Transaction interference, member behavior

[churro15]

Just wanted to throw this out there (again), hoping one day eBay will take it seriously and do something about it.  For the 2nd time in a few weeks, I purchased a newly listed "Buy It Now" item, thinking it was a decent deal.  Clearly others saw the item as a good deal, but were slower to try and purchase it and therefore missed out... or maybe not... A little while later the seller explains they received messages from other members offering to buy the item for more money, so they canceled and refunded.  Plenty of sellers aren't worried about the negative feedback or cancellation defect, (or integrity), and take the extra money, to no one's surprise.  If 2 sellers within a few weeks were willing to honestly admit this behavior, I have to think that many other cancellations are for the same reason, but the seller lies about it, or says nothing at all.  

The main issue that should be addressed are the members that interfere with sold items / completed transactions.  Clearly, this is not regulated or even discouraged anywhere that I can find. It's kind of disturbing that eBay has no issue or policy against this (as long as they don't arrange payment offsite), though it seems similar to bid interference.  I've seen other threads relating to this over the years, but the problem persists and I suppose it will continue, especially if eBay makes a little more money when sellers cancel and sell again for more money, doubling up on the fees collected in some cases. Yikes. I highly doubt they have any plans to address this, or at the least, discourage it.  Maybe some type of petition process would encourage change...? Come on eBay, help us out please!  Would not the vast majority of eBay buyers appreciate this type of behavior eliminated or minimized!?

[house*of*paws]

Hi @churro15 

It looks like it was the seller's first and only sale.  Who knows what might have happened to confuse a brand-new seller who never purchased anything on eBay?  They very likely weren't familiar with the rules.

Anyway, I'm very sorry this happened.  There's not much you can do to figure out whether any 'interference' occurred.  I notice that you've already posted about this subject weeks ago.  Maybe it's time to let it go.  You've already negged the seller.

[churro15]

Hello,

I'm not all that worried about the seller in this case, new sellers do weird things... but because they are newer perhaps that's why they were honest about others contacting them to sell for more money, whereas more seasoned sellers wouldn't share that information.  If I didn't emphasize it enough, this has much less to do with sellers than with the competing members that interfere with a completed sale!  To your point, with the transaction you mentioned from a newer seller, other members can freely manipulate or take advantage of them, as the seller may not know the consequences to them for participating...  Another reason for eBay to take this seriously.

[house*of*paws]

@churro15 

But we don't know the circumstances of how the offers came in ... like when they came in, or even if they came from eBay members.  They could have come in from 'locals' or from another venue.  

eBay does have a policy against 'transaction interference' ... for as long as I can remember ... but it's not something that eBay can enforce unless a buyer or seller reports the interference.  [I'm not able to find the policy right now, since the Site Map has done away with the 'A to Z policy' link.  ☹️ ]

I'm just sorry that you didn't take the time to 'educate' a new member, rather than punish them ... but I guess that's your business.

[churro15]

@house*of*paws 

Let me know if you do come across any 'transaction interference' information, I've been unable to find it anywhere, at least with any specifics like this with members contacting to offer more money post sale.

I see you're focused on this single transaction, and perhaps I was too hasty with the negative feedback on a new seller, and I'll let them know they can send a feedback revision request, in case you think I'm posting as just an angry, grudge-holding guy mad about missing a deal. (Which may have not even been a deal anyway, you never really know about condition of items until you get them...) So don't worry, I'm over it 😉 

Again, the main point is the pattern I'm seeing, that worries me, and with what feels like an increasing frequency, and perhaps seen as acceptable now by other buyers.  Hey, everyone else does it, so why shouldn't I type thinking.  And when one is successful at doing it, they try again.  Especially with newer sellers.  Shoot, they may even target newer sellers. Or even if someone experiences what I have, they may start doing it too, as they feel like, well it's "fair game" now to compete.  What do these buyers have to lose?  Type a little message and the worst case is they get a "no", or get ignored.  Zero consequences, and perhaps they land a good deal for what they wanted despite paying more than the original buyer. I buy on eBay frequently and have reason to believe it happens far more than just the times the seller is honest about it. 

So the goal in posting, is really to hoping someday if there's enough noise around this, that eBay will investigate and take action, create some consequences and penalize members that interfere. Someone said it's a lot a work for competing buyers to do this, or thinking they search through sold items, which maybe some do if they've been successful at it before... But where I've seen it, if they just miss out on buying a newly listed item at a good price that they wanted (I miss out narrowly all the time), they just send a quick message with a better offer.  Good sellers will ignore it, but if it's enough of a money difference, they're listening.

