £120 + P+P and sold for £175 by the time I have taken all my costs into account (exluding time) I will clear £35. Unfortunately my seller after weeks of selling in the wrong category and with a typo error has just corrected their error today...there goes another little earner....ws nice while it lasted!!!

So if you want to block them be my guest, it will just mean that those of us who take a more pragmatic (and I will agree riskier) approach to selling on EBay will just make a little more at your expense.