posted on May 23, 2002 08:28:55 PM
How come us sellers cannot approve buyers before we come under liability to deal with them.
The buyers get to look at us real close and our feedback before they buy, why can't we look and approve them before they have a chance to give us trouble with a winning bid.
All three of my negs have come from people who, if I was given a chance to review them, might have considered the second high bidder or cancelled the bid completely. I put in my ad that I do not accept Non-USA bidders. 3-4 times a week, some moron, usually from canada, go aheads and bids anyway. Now, how can they bid? They can give me bad feedback for not selling to canada, or whatever other thing they choose, even if I write in my ad they cannot bid. How do we get ebay to do stop this and allow us to approve bidders?
posted on May 23, 2002 10:03:11 PM
I always write that Canadian or International buyers must email me first. You can go in and check where they are from if you have a doubt. You will find that information on their feedback page in the box with their statistics, in the upper left corner. It will tell you where they are from and when they joined eBay. Sometimes their email address will give them away as they are quite different than ours. Now, I just had an international bidder bid on my auction but they mailed their package to an american address.
posted on May 24, 2002 10:40:44 AM
You can cancel any bids of anyone who you choose not to deal with. I have canceled bidders with a negative rating.
I went to bid on an auction, and it required pre approval before bidding, by the time I got approved, the auction ended. It's a great way to kill bidding.
posted on May 24, 2002 12:49:48 PM
<How come us sellers cannot approve buyers before we come under liability to deal with them.
You can. You can set up an auction where no one can bid on it without you approving of them first. Seems like a lot of hassle. But, if you prefer it that way, you certainly are able.
posted on May 24, 2002 01:28:39 PM
Another feeble attempt to bash Canadians.
In fact, you can have this type of "problem" with anyone from anywhere, including your own country. If you don't want to deal on an international basis, maybe you should get out of the game.
Think of the problems you can incur as a buyer. You send your money to someone you have never heard of before and hope you get something back. If you don't, too bad for you. As a seller, at least you can hang on to your stuff until you get your money ...
Feedback is not always a good indicator of a good seller ... I have been burned by a few sellers who have very high positive feedback.
Of course, *your* best solution is somewhat along the lines of what technerd said, only extend it so that no one at all can bid on your auctions. Problem solved.
posted on May 25, 2002 04:24:49 AM
I am at present going thru a feedback snafu with a Canadian bidder. I do not ship internationally, yet a Canadian bidder bid on a buy-it-now auction.
I requested their address, they responded. I relate to them that i'm sorry but I don't ship to Canada and that I would be filing FVF.
They left a negative stating: First time on Ebay. Left me unfriendly note stating he did not ship to Canada.
I sent powersellers an email asking that the negative be removed based on the grounds that the bidder was unauthorized in the first place. I'm waiting for a reply. I'll post it here whenever I get a response from eBay.
If they remove it it'll be the first time eBay ever removed a negative for me.
posted on May 25, 2002 06:26:50 AM
If negative feedback is such a bad thing for you, you would have been better off biting the bullet and mailing the item to Canada. It's really not that hard to do you know, and we are willing to pay the extra in postage/whatever
posted on May 25, 2002 07:34:25 AM
I do approve buyers before the end of auction, but can not if it is buy it now. I have canceled bids due to feedback, but seldom. As for shipping or selling outside the continental USA, ( I do welcome Canadians, APO's and Hawaii and Alaska. )Recently sold to Tokyo and Hong Kong with no problems, they asked first and they were willing to pay the shipping, which I calculated before their bid with their address. International is fine, have sold to: Australia, Greenland, England, Scotland, France, Germany, Holland) but I found there is a lack of understanding and I quit listing International in my description. Have had a couple of problems, with Canada and Italy buyers, they don't want to pay the shipping after bidding, but that doesn't speak for all of them. I want to sell my items, not keep them, so a sale is a sale, but I do check them out, same as they check me out. Remember everyone is not alike, thats what makes the world go round.....and customs forms are easy to do the USPS site is easy to work and gives what is restricted for each country and how to do the customs forms. Go for it.....
posted on May 25, 2002 01:17:38 PM
If I have an item that attracts questionable bidders--mostly comedy CDs--I place in my terms of service that I reserve the right to cancel bids of those with excessive or questionable negative feedback or who are outside my selling area.
I stopped selling to Mexico because of the risk that was involved. I was lucky if one out of five parcels made it to the intended buyer.
~*~
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. ~Oscar Wilde
posted on May 25, 2002 01:39:01 PM
I'm sure it wasn't the fault of the buyer, but I'm a small seller who cannot afford to refund money on items not received, especially that frequently. I later found out that postal theft is big in Mexico, especially that of packages. I can't afford the cost or the headache, so stopped selling to Mexico.
~*~
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. ~Oscar Wilde
posted on May 25, 2002 07:09:12 PM
Or what you could do is to watch your bidders, cancel any that you don't want and put them on your list of blocked buyers.
Also, FYI in case you didn't know this, you can get an idea where they live by going to their feedback and looking at their country.