I get that if it hasn't happened to you personally, or only once, or you don't buy on here often, you likely don't care and don't think it's an issue... just a one-off, no big deal, move on, etc.  I get it.

[redmodelt]

If they cancel the sell without you asking, report them. That is how eBay penalizes them. 

[house*of*paws]

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@churro15 wrote:

@house*of*paws 

Let me know if you do come across any 'transaction interference' information, I've been unable to find it anywhere, at least with any specifics like this with members contacting to offer more money post sale.

---

@churro15 

The 'transaction interference' that I recall reading about involved bad-mouthing a seller to other members.  [This usually was a seller's competitor.]   

There also was 'interference' in contacting winning bidders of auctions in an attempt to convince them to sell the item they just won.  [This is what eventually led to bidders' Usernames being 'masked'.]

I really haven't heard much about interested buyers contacting a seller after an item was sold EXCEPT to attempt a scam.  [They would pretend to be the buyer ... tell seller they put the wrong address on the payment and ask the seller to ship to a different address.]

The type of interference you're talking about is difficult for eBay to do anything about because they simply don't know when it occurs.   Someone has to report the interference and provide evidence.

And you actually are the first poster I've seen talk about this ... and I've been reading Community posts for about 18 years ... so it doesn't appear to be a common problem.

[ebooksdiva]

I found it ! Rules and requirements for buyers  Buyers interfering with transaction policy  that link takes you to Violation of User Agreement Policy  which really doesn’t say anything about interfering with transactions. 

Here’s the A -Z index of Policies  

[kathiec]

Google offered up this, from eBay India:

eBay Policy

• Members are not allowed to interfere with another member's transaction.

• Members may not contact a seller and offer to purchase a listed item outside of eBay.

• Members are not permitted to email buyers in an open or completed transaction to warn them away from a seller or item. If you have a problem with a transaction, please use the feedback forum and review our Fraud Protection Program.

Notes:

• eBay will consider the circumstances of an alleged policy violation and the user's trading record before taking action.

• Disciplinary action may result in a formal warning, temporary suspension, or indefinite suspension.

Violations of this policy may result in a range of actions, including:

• Listing or Want It Now post cancellation

• Forfeit of eBay fees on cancelled listings

• Limits placed on account privileges

• Account suspension

Note:

If a complaint can't be proven with certainty, eBay may take no action. Due to privacy issues, it's not possible for eBay to discuss the results of an investigation.

I have no idea if this applies to the .com site, but it seems like most policies of this type apply across sites. And this is very similar to the transaction interference rules I remember from the old days.

It's great to think that if there's enough noise eBay will start taking action. But you need to remember that there are approximately 2 billion transactions per day on the site. That makes enforcement of this a daunting and low-priority task. EBay has its hands full trying to deal with actual scammers on the site.

[churro15]

@house*of*paws 

"And you actually are the first poster I've seen talk about this ... and I've been reading Community posts for about 18 years ... so it doesn't appear to be a common problem."

I think part of that is because it's a hidden issue, largely unknown... I'm sure 99% of sellers aren't going to say hey, I'm cancelling your order to sell to someone else who offered me more!  And by the way, here's the username of the person that so generously contacted me to offer me more money 😉  Even if they don't arrange another sale with the person who contacted them, it may be enough for them to conclude, hey I can get more money for this, and cancel and sell it on some other marketplace. From a buyer's perspective, the problem is, most of the issues and frustrations that would be found on forums around this topic, are under seller's cancelling orders.  Buyers don't get honest info around the reason why, or realize this may be happening behind the scenes.

So yeah, evidence is kind of out of the question, it would be up to eBay to investigate the messaging of the sellers/other buyers after a cancellation.  And yes, it's possible it isn't very frequent overall.  But I do have 2 cases in the past 3 weeks where the seller plainly stated this happened. And the seller of the transaction you honed in on confirmed they were messaged through eBay.  The one before that, seller said they had MANY messages with multiple offers. Just a crazy fluke? Maybe. Maybe I shouldn't purchase a good deal when I see it lol...  In addition, other times in the past, seller has cancelled, and then re-listed at a higher price reserved for a specific user... so does that count too?  And other times, they just cancel and relist again at higher amounts and it sells immediately (so immediately it feels arranged).  I do suspect that some of these, conversations happen behind the scenes that lead sellers to cancel.  

