Buyer requirements: counts bids as well > should be sales only

[vacheron_nl]

On the page where you set the buyer requirements, I've made the setting that buyers cannot buy more then 25 items within 10 days. However; today one of my regular customers walked into the restriction. 

He did some bids on my listings (I accepted 3 of them, total value around 150 us $). 

Why is he now restricted? In the Buyers requirements activity log I found this: "Buyers who are winning or have recently bought too many of my items" on his name, so he's now on the excemption list. But this should not have happened in the first place. 

This is costing sales! Please, look into this!

[ebooksdiva]

You set up the buyer requirement not eBay. Seems to me you are costing yourself sales by restricting the number of items a buyer can buy. 

[marnotom!]

Why shouldn’t bids count?  Those bids could turn out to be winners and thus become purchases.

[vacheron_nl]

When selling items in multiple quantities you can protect yourself and I've found this restriction has protected me several times.

Still leaves an issue though; eBay counts bidding as buying in the requirements settings.

That is wrong and does not match how eBay explains it: "Consider selecting this requirement if you are selling expensive items and don't want to sell over a certain number to any single buyer."

[vacheron_nl]

Let's say that a listing has a best offer option. Usually buyers can make 4 attempts. Auto-reject below a set percentage are bids that I do not see. 

In this case I only saw 3 best offers which I all accepted. Most likely the buyer made a few too low offers which were automaticly declined. So, buyer has 3 succesfull sales and now walks into a restrction that reacts differently then how eBay explains the setting should work. 

[marnotom! · Accepted solution]

@vacheron_nl, a bid is considered a commitment to purchase the item should the bidder win the auction, just as an offer is considered to be a commitment to purchase the item should the seller accept the offer.

eBay stating that the buyer requirement is based on "buying" strikes me as "dumbing things down" a little for people who don't understand the concept of a commitment to buy an item.

It would be more accurate for eBay to base the buyer requirement on the number of items to which the buyer has made a commitment to purchase, I suppose, but you'd still be facing situations like this, by the sounds of things.  I suggest you give your use of buyer requirements a bit of a rethink.

[vacheron_nl]

Since I'm using a tool (SixBit) to list and check / managing my inventory, I'm able to set a scarity level so the setting on eBay indeed could be reconsidered.

But then again; it's because I'm using a listing-tool for a monthly fee. This setting should either be repaired / better explained by eBay for other users as well. @marnotom! thank you for your thoughts on this.