eBay

sea.breeze · ‎23-10-2016

This is quite a weird situation, I put an inflatable boat up for sale with a bin price pick up only and it was bought at the bin within a few hours, this is a buyer who only joined on the day of my auction, for all I know they joined just to purchase my item . So far so good. Buyer contacts me to ask if cash on p/u is ok, I say fine give my address and ask when they want to come down. But I don't hear back from them this goes one for a couple of days, no answer to my messages, at this stage I'm getting a bit suspicious and I'm suspecting that this is a sham bid simply to leave me negative feedback, I'll explain why later. I accept for now that I'm just being a bit paranoid.

I try to get their contact details but ebay does not return anything, says it can't. So I contact help and they forward me the contact details manually. Buyer just happens to live very close as well. I leave text messages for the buyer to arrange a time to collect. Nada. No answer at all to text or messages.

I apply to ebay to cancel the auction, the next day I get a message from the buyer saying how disappointed they are and that 'this is why I hate ebay', and that they didn't answer because they were ill, this made me more suspicious because the buyer only just joined. I wrote back explaining that I assumed they had bought it by mistake and simply didn't want it and I cancelled it so that they would not feel pressured to buy it and that if they still wanted it to not agree to the cancellation and pick it up, or cancel it whatever would make them most happy. I get no response to this. After another day I get another message saying they'd like to pick it up on Sunday between 5 and 7, it's just about 7 now and I'm pretty certain they aren't going to come down within the next minutue.

OK so why am I writing all this. Well, I'm mainly concerned that I've been set up for a negative feedback, which would banjax my 10 year record. I'm not sure what the circumstances are that ebay would actually remove a negative feedback, if this buyer does not cancel and the 10 days expires and they then left me a big red blob, would ebay allow that under these circumstances?

Informed opinions welcome.

kopenhagen5 · ‎29-10-2016

That's life with a freezer.

sea.breeze · ‎13-12-2016

Epilogue...

As they say 'just because you're paranoid it doesn't mean they're not trying to get you'.

OK so a month later I get a big blob with feedback comment saying 'Cancelled Sale', Long story short there was much correspondence between me and ebay, I told them I suspected this was a fake account but in the end I accepted that it was just a coincidence. I answered the neg I got with a simple 'seller arranged to collect twice, didn't show up twice' and that was the end of the matter. Until today when I noticed that I had received a follow up comment saying "Beware".

I found this to be extra suspicious as new sellers do not know how to do this. I was going through my invoices and I suddenly noticed that I had an address for this person, so I thought I'd go down and see why they are being so bitter. Went to the address but it did not exist...

So this is a reason to get the neg obliterated for fake details...

Anyway I reiterated my whole suspisions to ebay, but this time I got a really top person, who put me onto a really top supervisor and lo and friggen behold not only do I get the neg obliterated for a fake address but I've been informed that ebay has established a link between the two accounts. So I was right all along, the seller who sold me the dodgy home made decal, really did set up a fake acount purely to buy my item muck me around and then leave a neg, and follow up neg.

Thing is that he had completely gotten away with it until he decided to give me one more final kick. So all is right with the world again,

Just thought I'd complete the saga.

springyzone · ‎14-12-2016

Glad you were able to sort it out.

But for a pick up item, wouldn't you have been better off to just go the route of unpaid item dispute if you had not heard from the buyer or they had not made any arrangements to pick up in eg over a week?

I would never bother with cancelling a sale for someone like that.

A bidder can't give you a neg if they haven't paid and you carried through with an unpaid item dispute. Or they can, but you should be able to get it removed quick smart.

The only way then that the person could have got back at you was to actually pay and pick up the item. But hey, if you sold an item at a reasonable profit and they had had to pay for the privilege of red dotting you, they would be the loser.

sea.breeze · ‎14-12-2016

Hi, yeah I now know about the upb option, but as i've never had unpaid bidders or problems I was not aware. I thought it was a newbie who changed their mind and I was just offering them a way out, I thought an upb would be too aggressive. In the end it wouldn't have mattered because the account was set up specifically to do this. But now that a link was established by ebay they will be taking serious action.

chameleon54 · ‎14-12-2016

Pretty amazing story. Thanks for sharing it and the follow up. Ebay can be a bit of a swamp sometimes.

Not taking sides, but in response to some of the other posts on this and other threads...... this is the exact reason some of us choose to use posting ID's rather than our main selling account ID's when commenting on the forums.

sea.breeze · ‎14-12-2016

It actually got even more complex. After I left my original feedback for the seller stating the item was rubbish and I had to purchase elsewhere, he got that removed, but the reason I was given was that I was comparing the item to a different item, then when my dead accurate follow up feedback was removed I had correspondence with ebay supervisors who gave me the reason that my feedback constituted buyers' remorse. This blew my gasket, I was going to explain that it is not possible by definition to have buyers remorse over a $3 dollar item. But the point I am wanting to make with this post is that I finally found out that the buyers remorse reason was entirely fabricated and the real reason it was removed was simply that any follow up feedback to feedback that has been removed will also be removed. The further point I'm making is that I have found there are good people at the ebay administration level and there are not so good people. The person who finally sorted all this for me has entirely restored my faith and confidence in ebay and I hope is gives people reason to follow up seek redress when they have been treated in such a way that contravenes ebays own regulation.