Perhaps it's more common in the 'collectibles' genre that I do most of my eBay shopping in. Maybe some collectibles sellers on here could jump in and say if they receive messages about selling an item they've already sold?

A similar post below from a quick search, probably more out there.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Ask-a-Mentor/Member-interference-after-the-sale/td-p/32222436

[churro15]

@ebooksdiva 

Thank you very much for this!  I wish there was some simple method to report a transaction for investigation of member interference, though the problem with that is that the buyer would rarely ever know that...  

I found this, but seems quite general.  

• Members are not allowed to interfere with another member's transaction.

https://www.ebay.in/pages/help/policies/transaction-interference.html

Then it concludes with this, which doesn't help in cases like this...

Note:

If a complaint can't be proven with certainty, eBay may take no action. Due to privacy issues, it's not possible for eBay to discuss the results of an investigation.

[churro15]

@kathiec 

Thank you for this, this is what I was looking for.

"It's great to think that if there's enough noise eBay will start taking action. But you need to remember that there are approximately 2 billion transactions per day on the site. That makes enforcement of this a daunting and low-priority task. EBay has its hands full trying to deal with actual scammers on the site."

Very true, and agreed.

[scavyone]

Churro15,

I don't ever participate in these forums but this is to help you out.  Yeah it sucks when you win something after taking all the time to stay awake and snipe it, pay for it, and think okay now the ball is in the seller's court to package it safely and ship it off.

However, regardless of the "newness" of the eBay seller.  Sometimes people create multiple seller accounts so they may in fact not be "new" and totally or willingly know what they are doing is wrong.

An eBay sale is supposed to be a binding agreement.  When a buyer bids or purchases something and doesn't pay the seller can force the buyer to pay or get a unpaid strike and if they accumulate too many they can have their account banned or suspended.

There isn't any fault on the buyers contacting the seller or offering more because the "seller" is supposed to ignore them after you won the item and paid for it.  If you didn't pay for the item and the seller gets better offers then the seller could feel like you are flaking out on them and might cancel your purchase before it gets paid and relist it which I think shouldn't happen until the deadline to pay has run out.

However, back in the day there is a mutual transaction withdrawal policy that prevented a seller or buyer from backing out of an auction that was won.  This meant that the seller couldn't find a way to cancel the sale unless you didn't pay by the deadline.  Also the buyer couldn't cancel the auction win either without the seller's approval.  Assuming you were the buyer and you gave the seller a real good reason to cancel the auction and mutually agreed to cancel the transaction then there was no way to back out.  This gave the seller a way to legally leave negative feedback on the buyer's account without getting one in return if it went unpaid.  IF the seller were to cancel or not ship the item to the buyer then the buyer could leave NEGATIVE FEEDBACK.  Since retaliatory feedback could be removed usually the individual at fault would have the permanent negative feedback.

On top of this the policy to really screw the SELLER was "SELLER NON PERFORMANCE".

I have the eBay USA link somewhere as I used to multiple times when seller cancelled or backed out of a binding auction that I paid for.  For now I found the same one for India and the wording looks the same.  You could use the link back then to report the seller.  Today it is gone and doubtful it will ever return.

https://pages.ebay.in/sellercentral/seller-non-performance.html

When I reported the seller you have no idea what eBay does to punish them or if they even get punished or their account was affected.  They probably got a free warning and that was the end of it.  Now some sellers were pretty bold and relisted the item even after negative feedback.  Then you can get them for another seller policy violation for relisting it.  If you can get them to violate 4 of them in a short time span say within 1 month then it is possible eBay "might" suspend or terminate their seller account.  But I would say given what I've seen over the years it's unlikely to happen anymore.  But if they violate enough listing policies (ranging from shipping, copyright, et cetera) and you report their listing for each one and eBay tallies them all up then yes they can get banned and I have seen that happen more often than not shipping the item and pissing out buyers claiming the item is broken or out of stock when it is not. 🙂

