Has anyone else on here that sells on Ebay had more than the usual amount of dead beat bidders lately? Between my wife and I,we've probably had 10 or so in the last month or so!! It really gets irritating after awhile!!
I had one dead beat bidder, but that was about a good 3-4 months ago... I failed to report him. I haven't had anything for sale on eBay in quite a while... rH
Since we are speaking of dead beat bidders, what of dead beat sellers? What is the responsibility of the seller? If a bidder wins an auction, and there was no reserve, they HAVE to sell the product, right? The reason I ask is because I recently won an auction, and sat around for a couple days waiting for the seller to send me the total plus shipping. When I received no email, I sent one to the listed email address of the seller, and I got an "automatic" response stating that this company had received an email virus, and that they would respond as soon as they are told it was safe. But if nothing happens in 10 days after the auction, then they don't have to sell to me, right? What I am worried about is that this seller did not set a reserve, and was unhappy with the final selling price, so they are stalling until the 10 days is up so they don't have to accept the finishing bid. Anybody got any help for me here?
hey raven, that plain sucks... but if the seller can get around selling their product, then they probably will. can you file a complaint with ebay? ebay also has message boards, try posting this question there? rH
I havent heard of this. I know the seller is supposed to contect the buyer with in 10 days but to my knowledge there is no statue of limitation type thing where if they dont contact each other the auction is nulll and void. Also when you are buying look at a sellers feedback and if they had negs where the buyer claimed the seller never contacted them click on the auction link (when avaliable) and see if it had a low start price with only one bid. I have never had this problem on ebay. I've had some really slow transaction which really woried me on whether or not I was ever going to the item. This is especially troubling when you've already payed via paypal. As to Dirt's original comment: with more and more people bidding for the hell of it I see sellers now putting up disclaimers in their auctions saying that they will cancel bids from people with less then a +5 rating. Personally this doesnt bother me because I am in the 20s but I think this is unfair to new bidders. I think the most common nonpaying bidder is probably someone who wants the item and then gets in a bidding war with someone and gets carried away and bids more then he wanted to. I know this has happened to me a couple of times as a bidder but I've always made sure to pay. To save my perfect rating but also b/c I bid and therefore I have to pay
In response to Johnny Rocket's post,I'm leery now when I see my high bidder has less than 10 feedbacks. In the last batch of ballcards I sold [probably about 30 auctions],of the 4 "deadbeats" I had,all of them had less than 5 feedbacks[2 had 0,one had -1,+one was at 4 or 5]. I honestly think that alot of new Ebayers just don't read the rules.
I know to sign up for an Ebay account you have to enter your credit card info. I thought that measure was put in place to stop deadbeats
I think its more for deadbeat sellers so that they cant take somebody's money and run because if the buyer goes through enough trouble with ebay I think ebay could charge the credit card. That is also in place to prevent people from signing up for multiple accounts and then bidding up the price of the stuff they are selling.
I figured it was to make sure eBay got their listing fees, etc. rather than to protect the sellers or bidders.
You only have to have one (a credit card) if you are selling on eBay, not if you are buying. They only ask for your name and email and such on normal signup, making it easier for anyone to buy.
Dirt, I know what you mean about the deadbeat bidders. I haven't had any in a while, but they are a pain & Ebay won't change their policy to prevent the kids from making fake bids. Imho, they need to require bidders to submit a credit card, just like they do for sellers. Then, if a bidder doesn't pay, Ebay could automatically charge the Final Value Fee to their credit card. I'd bet that their parents would jerk a knot in them, once they start getting charged for the kids prank bids. I suggested this to Ebay a while back, but I think that they are too afraid of being sued to do anything proactive. The worst case of a prank bidder that I've ever seen, was one that had bid on & won over 30 auctions for somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,000-$2,000. He was suspended after a while though. By the way, you do know that you can file for a refund on your Final Value Fee, don't you? You can also contact the next highest bidder & offer to sell the item to them, without having to pay the Final Value Fee, as long as you don't tell Ebay & there's no way they'll find out, unless the next highest buyer tells them. Raven, As for the deadbeat sellers, unless Ebay has changed their policy, your only recourse is to leave them negative feedback & take them to court. After all, the bidding & selling process is a binding contract. However, if the seller decides not to sell the item to you, Ebay won't do anything about it. I'm not sure what the 10 day time frame is that you're talking about, but I do know that you have 90 days in which to leave them negative feedback & 45 days to file a fraud claim, if you paid for the item. I have had sellers that've tried to drag that out, so I wouldn't leave any negatives or file a fraud claim. One thing you might do, is to watch their auctions & see if they relist the item. If the item has a distinguishing characteristic like serial numbered trading cards for instance, then you can notify Ebay of the fact that you won that item on a previous auction & now they've relisted it, rather than complete your transaction. Unfortunately, the only thing Ebay will do is to cancel their relisted auction. If they have several instances of this type of behavior, Ebay might suspend their account (but don't bet on it). Ebay's a big wuss, when it comes to enforcing anything. As for the item you won, I'd keep an eye on the calender, email them once a week, & then leave negative feedback before the 90 days runs out. After all, they may be telling the truth. I received a virus once through an email also.
