And nobody gives a fuck that you can’t figure out how to make a buck on ebay without wigging out in the pit. You’re a pathetic whiner about little shit that happens to everybody from time to time, but for some reason your think it entitles you to be the center of attention. If you were pitting the Nigerians, that would be one thing, but I really don’t see anything here that make eBay look like the bad guy.
Nobody’s wigging out. Not everything in the Pit needs to be on the level of global deforestation dickhead.
And let’s not forget the time you cried because you couldn’t figure out how to make a Christmas card from scratch on your brand new printer. Awww, too bad. Poor baby needs a template? That’s so cute.
Maybe you should have just made those cards the way people did 15 years ago. But then, you wouldn’t have been able to be the center of attention in the Pit, right? Fucking Troll.
Strange. I’ve sold over 60 items on eBay over the past couple of years and never had this problem. For every single item I listed, the highest bidder was a legitimate buyer. I wonder what we’re doing differently?
Only thing I can think of is, do you set your “ship to” setting to “worldwide”? I usually set it to US and Canada only.
That’s gotta be it, as Uvula Donor suggested. I never thought to do that. Seemed kinda dickish to the rest of the globe. Figured I wouldn’t mind shipping it anywhere as long as they’re paying. But I’m going to change that from now on.
This one particulary item was set with a 200 dollar starting bid. And it would get swarmed with scammer bids and spam emails and questions and everything. I had to relist it three times, (and was charged final selling fees twice) before I just gave up on selling it.
The smaller priced items under 100 dollars have gotten no spam or scammers.
So either it’s the US/Canada filter, or maybe because the item had such a high starting bid.
I’m confused about this “automatic credit.” Did E-bay recently change? I did a sale about 2-3 months ago, and was never charged a fee, even though the sale did not go through. Do they now need your credit card/bank account # for registration on their site? If not, how do they get the “fee”?
I sat next to a guy at a dinner once. His answer to this question was yes. He was Nigerian. He told me, in all seriousness, never to trust Nigerians. He said that one of the largest groups in Nigeria basically had a culture by which anyone outside your extended family was “fair game”. He was from that group. I didn’t believe him, natch 
It’s a bitch for us, down here though.
No, it’s the biggest fish in the pond. There are a couple of minnows around.
Have something worthwhile to sell?
I made a thousand bucks last week, and did it on a whim. I got an email they were having a “20 cent listing day”, regardless of starting price. I put up a bunch of rare motorcycle parts and made bank!
Got shit? Expect shit. Got something good? Expect profits.
I’ve done pretty well with selling, but it’s definitely fraught with problems. IMO, eBay has made a series of questionable business decisions. Their bottom line is greed, plain and simple. But if they’re not careful, the whole system will implode. The scammers are constantly trying to get a foothold. I always carefully select which countries I ship to, and block bids from countries I don’t ship to. I block bids from sellers with negative feedback. Unfortunately, eBay insanely only allows you to block bidders with (I think) -2 or less. You have to fuck up SO badly to have a -2 feedback rating, it’s practically impossible. But you can keep an eye on your auction and manually cancel bids from 0 or -1 bidders. I’ll routinely get several “phishing” emails on every auction I run. They’re easy to spot. I just report them to eBay.
There’s a really tricky scam where an auction will re-direct you to an outside site that looks like the eBay sign-in screen. As soon as you type in your password, the scammers have it. They take over your account and post a bunch of scam auctions. Then you have to straighten out the whole mess with eBay. This happened to me, and eBay actually called me on the phone about it. I suggested that they send a global message to warn users about this scam, but they feigned ignorance of the problem. I don’t think they want to admit how vulnerable they are to the scammers.
The recent eBay decision to hide bidder identities is exceedingly poor. And this actually hurts buyers. Shill bidding is rampant on eBay. It used to be that you could check up on the bidders and figure out if the seller was using a shill. Now eBay hides the bidders’ identities, so you can’t do that anymore. They claim they did it to try to solve the problem of bogus second-chance offers where the scammers cull their list of victims from bidder lists. But you don’t solve one problem by creating another problem. And the fake second-chance offer scams still exist anyway. The bottom line is greed: When bidders’ identities were public, we could email each other to warn about scams and unscrupulous sellers, as well as uncover shill bidders. Hiding the bidders’ identities only benefits crooked sellers and eBay. The scammers get away with their scams, and eBay gets more seller fees. The losers are the buyers.
