Restricting quantity a buyer can buy?

[everard6920]

Is it possible?

I have a few buyers who buy up all of my items as soon as I list them (like, I'll list quantity of 20 of something and they'll buy all 20). I want to stop this happening if I can.

I know a sale's a sale, but many of my buyers are repeat, and these items are collectible, so I'd prefer to restrict the quantity (eg: maximum 2 per customer) to allow multiple customers the chance to buy these items.

Thanks in advance.

[springyzone]

I don't actually know the answer to your question. I'd be surprised if ebay had anything where you could restrict buying.

But one thing that popped into my mind was maybe you need to charge a little more for your items.

If people are jumping in immediately to buy all 20, that says they may be planning to on-sell them at a reasonable profit & are confident they can do that. So charge more-maybe even double. See how they move then as it may knock the entrepreneurs out of the picture a bit & leave the collectors.

[brerrabbit585]

In site preferences there's something where you can restrict someone from buying more than X number of items at once. It might be for bidding on auctions but I can't remember. It's down the bottom of the section where you put your buyer blocks in place, from memory.

[brerrabbit585]

Site preferences > buyer requirements.

Scroll down to this bit:
Buyers who may bid on several of my items and not pay for them
Block buyers who are currently winning or have bought of my items in the last 10 days.
Only apply this block to buyers who have a feedback score of or lower.
Consider selecting this requirement if you are selling expensive items and don't want to sell over a certain number to any single buyer. Learn more about how this requirement works.

It didn't copy and paste well but you can select any number of items from 1 to 10, then 25, 50, 75 or 100 items in the last 10 days. That means that they can't buy again for another 10 days so others have a chance.

I'd be VERY careful because you might upset a few people and lose a lot of buyers. I don't know what you sell or what your postage is, but it may well be that postage cost on single items might mean a lot less sales.

As springy said, I'd be putting the price up because if they're buying all you have then you're probably too cheap.

[everard6920]

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@springyzone wrote:

I don't actually know the answer to your question. I'd be surprised if ebay had anything where you could restrict buying.

But one thing that popped into my mind was maybe you need to charge a little more for your items.

If people are jumping in immediately to buy all 20, that says they may be planning to on-sell them at a reasonable profit & are confident they can do that. So charge more-maybe even double. See how they move then as it may knock the entrepreneurs out of the picture a bit & leave the collectors.

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Yeah, that is the plan (in addition to restricting quantity if possible). It's a little tricky to price them because there is no other seller on eBay selling these items; the only other sellers of these items are in the country of origin on a site for buyers from that country. Mine are (obviously) more expensive than theirs, given the costs involved of importing them, etc, but I definitely think I can charge more and get away with it.

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@brerrabbit585 wrote:
Site preferences > buyer requirements.

Scroll down to this bit:
Buyers who may bid on several of my items and not pay for them
Block buyers who are currently winning or have bought of my items in the last 10 days.
Only apply this block to buyers who have a feedback score of or lower.
Consider selecting this requirement if you are selling expensive items and don't want to sell over a certain number to any single buyer. Learn more about how this requirement works.

It didn't copy and paste well but you can select any number of items from 1 to 10, then 25, 50, 75 or 100 items in the last 10 days. That means that they can't buy again for another 10 days so others have a chance.

I'd be VERY careful because you might upset a few people and lose a lot of buyers. I don't know what you sell or what your postage is, but it may well be that postage cost on single items might mean a lot less sales.

As springy said, I'd be putting the price up because if they're buying all you have then you're probably too cheap.

---

Thanks for the info. I'll take a look. I don't think the problem is anything to do with the postage.

[brerrabbit585]

No, I assumed if they buy 20 they really want them, but if I'm reading it correctly, what you're saying is that they save a lot of money on postage if it's only $1 more to post 20 than it is to post one. That really reduces the postage cost for each item.

[brerrabbit585]

Can you experiment with putting your price up quite a bit on 1 item, then do another bulk listing for the same item for slightly less per item than the single item, but still more than you've been asking previously?

I love buyers who purchase in bulk - it saves me a lot of work in addressing envelopes, leaving feedback, counting/measuring fiddly amounts, less messages, etc etc.

If you're importing them and you're making a reasonable profit, why not stock a few more so that it doesn't matter if they buy in bulk? That's assuming you can get enough stock? If it's limited, just ask more and see how they go. Remember that it's always easier to reduce your prices than increase them, so starting high is always better than starting low.

[imastawka]

Are you serious????

Sellers are complaining about no sales, and you come here complaining that you're being bought out!!!!

And how collectable are they if you have multiples of 20 at a time to sell?

Bragging in the form of a complaint IMO

[brerrabbit585]

I'm not sure why anyone would want to pay an extra 30c to paypal for every item they sell, or extra fees on postage to ebay.

[everard6920]

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@imastawka wrote:

Are you serious????

Sellers are complaining about no sales, and you come here complaining that you're being bought out!!!!

And how collectable are they if you have multiples of 20 at a time to sell?

Bragging in the form of a complaint IMO

---

WOW. Bad day?

I was neither complaining nor bragging . . . I actually DID want an answer to my question. I don't usually post just for the heck of it. 

1. I genuinely like my customers, have a good rapport with many of them (I would even consider some of them to be friends), and would like more than one of them to be able to buy a given item.

2. Over 75% of my sales are to repeat customers. See above.

3. Given 1 and 2, if a single customer is buying up all of a given item, then other customers may become frustrated and shop elsewhere if the items they want are selling out almost instantly to one person. And, I sell on eBay because I enjoy sharing my items with people who also appreciate them. Believe it or not, profit is secondary to that. Probably doesn't make me the best businessperson, but there you go.

It's like if you always go into Baby Bunting for baby formula and they never have it because Chinese resellers have bought it all - you're not going to bother going in there any more.

4. Given that my customers and I, uh - collect my items (and I spend a lot of time messaging with many of them about their collections) - yes, they are definitely collectible. I used 20 as an example because that is the maximum quantity I generally have. Remember how I said nobody else sells them? 20 for the whole of eBay - in fact, in most cases, the whole of the Australian market. Not collectible? Okay, Stawks. You don't even know what they are and you're making all these assumptions.

 I'm very lucky to be selling something that nobody else sells. I'm very lucky to be making sales, and to have a customer base of really wonderful people. I don't know why you're assuming I feel otherwise.