OT: Ebay frustration, winners not making contact

[Sarcophilus Harrisii]

I've sold a ton of international, and in fact that's where the market seems to be best presently. Last four deals to Federation of Russia.

I have never sold to anyone in France. In fact when someone from France bids on my items, I remove their bid and contact them that I do not sell in France.

Perhaps many of you don't know about the French. For the most part they hate Americans. Go there for vacation some time.

Oh, and my last name is Cousineau. Bred and Born in the Good Ole USA!

It's possible to set your buyer requirements to exclude particular bidders, or bidders from certain countries. Probably a better option than letting them make a bid and having to tell them it is cancelled afterwards. I very rarely sell on ebay, but when I have, my buyer requirements are set so that only bidders from countries I want to sell to (Ie Australia) can place a bid.
Regards,
Brett

 

[Paul T.]

It's possible to set your buyer requirements to exclude particular bidders, or bidders from certain countries. Probably a better option than letting them make a bid and having to tell them it is cancelled afterwards.

Well, yes, cancelling a bid because you don't ship there - but haven't deselected it as an option - is incompetence plain and simple.

The only problems I find are still zero feedback bidders. I post a note saying that if they bid, without contacting me first, I will cancel their bid. Every now and then I let one thru... thinking maybe for once I'll relax and now worry. Every single time, without exception, they turn out deadbeat. It's a good life lesson, as that harry potter character used to shout... "constant vigilance!"

As for fixed prices ... no! On Sunday I sold an old WC had been sitting in the garden for years. Would have given it away, placed it for GBP.9.99 figuring it would go for that. Final price was 145.99. My best eBay sales have always been items like that.

It's still the irrational feeding frenzy that still delivers the money, after all these years.

 

[enasniearth]

eBay

eBay

Once had a buyer that never paid , sent him several emails .
After a month he sent an angry email ' why haven't I received my lens ? '
The responce I sent was that items are not sent untill paid for and perhaps he had overlooked this part of the sale process .
He paid the next day , after I packed the item,in a priority mail box , he emailed again insisting that the item be sent express mail . My responce was that the item had been sent priority as was paid for .


There are some odd ducks out there .

 

[nanntonaku]

actually, if you've got the right item, ie something that everyone wants and everyone knows about,... auctions can still get you better prices, especially if you start at a stupidly low number like $0.99.

dreamers think they might get a bargain and bid it up to fair market value within a couple of days. the activity on your item then pushes your listing higher up on the search rankings making it more visible and the more realistic people come in and price it according to factors like condition, history, etc.

i've done that on a bunch of items valued between 500 and 1k and so far they have always closed quite a bit above the most recent BIN that sold.

i think the london school of economics did a study on it a few years ago,... if you're selling something well known, you might want to take a look at it.

but i dont think it'll work on obscure items that very few people want.

 

[Rogier]

Manny buyers use a automates service to place a bid for them at the very last moment. Therefor they are not present when the auction ends. Usually you want hear from them untill the next workday.....

Also require immediate payment and set your auction to automatically send the invoice.

Use USPS flat rate shipping boxes with automatically calculated shipping costs. Makes this easy for every one...

Sigh

I'm getting frustrated with ebay winners not making contact with me after the auction end.

Okay, one of them turned out to be fraudulent, which is a frustration all in itself.

But some look fully legit (okay, they look like camera dealers) with healthy active feedback records, and my item is not out of range with what they've been dealing with, and there are all sorts of feedbacks with "fast payer, great ebayer".

I would figure if a buyer has bid to the end, they'd want to close the deal quickly.

Okay, rant off, thanks for letting me blow off steam here.

How are you all doing?

Vick

 

[wolves3012]

I always find it funny when I bid on an item (say $500 item) and find out that the previous bidder put in a bid of $18.34 as their max. What were they hoping for? :bang:

Plenty of people bid low amounts, especially on 0.99-start things. They don't want the item, but if no-one else bids they get the bargain and re-sell. If you bid on 100 items and (say) 2 get no higher bids, you may be able to make a profit.

I once bought an item worth about £15 for 99p because no-one else bid. The seller clearly wasn't happy but grudgingly sent the item. I was prepared to pay a fair price but just got lucky, it's hardly my fault no-one else bid and he chose the 99p start. I also got a nice auto-flashgun for 99p as sole bidder. I even offered the seller excess postage because I felt he'd lost out but he just said "you win some, you lose some, it's ok".

 

[miatab]

Here's the other side- the buyer's side! Couple weeks back I won an auction for an item I wanted for parts to replace same non-functioning parts on my own item. I placed a max bid of 105 bucks, but I got the item for about half that. Almost opened a bottle of wine to celebrate, then got a badly written email from the French Canadian seller telling me not to pay because her place had been burgled and "lots of my stuff is gone." I noticed that none of her other stuff was removed from eBay, just the item I won. AFTER the auction closed. Never emailed me in the two days of the auction to tell me about the Burglary. I told her, "I'm old but I'm not stupid." If she'd been in range I'd have kicked her arse as high as her expectations for the item. So I found an on-line store and bought the part I needed for 15 bucks, ten bucks postage, delivered in three days. There are bad *******s on both sides operating against the spirit of eBay.