The eBay BUYING advice thread

Nice!

Nick what CD's were you selling?

Am I getting ripped off here? Bid on an effects pedal, of which there are plenty about at the moment, all selling between £20 and £35. I bid on one in particular as the seller lives pretty close by so it'd be easy to collect it and save the postage (plus hassle of postman delivering it while I'm at work and then me spending days going to the sorting office to see if it's turned up there. Anyway.) So I'm first bidder (started at £15, max of £26), and still a week left, and then a couple of days later I get an outbid notice, then 4 minutes after that a notice that the other bidder has retracted their bid so I'm top again (I'm out at the pub at this point, so I can't really see what's going on), then a couple of hours later the auction's over and I've won, at my top price.

This is shady enough right, but then I look at the 2nd bidders info, and they've no feedback, registered 30 days ago and they've only bid on items from this seller. What I don't get is that this seller has a 100% positive feedback of 133, so it's not like they need to boost their sales or anything.

It does sound like really obvious shill bidding. Does the underbidder have a record of only bidding on *but not winning* items from this seller? If so, that would be even more suspicious. I would certainly consider complaining to eBay about this.

A positive feedback score of 133 is quite low in the greater scheme of things and it sounds like this relatively inexperienced seller doesn't want their items to sell too cheaply and doesn't realise that this kind of obvious shilling using a newly set up account is going to be pretty easy to spot.

report! report!

Yeah, I've reported it. The second bidder hasn't won anything, as far as I can tell, just a few bid retractions and a fair bit of bidding in increments. 11 bids on 4 items from one seller? I thought it was pretty obvious but part of me wanted to credit the seller with a bit more intelligence really.

gah, are ebay always so useless? 'Please be aware that as it's important for eBay to maintain the privacy of all its members, we can't share details of the action we take', and saying it's up to me if I want to buy it or not. I want to see justice. Guy's emailing me now suggesting we meet up 'to save me the postage costs'. I should probably tell him I'm out of it, but my general tendency is to ignore him and hope it'll go away.

Your winning bid went back to what it was before the cancelled bidder bid, right?

if so, it's not shill bidding, at worst it's finding out how much yr maximum bid would be.

If some other 'spurious' account then did bid up to just under your top bid, then that's totally obviously shill bidding.

OK, I don't think ebay are being useless here (or tbh that's it's that much hassle to go to the PO sorting office - you get a card - it tells you when to to go, right?). You're getting the pedal for the price you were prepared to pay, so, you know, that's not sooo bad. Just don't deal with the fellow again. And leave sarky feedback.

Yeah, this is it in chronological order:

Starting Price £15.00 07-May-09 14:21:30 BST
me £15.00 08-May-09 09:42:32 BST
Bidder 2 New eBay Member (less than 30 days)£30.00 09-May-09 22:28:47
Retracted: £30.00 Explanation:Entered wrong amount Retracted: 09-May-09 22:32:26 BST
Bidder 2 New eBay Member (less than 30 days)£26.00 09-May-09 22:35:40 BST
me £26.00 08-May-09 09:42:32 BST (my original max bid)
auction ends 10-May-09 00:08:20 BST

Auction was supposed to end 12-May-09 14:21:30.

That's pretty obvious isn't it. Maybe I'll just post links to his Rolling Stones covers on youtube.

Ned, yeah, ebay are doing what they do - I was just annoyed that they won't tell me what they're doing. And the post office isn't that much bother, you're right. And yes, it is my max offer, but that's not the point is it.

Unless ebay come out in your favour, I'd guess you're stuck with it even though there's ckearly some dodgy dealings going on. Next time he lists something you should bid on it big, watch him shill the price up and then withdraw your offer just before the auction ends leaving him with the item and the sellers fees to stump up. Petty, but likely to be satisfying.

xp

No, you're right, it's a pisser when someone tries to screw the system - a system that I have found to work really well - and I can't understand why he was so keen to lose (your future) custom (for instance) over £11!

OK, that's blatant, and ebay should react to this immediately.