I've only had one deadbeat bidder in my 109Transaction history w/Ebay, but then again I'm usually the payee! Oh yeah, I think the key to getting your good feedback regardless of how late you or the other person is, is Email/Communication! We all get caught up in the daily routine and sometimes a trip to the Post Office in the middle of a busy workday is near immpossible. As long as the emails keep coming, letting me know what the deal is, vacation, busy w/work, life, whatever, its all good. I hate when people don't ciommunicate! Speaking of Ebay problems: What I really have a problem with is when people Overcharge you for shipping on little tiny items?! Priority mail is 3.50 for up to 1 pound and the frickin boxes are FREE at the post office. I'm sort of obsessed with these Occupied Japan ceramic knick knacks and these things generally weigh less than an ounce!? The last couple of transactions I've gotten emails back about shipping charges were like, 4.50, 5.40 w/Mandatory insurance (WTF?!), and 4.00?! So a nice little 4 or 5 dollar thing ends up being over 10 dollars. Perhaps I should say make a signature on my emails like: Don't forget, Priority Mail is ONLY $3.50 Up to 1 Pound and the boxes are FREE! Anyone else run into these skeezers on Ebay?
My ebay id: R0ckets03 I havent had any deadbeat sellers (knocking furiously on wood) and I havent bean a deadbeat buyer.
So they dont have to worry about it and if they know their maximum they want to spend is $20 then they bid that and then as other people bid the proxy bidding keeps them in the lead until someone bids more then $20. That way too people dont get caught up in the heat of the auction and end up bidding over their maximum Oh and BTW, Hottoddie, they do require buyers to enter in a credit card number. I dont think they ever charge it but they do require one to register.
Johnny Rocket: My id is deh@sunlink.net Among the stuff I have sitting around that did not sell or was'nt paid for is 50 Dream cards [with a gamejersey insert],a Cynthia Cooper Ultra Promo card,40 NY Yankee cards+lots of hockey cards. I'll give someone a real good deal on that!! I probably won't be listing much more till after Christmas. Another gripe I have with Ebay is with what I call "payback feedback". My wife and I have over 500 positive feedbacks and 1 negative. That one resulted from a new user buying something from my wife,and than refusing to pay for it because she did'nt want to send money through the mail or use Paypal. She told my wife she was'nt going to buy it,and hoped it did'nt inconvenience her too much.[We checked her bidding history+found that while she was feeding us this line of crap,she had purchased the same item for $10 less]. My wife explained to her about the listing costs+how it still cost her several dollars and if she chose not to follow through with her end of the deal,she would leave her negative feedback. The woman basically said "go ahead",so my wife did. Several months later,this woman left us negative feedback,saying my wife wasrude+inconsiderate.It's not that big of deal,I guess,but it still gripes me!!
I didn't have to give my credit card details and I only registered with them in the last few weeks...
If you have an email address with something like Yahoo! or Hotmail, they require a credit card, I believe, in order to register as a buyer. An attempt to keep people from signing up for a bunch of different accounts with their free email addresses, I suppose.
hmm.... I registered a few years back and sold one item so they had my CC info but then last spring I changed my email from @aol.com to @ureach.com and they required a CC for that.