[ edited by JACKSWEBB on Jaunary 01, 2525 12:00 AM ]
posted on May 25, 2002 11:33:06 PM
RB - It really is the seller's prerogative to ship or not to ship outside the US - personally, I have no problem shipping to Canada and abroad, and often do. However, if the seller only wants to sell domestic, ebay should come up with a way that would block international bidders. At a minimum, they should remove any negs associated with a buyer violating the TOS by placing a bid when they are not supposed to.
posted on May 26, 2002 09:09:37 AM
Re: Sellers who don't want to ship to Canada
It's really not that hard to do you know,
If you don't like Canadians being bashed as the largest group of people who bid on auctions where they are not welcome to bid, which in my experience is absolutely true, perhaps you could lay off the condescension.
fluff
470 auctions running under 3 eBay seller ids
posted on May 26, 2002 05:35:16 PM
2705 positives on eBay in 3 years 7 months with one American user ID
Member since: Saturday, Oct 17, 1998
3457 positives. 2711 are from unique users and count toward the final rating.
8 neutrals. 3 were converted from users no
no longer registered.
6 negatives. 6 are from unique users and count toward the final rating.
As far as selling internationally goes I don't find it necessary as I have enough in U.S. sales to keep me busy. When I'm ask by an international bidder (including Canada)if I'll ship to their country I politely decline. I have nothing against international customers and at one time did ship internationally.
My eBay business has doubled in the last year so I stopped selling outside the states. The wife and I are both retired and we have other interests beside eBay. A five year old granddaughter is one of them. Money isn't everything.
posted on May 26, 2002 06:43:07 PM
Well I got a response from eBay and it looks like there is some hope after all.
Hello xxxxxx,
Thank you for writing to eBay. I am sorry to hear about this
situation,
and understand your frustration and concern over the issue.
There are some circumstances where we will consider removing a
feedback
comment. In this case, and in light of the information you
have
provided, some of the preliminary criteria appear to have been
met. The
comment has been submitted for removal.
However, due to the possible legal implications involved when
removing
feedback comments, we must use extra caution when reviewing
these cases.
So, every comment that meets preliminary qualifications must
also be
sent on for final evaluation. If the comment meets the
requirements for
removal at this point, it will be removed at that time.
Please check your feedback profile in approximately 10 days. If
the
comment has not been removed by that point, it would indicate
that the
final evaluation found that the comment did not meet the
necessary
requirements for removal as outlined in our Feedback Removal
Policy
found at:
posted on May 27, 2002 08:00:26 AM
rampaged ... great post!
It's nice to see an honest reason why a seller prefers not to ship internationally rather than the usual "everyone except me is too stupid to deal with" garbage. I wish you great success with your eBay biz
Yes, they do still run these commercials here, and as a matter of fact, there are several new ones introduced monthly. There are a couple now that continue from one to another ... kinda like a little story. I never thought I'd see the day when I was looking forward to new commercials.
I guess you have to be "world wise" to understand this
posted on May 27, 2002 07:10:21 PM
Hi RB
I'm the husband from the post above
those are great, got a website link where I can see the new ones?
I saw the old one on the beer site but I cant remember now.
Thanks
posted on May 27, 2002 08:16:02 PM
I promised an update on the negative feedback removal request. Ebay acted fast on this one. The feedback was removed. Here is the email I received from eBay:
Hello,
Thank you for contacting us with your feedback removal request.
After reviewing your request, we have found that the requirements for
removal have been met. The feedback has been removed in accordance with
our Feedback Removal Policy found at:
Due to system updating, your feedback score may not reflect this removal
for 24 hours. I am glad that we were able to help you with your feedback
concern. Good luck with your eBay auctions.
Regards,
xxxxxx
eBay SafeHarbor
Investigations Team
______________________________
eBay
Your Personal Trading Community (tm)
posted on May 29, 2002 02:54:36 PMramapaged, congratulations! Good to hear that TOS violators can get removed. Did you have to send much documentation, or was the auction itself enough proof?
To drjackk's suggestion: The only way I could see this working is if an eBay bidder's ID were automatically encoded with criteria - like country of origin, number of negs, neg-to-pos ratio, etc., and sellers were allowed to set filters to screen out people with factors they didn't like. (The same way a US-based web shopping site can be set to automatically reject potential buyers based on the address they enter.)
But that's a heckuva coding job, and quite frankly, I don't see the rationale for eBay to take it on.
As soon as the auction was over I requested the bidders address. When I found out the bidder was Canadian I sent them the following email:
Hi xxxxxxx,
You should have read the auction before you bid. I ship to U.S. customers only.
I will be filing for credit with eBay for this auction.
Best regards,
xxxxxx x. xxxxxxx
I then informed powersellers of the situation and they responded with:
Hello xxxxxx,
Thank you for keeping us informed on your situation.
I understand that you are trying to resolve a situation with an unwanted international bidder, and I appreciate your desire to document your progress and to keep us informed. I will keep the message you sent us on file for future reference.
Thanks for your help, and good luck with your transactions. Have a great evening!
Regards,
xxxxx x.
eBay PowerSeller Support
After I received the negative I informed Powersellers again using the previous response I received from them. They then investigated and removed the negative.