My past dealings with ebay have been pretty swift, so you should get some sort of feedback today, I reckons.

don't think tht wd work, billy, I think you can only withdraw bids made if you have the seller's consent to the retraction. unlikely tht this tosser would consent to anything really

this is so blaytant, hope ebay find in yr favour dude

ebay shucksters are the most disgusting savages in the world imo

Thanks. Ebay have actually already responded, 'We take Shill Bidding very seriously and we investigated your report
immediately', but they say they can't tell me their action due to their privacy rules (it's pc and health'n'saftey and human rights gone mad!). I'd be surprised if this guy's even bothered to try and use a different IP to do his shilling. Now I've just got to try and write an email to him telling him I can't be bothered anymore without being too rude.

And after all this I've just realised I can get the pedal new off Thomann for £36. which is like twice my original bid. I think the main lesson here is don't put a maximum bid down that you'd rather not pay. And don't deal with idiots.

I think you can only withdraw bids made if you have the seller's consent to the retraction. unlikely tht this tosser would consent to anything really

1) Not so
2) even if true, we are supposing the retractor and seller are the same person.

mark, re 2) I was refing billy's hypothetical scenario not jona's being scammed. re 1) oh rly?

ya rly

oic

One thing which you could do in future is use a snipe tool to place your bid a few seconds before an acution ends. That way the seller doesn't have sufficient time to place a bid and then retract it.

If ebay have found that he has been shill bidding then surely his account would be suspended and he'd come up 'not a rgistered user'.

It might well do shortly.

Heckofaway to lose a fairly decent amount of positive feedback rating.

Like I said - over £11?
Jona - have you still got to see this guy? That's going to be a fun meeting.

I don't really blame Ebay making the retraction process pretty rigid - it's be bloody chaos if everyone could just bid what they like and then change their minds.

the problem with ebay is the sheer volume of people going in there. i got fed up with it when i kept trying to put in (legit) bids for things only for the ebay For Your Security firewall to rebuff me every time, viz. "invalid phone number or used on too many accounts" (when i'm only using it on the one and i've tried more than one number, including landlines!). i mean, really. sort your system out so you can send a message to my mobile like everyone else does or don't bother. the end result is you get this over-paranoid overprotective keep-the-trolls-out control freakery which (a) prevents people from doing anything on ebay and (b) (as we've seen above) doesn't stop the crooks and freaks from going on there anyway and fucking up everyone else's fun/business in the process.

Jona - have you still got to see this guy? That's going to be a fun meeting.
I'm far too weak to do that; I'm just going to email him and say I'm not happy with the way it's gone and I'm not playing anymore. If anyone in the Wood Green area fancies going along and making fun of him in public, then you're welcome.

yeah i think the moral of this story is dont bid until the last minute

even if the other bidders are legit youre just pushing the price up unnecessarily

Anti-climax: the guy filled out the transaction cancellation form, I accepted. Case closed. Hope ebay throw the virtual book at him though.

I dunno, I guess they will warn him strongly about this, but let him continue.

Well, he's relisted the item already!

Hmm, what's the odds he gets no bids and then emails me asking if I'll give him £15 for it..

I bought 2 items from one seller and am happy with both but was considering only leaving feedback on one of them so that the description doesn't show up in my profile (birthday gift for other half). Is this rude?

Obviously the seller wouldn't get any extra points on their score from me doing it twice, but it's always nice to see some extra lines of glowing praise in your feedback profile...

Of course the other option is to buy 20 new things for myself on ebay so that it's no longer on the front page, heheh.

You don't have to do a feedback rightaway, you can leave it to after the event!

Can you wait until the birthday and do it then?

oops xpost

yeah, just do the feedback later. people forget to do it all the time - either the seller will contact you to remind you or just happy when you eventually do put it up.

Is there a Firefox add-on/script that you can use to exclude or ignore specific search results? I get really tired of browsing the same junk items from sellers at stupid prices for the searches I run daily, or those auctions that seem to run forever and get relisted again and again at prices nobody will ever buy them at.

i just use auction sieve. it's a client, not a browser addon, but it's indispensable

Last time I did a bunch of saved searches I excluded the usernames of the spammy type sellers in the "sellers" section of advanced search, within ebay. I guess if there's a lot of them it's a pain but looks like you can save them as a list then exclude them all.

