Bid snipers requesting cancellation immediately after winning a bid?

[saturdaycrush]

Just had a buyer () snipe one of my auctions last night on a Nintendo Switch bundle I listed on a 5 day auction. Seemed like a good buyer, had 100% positive feedback but immediately after he won, he requested to cancel within the same exact minute.  Seems like a huge waste of time and potential profit lost, now I've re-listed the item as a fixed price auction for less than it sold for and am getting far less traffic. I went to report him only to find out there's no option for such thing and in order to not waste any time and be able to re-list the item, followed through with this cancellation request.

What can we do about buyers like this other than block them? Don't UPI strikes barely do anything? Additionally they're a waste of time for users like myself who are trying to quickly move inventory. Better question, is it even worth listing auctions anymore since buyers seem to have so much swing with little to no penalty?

[katzrul15]

So a competitor who sniped to mess with your listing?

Can you not do a 2nd chance offer?

[albertabrightalberta]

When a reasonable buyer requests cancellation for a valid reason, I accept.

But what I usually do in a case like this where the buyer knew it was auction, knew he was sniping and requested to cancel immediately would be to tell the buyer that he should just wait out the 4 days and the transaction would close automatically. 

This way, buyer gets the strike. 

[postingid7659]

What he said, you can relist anyways, but since winner's not paying just wait it out and give them the strike.  

[downunder-61]

eBay allows a buyer to cancel an order if they do so within the first hour, so best to just let them and offer to second highest bidder as katzrul15 advises.

Not sure how you know it was a snipe bid, but that is neither here nor there.

And this "now I've re-listed the item as a fixed price auction " is impossible to do

[threelittlelambs]

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@albertabrightalberta wrote:

When a reasonable buyer requests cancellation for a valid reason, I accept.

But what I usually do in a case like this where the buyer knew it was auction, knew he was sniping and requested to cancel immediately would be to tell the buyer that he should just wait out the 4 days and the transaction would close automatically. 

This way, buyer gets the strike. 

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This is a good idea, never would have thought of it! 😄

[downunder-61]

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@postingid7659 wrote:

What he said, you can relist anyways, but since winner's not paying just wait it out and give them the strike.  

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Can't do that if the buyer cancels within the first hour any more.

From jasmen@eBay

When a buyer asks to cancel, you should just always just do it. There's never a good outcome from forcing a buyer to go through with a transaction they want to cancel. If you deny it, you can't open another request. Since they didn't pay, the best think is to just archive the sale, relist it, and move on. You don't get billed any fees when they don't pay so there's nothing else that needs to be done. Thanks!

[heckofagame]

As mentioned above, do a second chance offer.

[nobody*s_perfect]

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@downunder-61 wrote: ... Not sure how you know it was a snipe bid, but that is neither here nor there....

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Just look at the bid history.

It shows that the last bid was placed at 7:27:21 PM, and then the auction ended at 7:40:25 PM.  IMHO a bid placed 13 minutes before an auction ends is not a snipe bid.

[saturdaycrush]

Sorry for the typo, bud. Meant to say fixed priced listing. Also, the winning bid occurred right down the wire so it seemed the buyer either had immediate remorse or had no intention in paying to begin with. This we'll never know.

[saturdaycrush]

Thanks for the feedback, folks. Unfortunately the second chance offer attempt failed originally. The user got back within a few minutes of sending t and informed me they had just won a different auction. This is why I ended up just re-listing it as fixed price. 

[lacemaker3 · Accepted solution]

I have to agree with @nobody*s_perfect , the winning bid was placed 13 minutes before the auction ended, so not a snipe bid. To me, a bid has to be within the last 60 seconds to be called a snipe, and even that is stretching it. Most snipers want to be within the last 10 seconds.

But, the definition doesn't really matter in this situation. I also took a look at the bid history, and I noticed that the winning bidder placed 2  bids, 7 seconds apart. The first one was not enough to take the lead, the second bid put him into the lead by one bid increment. Because of the 7 second interval, the second bid was almost certainly placed using the one-click-bid buttons.

I see several possibilities.

1. The bidder just couldn't stand to be outbid, so he entered another bid, and then decided he didn't want to pay that much.
2. The bidder didn't expect to win, and was just  trying to find out what the current bidder's proxy bid was.
3. The bidder hit the one-click-bid button by mistake.

About the only thing you can do now is block them. You can try sending a second-chance offer, but many buyers won't accept them on principle, or if they suspect that the winning bid was from a shill bidder.

[saturdaycrush]

Thanks for the clarification, I can definitely see all three of those scenarios possibly coming into play. Especially annoying if 1 and 2 were the case, but nothing that can be done now other than block them as you mentioned. Will just have to hope for the best on auctions moving forward and utilize UPI cases when applicable.

[postingid7659]

You just don't answer them.   

[buyselljack2016]

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@postingid7659 wrote:

You just don't answer them.   

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Makes no difference the seller answers as far as a UPI strike goes.

Only thing with not answering is maybe the buyer would panic at the "no response", and pay.

Savvy buyer would know they can not get a strike.

Non-savvy buyer might pay, and then return as a SNAD (false, or otherwise)

Lose, lose situation for the seller.