But, as already said, it’s the only game in town.
First I’ve heard of this, and I completely agree with your opinion of the effect. I think the real reason, though, is to prevent sellers with multiple items from only listing one item, then selling the others (without giving ebay a cut) to the list of auction losers. This is really advantageous to the seller, as multiple listings would essentially be competing with each other, and also make the item look much less rare. A dutch auction would net the seller lower average selling prices, plus the problem that very few folks understand a dutch auction.
I think this was not uncommon, as I’ve been on the buying end twice, and have probably only bid in 20 or so auctions, and most of those were cases where no seller would have multiple items. I can see where it would piss ebay off, but I agree that their response is horrible.
It is very rare these days that I bid in an auction. I do buy quite a few things that are listed with reasonable “buy it now” options.
What is “shill bidding”?
I knew a guy who would post an item for sale. Before the auction ended, he would bid a high bid with a 2nd account. This way, he could see what the previous bidder had set as a high bid. He would then cancel that 2nd account’s bid, and bid with a 3rd account right below the high bid of the actual bidder. This managed to drive the final bid price up to the maximum.
Is that an example of “shill bidding”? I always thought this was quite clever, but I never had anything to sell of value so never gave it a shot. I assume this was against the Ebay terms of service in some way, however.
Can you specify which countries not to ship to? Because setting to “US and Canada only” all to avoid some fucknuts in Nigeria really chaps my ass. I’ve won stuff only to have the dickweasel say “oh I won’t ship to the UK”*. Why not? I’m paying the fucking postage. All you have to do is go down the post office and fill in a tiny green customs form and then it’s my problem.
Grrr.
*Acknowledging that I should have checked first. But still.
Exactly what you described. It is a blatant violation of ebay’s terms of use. If ebay became aware of this, they would cancel your friend’s accounts.
Bidding in the last few seconds (so called “sniping”) denys a dishonest seller time to do this. It is one of many reasons a savvy buyer won’t bid more than a minute before the auction closes.
Where the seller uses a “shill” ie dummy bidder to push the price higher.
Aaaand another good reason why I snipe and only snipe.
Yeah, S&H isn’t part of the final selling fees. So I do tend to take my money from eBaying in my S&H. But, I can point to others selling similar items to me who are charging what I consider extortionate S&H fees - $8 to $10 for media mail shipping. Don’t get too greedy with it, and it works. But, again, I’d been working with an inventory that I consider worthless*, unless I manage to find a buyer on eBay for it, so I tend to look at any money I make actually selling the silly things as gravy. That reasoning may not make sense for your situation, though.
*After the comic book collector’s market imploded around 2000 it’s been very, very hard to sell post-Silver Age books anywhere but directly to end buyers - trying to get a fraction of nominal value by selling to comic book shops is pretty much a thing of the past.
And if you’re going to snipe, I suggest use www.cniper.com
It’s excellent. By the way, if you want a giggle, read the “Info” page on the site.
lowbrass, I do both buying (too much) and selling (not enough). And I’ve never heard of, nor definitely not seen, hiding bidders identities. Unless I’m not understanding you correctly. Could you please explain what you mean more in full?
Oh, and to the exorbitant shipping fees… I’ve come across stuff listed that goes for a BIN price of .99 and ships for $124. I always wonder about the folks who pay that much for a vase. :eek:
Craigslist might be an option, if you know the value of the item. Simpler than Ebay.
That’s another problem I’ve seen. When I was trying to buy an iPod, I ended up bidding on and losing 6 auctions to one of those ebay store types and for each one I was given a “second chance” offer. And each one I lost, it was by a dollar or two and the bid came from some obvious sock. And this was from a “reputable” business using ebay. Finally, I stopped bidding on that person’s shit and was able to legitimately win an auction from someone else. Damn scammers. I called him on it too and sent him an email.