I have been selling and buying on Ebay for many years and rarely have had any problems. Maybe 3 non paying bidders and one flaky seller that insisted I didn’t pay even though Paypal and Ebay both showed I paid.
This new problem actually started about a month ago or so when I won an auction for some older Crayola crayons. The lot was for 14 boxes, I only wanted 4 of them. My plan was to win the auction, hopefully at less than $100 then sell the items I don’t want to recoup some of my money. Bidding was a lot more active than I anticipated and as an act of desperation, I ended up spending $152 to win the auction. I paid right away and the items arrive shortly after that.
I took the 4 boxes of crayons I wanted then took the 10 leftovers, added 7 other boxes of crayons I had and listed the 17 boxes on Ebay. Bidding started slow but some last second bidding resulted in the lot selling for $127, I was very satisfied with that. Sent off an invoice and waited. After 6 days of no payment, I did a little investigating and discovered the winning bidder is the same guy I outbid for the auction I won. I sent him an email outside of Ebay asking if he had any intention of paying for the auction. The response was a profanity laced diatribe about me using illegal bots and bidding schemes to win the auction. He was going to report me to Ebay for my illegal activities and get me suspended from the site. He also stated he will not pay and if relisted, he will win any future auctions to prevent me from selling the crayons.
I used nothing illegal to win the auction, I made my last bid 5 seconds before the end of the auction using nothing more than the place bid button. I have never used any sniping software or bots on Ebay. I forwarded the email to Ebay yesterday but have not received a response yet. I have lost auctions myself in the same manner and never considered, or even thought of it for that matter, any kind of revenge to the high bidder. I have searched and found instances of revenge buying but it was usually as a method of leaving negative feedback, not to prevent an item from selling. If there was any consolation to the above, I sold a Hallmark ornament of Ebay last night for $89. I paid $3 for it at a garage sale a few weeks ago.
I’ve never heard of it, but it sounds possible. Did you try explaining to the person that you are just a normal person? Also, while ebay and Paypal are one in the same, I would also report this to paypal - non payment. People get serious when they even think money is involved.
Let me see if I understand this. You have a buyer who threatens to purchase anything you put up for auction, but never pay for it? And repeat the process? This certainly seems like a bannable offense. How can someone who repeatedly doesn’t pay remain an eBay bidder?
I wish it was that easy to get out of a winning bid. I got carried away a few years ago bidding on a vintage Martin guitar. I didn’t think about some up coming bills we had budgeted for.
I put myself in a bad financial bind just to save my Ebay account. All because of one stupid moment bidding. It took a few months to get back ahead on the bills.
I guess I was a fool for worrying about Ebay. I should have taken care of my family and said screw Ebay.
I’ve never placed a bid for anything more than a few hundred bucks since. I never will fall into that bidding trap again.
Interesting that a weak moment at Best Buy can be corrected. Say you foolishly buy a Plasma TV. Shouldn’t be a problem to return the next day. Especially if it’s still boxed and unopened. Best Buy’s return policy has always been flexible on most items.
Click that buy button on Ebay and you’re screwed. Or at least I got that impression when I got those non payment warnings from Ebay. They scared me bad enough to cough up the money that I couldn’t afford to lose. I still resent that stinking guitar every time I see it in the closet. I need to sell it one of these days. It’s too expensive to actually play and risk scratching.
That’s far from new. It’s been happening on ebay for a loooong time. Usually it goes ‘seller annoys buyer somehow, buyer creates a new ID to win all seller’s auctions with no intention of paying’, but this version happens plenty.
Or it used to, anyway. Like someone else said, I’m not sure how the guy knew it was you - or how you knew he was the underbidder. Buyers’ identities are kept hidden these days. How did he track you down?
Can you make a Second Chance Offer to the underbidder?
(Aceplace, if you don’t have a sense of personal responsibility it’s very easy to get out of a winning bid, unfortunately for sellers. You just don’t pay. Ebay will put a non-performing buyer strike on your record, but one of those won’t do you much damage. You won’t be able to bid on some auctions for a while, since a lot of sellers have theirs set up to block anyone with an NPB, but it rolls off eventually.)
ETA: Second chance offer. It’ll be offered to the underbidder at his max bid - so at most one increment below the winning bid.
So far as I know if you cancel a winning bid these days and they seller refuses to accept it all that happens is an “unpaid item” note is placed in your account. It’s barely a wrist slap.
ETA - I see eclectic wench has made the same point.
I’m not familiar with eBay procedures so maybe I’m missing something. But why not just put it up for auction as you planned? If the guy follows through on his threat and posts a high bid he doesn’t plan on paying, follow up by filing a complaint against him for non-payment. How many times can he play this game before he loses his account? Sure, it’ll be something of an annoyance but he’ll break before you do. As somebody who’s selling on eBay, he’s got more at stake than just his buying privileges.
As with many things designed to be used to destruction, old (‘vintage’) crayons - and their tins and boxes - are collectible. It’s no more remarkable than collecting stamps or matchboxes.
I’ve never heard of this, but he sounds like either a complete noob to eBay - or one of those paranoid nutjobs that make you wonder how they still have an account. I don’t buy or sell much on eBay these days, but I remember running across sellers who had ‘terms and conditions’ in every listing that were little more than rants about watchers who never bid, sniping, what they would do if you failed to leave nice feedback, etc.
If you guys spotted each other by the FB numbers, then the old way to avoid this kind of harassment would have worked here too: keep your buying and selling accounts separate. I’d recommend it in future. Keep your established account for selling on, start a new one for buying.
Three NPB strikes and you’re out, usually, but he can just create new accounts.
My info on this is a few years out of date, but it used to be that you could only block bidders with overall negative feedback. In other words, you couldn’t block 0FB newbies, just people with -1 or worse. Which is even more useless now that buyers can’t get negative feedback.
(You can block any individual bidder you want, but you can’t group-block by FB for anything but a negative number.)