Before there wasn't a "loophole" for a seller to cancel a transaction without the buyer's approval.  I'm not sure when exactly or why eBay got rid of this as this hurt buyers.  Otherwise the seller would be forced to ship that item to you and you wouldn't have wasted your time posting here fuming at the other buyer who stole it from you by paying more.  The seller could have reached out to you and said he had another buyer offer $XXX and would you match?  Would you have said yes and been happy because you got the item but paid more for it?  It's possible at the price the other buyer offered you wouldn't have wanted it that badly.  But if the "newbie" honest seller had asked you what would you have done then before selling it the other buyer?  I'm sure you could have then warned the seller that it was against eBay policy and they could have their account suspended and the seller would have apologized and just shipped the item.  This is most likely what would have happened had the seller asked you first and not made the mistake of keeping you out of the loop.  Although, the seller could relist the item and just not ship you the item he/she would still suffer the eBay Final Value Fee that would not get refunded back.  I believe the seller still paid for the original eBay FVF on your won item regardless of his/her cancelling it without your approval.  If you sent the seller and requested to cancel then the seller would get their eBay FVF refunded.

As for what you did afterwards and had left negative feedback to the seller account.  That was the correct thing to do and the only thing today that you can do.  Sellers can't leave negative feedback for non paying buyers.  But you must wait like 1 week in order to leave feedback and no sooner.  I guess this is to prevent a shipment taking longer to arrive not cause a false negative on the seller.  Later you had regrets and had it revised to a positive feedback.  You shouldn't have done that and rewarded them with a positive feedback.  If you felt bad because they were a new seller but just wanted them to learn from their mistake then just revise it to a neutral rating which allows you to at least comment on what the seller did wrong without hurting their early feedback and the seller would most likely remember their mistake to not do this in the future.  If you put a negative or 1st negative on a new seller account they would probably realize they screwed up and abandoned this account and made a new one.  Giving the seller a revised positive feedback doesn't quite make the seller learn from their mistake but may attempt it again until a buyer leaves the negative feedback permanently.  But it hurts more when they are starting out then when they had over a 101 feedback.

In the end the seller wasted your time.

1) Time taken to stay awake and search for the listing.

2) Bidding or winning the listing.

3) Checking out and Paying for it.

4) Time spent wondering where the package is tracking it daily.

5) Time spent contacting the seller about the status and finding out they screwed you.

6) Time wasted posting about it here for suggestions.

7) Possibly wasting other people's time reading about it as eBay DOES not care.

Anyhow the TLDR version:

You should have kept the negative feedback on their account.  The "seller" regardless of how long they have been on eBay was at fault.  It is not the fault of the other buyers contacting the seller.  The seller did not have the "will power" to commit to the binding contract that you won and paid for regardless if the other buyers offered more.  The seller may have not done proper research in pricing the item correctly which made it a good deal in your eyes.

End of story.

P.S.

Enjoy your life and move on is the only way forward and not waste any more time trying to penalize the wrong people.  The seller made the wrong choice to not honor the binding contract.  I've had this happen at least a dozen times over the years and sellers found a way to remove the negative feedback and then block you from buying again.  If you truly want to prevent this then getting eBay to bring back the "mutual transaction withdrawal" would stop this from happening as easily.  Then enforcing "Seller Non Performance" with a First and Second Strike temporary account suspension, and a Third Strike account banned would be the other one.

I've spent probably close to a hundred thousand on this site.  Again, honestly from past experiences, eBay DOES NOT CARE. 🙂

[reallynicestamps]

this has much less to do with sellers than with the competing members that interfere with a completed sale!

There is also the chance that the naive seller was contacted by a scammer. You may never know if they got paid for the item they foolishly sent out.

[mudshark61369]

@churro15,

You replied to house*of*paws saying:

"If I didn't emphasize it enough, this has much less to do with sellers than with the competing members that interfere with a completed sale"! 

Maybe the competing member sent the seller a message they did not see before the listing ended with you buying the item, and they thought it was OK to cancel and accept the offer. Newbies do the strangest things after all.

Maybe the seller cancelled because of the new seller 21 day payment hold, which would show your payment status marked as Pending on their account page, so they did not think they had been paid yet.  Most new sellers these days, seem not know about the hold. 

In order for them to sell the item to the other "member"  through ebay they would have had to relist it, so the other buyer could pay. If they did not relist it, chances are the person who sent the seller the message is a scammer, who will take the transaction off ebay. They will use the seller's inexperience to get the seller to accept a fake PayPal or other payment type by sending them an official looking payment form, getting them to ship. It happens a lot in some categories.