... continued from above


In well over 300 transactions, I've gotten one completely undeserved negative feedback from an idiot buyer that couldn't be bothered to follow-up on the auction like they were supposed to. Even as I went way out of my way to make things right for that buyer, it wasn't good enough because I had already left a negative (after 10 days of no communication) for them noting they were a flaky bidder at best. Sure enough, several months (about 8 months I think) later, they were NARU'd (not a registered user, as in their registration was cancelled by eBay) and gone from eBay, but unfortunately that lone negative is still in my history.

Doesn't really matter about that though, as I continued to have buyer friendly policies, especially friendly to long time eBay-ers. If you had high enough feedback and no negatives in recent history, I would take personal checks without item hold, and with high enough feedback and low enough value on the items being sold, I'd even be known to cross-ship items back when I was buying and selling more frequently (video games, DVDs and such).

Sadly, a few months back I listed one of the green Xbox systems. The Halo Collector's edition. Had it up for auction, no buy it now, no reserve, just straight auction. I was plenty happy to see a very nice (not overly expensive, well within average) final value for the auction when it ended, but that joy became sadness fast when no one ever contacted me after the auction to arrange payment. No e-mail, nothing. That was my first time through dealing with non-paying bidders. I got back my listing fee and such and have been sitting on a credit for my eBay account for months now. (I wound up selling that Xbox to a friend of my wife's for her kids. Collected a similar amount as what the auction would have given me, though I tossed in several games since it was a friend).

Flash forward a few months and I have a few Sony PSP games up for auction. 3 different games. The first two games are won by the same individual, the 3rd by a different person. I send my normal e-mails off, send off invoices where I actually discounted (wiped out) the shipping for one of the two games for the bidder that won two auctions (saving that person $4.40) and waited for payment. Few hours later I had payment for the single item winning bid, but nothing from the person that won two items.

5 days later, still no payment, though the auction clearly said CONTACT ME WITHIN 72 HOURS OR GET NEGATIVE FEEDBACK.

I figured there was gonna be a problem with that buyer when I saw it was another of those Yahoo! accounts with a long line of numbers at the end of the name. You know the ones: jblow186574@yahoo.com or similar. One of those accounts created just for harrassing sellers on eBay.

I don't get these people though. They apparently don't realize and don't care that they are screwing over the sellers, not eBay when they do this, and they apparently don't care that they are ruining things for other n00b buyers on eBay. I was careful when I listed my items this time. I choose specifically to ignore persons that had non-paying bidder strikes in the recent past. I choose specifically not to take bids from people with feedback lower than 0 when I could have made it lower than 1 (meaning you have to have some positive feedback before you can bid on my items). Of course Mr. or Mrs. jblow325268@yahoo.com (or whatever it was) had 0 feedback, and apparently hadn't screwed over anyone else yet, so they met criteria and bid away.

Now I'm left waiting for 7 days time to past, then file non-paying bidder claims again, leave negative feedback as well, and eventually relist the items when the stupid waiting periods are gone.

How much do you want to bet I will change my standards to require minimum feedback levels of * in future auctions? I had doing it, I really do. I'd prefer to think most people are nice, and they aren't out to cause trouble and harrass others. Unfortunately these last few morons have ruined it for all to come in the future. I'm sure it's not just me, as I know I've been one of the last hold outs. Now when someone complains about not being able to buy from me, I'm gonna have to tell them to buy some useless item with a buy it now bid, get their feedback for paying right away, and then come back and bid on my item if they want. Sucks for them, makes them buy something (like a can opener or other useless junk item) they don't necessarily need, and leaves a smaller pool of bidders for my items.

Thanks again for ruining things worthless eBay bidders.

Your wife's friend paid you with kids?..

Bad decision. I know how to get some for free.

I'm sorry to hear that terpfan . I have never sold anything on eBay, but I have purchused items. One item took almost 5 months before I even recieved an email saying they shipped it... a few weeks later, I received my item. It worried me they had run off . But almost a half year to get an item plain out sucks .

Good luck in the future .

Btw, I hope those kids you recieved listen lol .

Don't you just love the English language

I was thinking of using your statement in the Weird and Whacky series.

well it cuts both ways I gues.....

I just won an auction for a "vintage item"  only to have it be a total misrepresentation,  made of spare parts, and when I went to remove the clothing ( it's a doll) the leg fell off!  it had been glued in place and they used a rubber band along with the glue...

it gets worse.

geesh....

I started the dispute process with PayPal and she wrote a response to my letter and her letter is a total lie.

So frustrating.  I pay ontime, with PayPal, and sometimes the seller doesn't even leave a nice feedback!

Grrrrrrrr,  understand your position too!  that's why I haven't yet started selling!

I just wanted to take a quick second to let y'all know about this service out there that ends the problem of non-paying bidders. Recently, I started using this company called ReliaBid who automatically insert their seal into your auctions that helps to deter fraudulent bidders. It works because if you still end up w/ a non-paying bidder they offer memebers a way to collect on these idiots through a debt collection agency. Overall, they are offering sellers like us a way to protect ourselves from non-paying bidders and from getting stuck with unpaid items. They’re worth checking out – www.reliabid.com. Used to get a bunch of these non-paying bidders every week, but I haven't had any since signing-up to them!! Hope this helps…I hate it when these people pull this crap.