unusual bidder

[fairyquadmother]

hey everyone...

Have a bit of a problem.

I sell vacation vouchers on ebay, and do pretty good at it. It's a nice little supplement income (not a ton, but it sure pays the light bill). Anyway, I woke up this morning and I went from having $15 worth of these certificates bid on, to $400! *huge red flag*

I go to look to see who it is, and there's a person that registered yesterday and has bid on basically every single certificate on ebay (or a good majority of them). Most at really high prices. Probably over a couple grand.

I wrote them a few min ago to confirm to me their intent to purchase, but I"m thinking I should just cancel all the bids that end here in a couple hours. It kinda pisses me off because it makes me lose customers that might REALLY be bidding that last couple hours. sigh.

I'm contemplating IM'ing all the other sellers and letting them know what's up.

Do you think I should try to call them? Or just cancel/ban them?

Lana

 

[iggyshotthebear]

Wow thats a tough one. He's a new user that just registered yesterday.
Do you accept paypal only for those auctions or do you allow them to pay with check/money order?

There is no way he could have been authorized by PayPal that quickly unless he has a different account from before.

I think I would write him another email and just mention politely that because he is a new bidder, you would be glad to relist the items for him if he were serious about bidding and go ahead and cancel his bids. Yadda yadda...

 

[yooperchick]

I agree. Looks funny to me too. If they were really serious, they should have emailed you letting you know that they were planning on purchasing many of your items (being a newbie and all). I've done that before when I was brand new, even though the seller didn't state to do so.

 

[nani1987]

yup that is a huge flag I had someone bid on my vhs tape 1200 now come on that is a fake bid... so I canceled all there bids and blocked them since all i knew they were wrong and just wanted to make my ebay comeback hell.....when i looked up there ebay name I saw they were the ones who bidded on my sons cards and I refused to sell to them so ... i would email them if i don't know them and do what others suggested.. I hate people that have nothing better to do and to bid on auction they have no intendtion of paying............. nani my 2 cents..lol

 

[Msbabedoll]

Hey fairy, do you ever get any coupon deals for places? I mean not like the free ones you can get at the welcome center, but real good coupons? My MIL is taking us all to Gatlinburg in a few weeks, and I LOVE to save with coupons!! I looked at some on Ebay, but I'm skittish about buying from someone I dont know.

 

[fairyquadmother]

Hey Jen...

The coupons that I have, are indeed for free hotels. You pay a $10 fee to the agent for the reservation form, and then you pay your room taxes. I do have forms for Gatlinburg.

The down side to this is, that you're going in less than 60 days, and there's a surcharge for that, which I believe is $35 for Gatlinburg.

If your still interested, let me know and we'll work something out.

Lana

 

[karvsdiscounts]

While I'm a new member - very old on EBay. There is a board - Seller Central, and Trust and Safety (2 boards actually). Now - recommended approach - this is someone probably trying to mess with auctions. I have cancelled and blocked with this before. You can always pull the contact info for your bidders if auction hasn't closed.

Now here is the kicker. If that person isn't already naru'd, if you pull the CI, and it is invalid - you should be able to file ICI, and that person will be down in 2 days. Now - if they are on the up and up, a legitimate phone call can clear up a lot of confusion.

Hope that helps.

 

[fairyquadmother]

I cancelled both bids, and they didn't bid on mine again. I did watch them over the next week, and it seems that their goal was to discredit all those selling vacation vouchers. Without paying, they left horrible negatives and then were banned by ebay.

I did request one of the users info, and called the #. No answer. Also, I googled it and the name did not match the name on the account. Good enough for me.

I now watch every 0 feedback bidder on my auctions and see what else they are bidding on just to make sure.

 

[karvsdiscounts]

Yep, unfortunately, that is what it has become. The more tempting, high profile the auction - the more one must watch it. And we all started at 0 one time.

 

[fairyquadmother]

yeah we sure do.. and that zero is there for a reason. It means that I have nothing to base my decision to do business with you on. So if I so choose, I don't have to do business with certain people. As a buyer OR seller.

And FTR, this was just an everyday auction. Had nothing to do with any high profile auctions.