Looking at Auction Sieve, pretty neat, but I don't think I can get it to ignore those specific annoying auctions that crop up

So I bought an electronic item on Ebay and when it arrived I discovered it's a fake. What are my options? I want to send it back to the seller for a refund but I'm not happy about having to spend postage on returning it. Can I complain to Ebay or Paypal and get a full refund? I've messaged the seller saying it's a fake but haven't heard anything back.

i think it depends on how the seller chooses to handle returns? iirc as a seller you can choose to accept returns at the buyers' expense or your own.

tbh the best option is to hope that the seller doesn't bother replying and then chances are you'll get a full refund by default and get to keep the item to use as a novelty ashtray or whatever

unless it's a knock-off of a high quality novelty ashtray. then just prepare for disappointment

open a case in the resolution centre or whatever they call it requesting refund and return stating reason. seller has a limited period of time in which to respond, if they do not do so then the case is reviewed and if in your favour (i havent dealt with electronics myself but ebay is generally v heavily biased towards buyers for obv reasons) ebay will refund you themselves and chase it up with seller in their own time

they dont oblige you to send it back either

my gf is interested in a Vuitton Noe bag, I was thinking about getting her one for our anniversary

anyone tell me if a listing like this seems legit http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/272515683486 ?

I had a weird buying experience on eBay lately: the item arrived a week late because the seller (1) dispatched it on the last day of the delivery date window and (2) used USPS Media Mail even though the listing said it would ship via Priority Mail. I messaged the seller to express my disappointment, citing eBay's policy w/r/t accurately representing the shipping time/method. at first he apologized profusely, blaming the mistake on a family member and offering to refund me the shipping difference (which was the most I expected: I hadn't opened a case or asked for a refund, and I was really just hoping he'd acknowledge the mishap). but a few minutes later he promised a full refund for the price of the item plus shipping. I replied that it really wasn't necessary to go so far, but he insisted, and at that point he'd already completed the refund.

even though he was clearly in the wrong, I feel a little guilty that he ended up losing money on the transaction. I know eBay will generally side with the buyer in a dispute, but it seems a little extreme for a seller to give a full refund at the drop of the hat when the buyer didn't even request it. is the threat of negative feedback really that compelling, or was he afraid I'd report him for fraud if he didn't smooth things over asap? I've never been in this situation before, so I have no idea how common it is.

(fwiw the item was a radio, so I think he technically committed mail fraud by sending it via media mail)

Nah, not mail fraud. They'd just return it to him for not using enough postage.

Negative feedback is definitely scary to sellers who don't have a lot of feedback to keep their percentage up. I've refunded a couple of people with complaints about condition when I just didn't want to deal with a return - maybe they were scamming me or maybe it got beat up in the mail, just wasn't worth it to find out.

I guess it comes down to a cost-benefit analysis where the seller figures it's better to take a $15 loss now than to potentially lose out on multiple sales if their feedback percentage takes a hit. in my case the seller only has 1 negative feedback (vs 462 positive) for the past year, so I can see why he'd want to keep his record as clean as possible.

do you expect buyers to send you photos of the items they're complaining about? I got a defective item from another seller who didn't accept returns, and I included a bunch of photos of the defect with my refund request to (hopefully) prove that I wasn't a scammer. tbf it's possible that they would have said "fuck it" and given me a refund even if I hasn't provided receipts.

No, I don't think I've ever had someone send photos. On a high dollar item it would be appreciated.

I've been selling quite a bit for the last few years (clearing out my dad's various hobbies for my mom after his death) but return requests have been rare for me so I might just be lax about it. I can only remember one this calendar year.

I dabble in selling and had my first issue with a customer the other day. He sent three photos of a rip in the plastic of a game disc case. I offered 25% back (enough for a fresh new case at least) and he was delighted and I got positive feedback.

It's all pretty random. Of course most buyers don't leave feedback at all.

Being in Canada, I take a risk bothering with low value items at all, shipping them out pretty cheap with no tracking. You can't ship anything here with a tracking number for less than $15. It seems to be pretty common practice around here. In the absence of a tracking number, eBay will always side with a buyer who says nothing showed up. That stuff is just operating on the honour system.

Everything I've read about the accept returns setting (like on eBay forums) makes it sound like you just look sketchy for saying that you don't take them, since eBay essentially has blanket policies to protect buyers as much as possible.