eBay

egarchow89 · ‎10-22-2019

Hi All,

Some of this will seem hard to believe, but there is a bidder who seems to have a grudge against me and other sellers of the same card game. A few months ago, after I blocked this person for sending repeated lowball offers, often with hostile messages, he started coming after me with different accounts.

I adjusted my requirements to help restrict his activities, since the accounts would all have very low feedback scores. He would bid my items up, then retract bids, tanking the price after many bidders had lost interest. I blocked and reported all the accounts as they were all from the same Massachusetts city. He won a few items from me in a round of auctions recently, and I didn't notice it was him till I saw the address (with the name of a wife or girlfriend).

I also have seven unpaid auctions, all with single cards (which is odd as most buyers win multiple cards), all from separate buyers scattered around Massachusetts, all with feedback scores of 6 or less. Some live close to this buyer in MA, others live in his hometown, and one or two are facebook friends with him (the card game has a large facebook group that he has been called out on before for not treating people right in transactions, so I actually "know" him somewhat outside of eBay). At least, the names of these buyers are the same as some of his acquaintances. This person is seriously so disturbed (and I know it sounds ridiculous) that he might be using their names and addresses to get more accounts to harass sellers of this game.

What could I possibly do at this point? I know a couple of those seven might be legit buyers, but based on what he's done so far it's clear he's involved in some of them.

I know many of you will say I can simply stop doing auctions and do immediate payment required, just keep blocking and whatever, but auctions work well for me based on this game and he is only cutting into 5-7% of my auctions sales but that is still 5-7%. Now that he is not using the same address when he started his campaign, so the literally 15 accounts with that address that I blocked and reported might not get connected by customer service, I don't know what to do. I have some pretty restrictive buyer requirements for low feedback bidders, and I am sure I am crowding out some legitimate bidders with low feedback.

escarchac · ‎10-22-2019

It sad that eBay won't step in and ban ALL of the accounts from that IP address. It can be done if they chose to, but instead of protecting their sellers, they would rather bend the sellers over, and give the benefit of the doubt to the buyers because "They don't want to scare away buyers". As far as the restrictions on buyers, I have mine set up to not allow buyers with very low feedback, but for some reason, they are still allowed to purchase my items. Ebay doesn't care as long as they get their money.

Everytime you think that it is the same buyer, call customer support and tell them. Eventually, they may block the user. The squeaky wheel gets the oil.

chapeau-noir · ‎10-22-2019

There is no way to block low feedback buyers.

“The illegal we do immediately, the unconstitutional takes a little longer.” - Henry Kissinger

"Wherever law ends, tyranny begins" - John Locke (Don't get distracted).

the_fancy_fox · ‎10-22-2019

By now you probably know what your item should sell for so make it a Buy it Now with immediate payment required.

The Race is over
The Rats won.

slippinjimmy · ‎10-22-2019

@escarchac wrote:
It sad that eBay won't step in and ban ALL of the accounts from that IP address. It can be done if they chose to,

It's no longer the 1990's, security measures that were barely effective then don't work at all in 2019.

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep

cashvaluerecovery2011 · ‎10-22-2019

Lol jimmy tech makes life easier as years go by. Blocking a malicious buyer in this day and age is stupid easy.

If this was so hard people would have piles of poker accounts to stack the odds. Not happening.

Ips...shipping addys...emails...names linked to addys or emails....phone numbers....paypal accounts...credit card numbers. I could go on. These are all simple blocks to keep abusive buyers or sellers off ebay. It only does not happen here because ebay knows there is a chance at a fvf.

jaad_6732 · ‎10-23-2019

Hes trying to get people to stop biding on your item so he can get it super cheap as the only bidder. Hoping the other people interested will get tired of bidding and losing and move on to something else. Hes using a bunch of scam accounts to place false bids and bidding with a legitimate account. When the legitimate bid gets outbid he usesthe scam accounts to tank the auction so he can rebid when you post it again. Just keep blocking the fake bidders and he will eventually run out of accounts to keep doing this with. Or unlist the item he wants for a while so he has to move on to another person selling it. It seems like hes after the item not you personally.

autopiacarcare · ‎10-23-2019

@slippinjimmy wrote:
@escarchac wrote:
It sad that eBay won't step in and ban ALL of the accounts from that IP address. It can be done if they chose to,
It's no longer the 1990's, security measures that were barely effective then don't work at all in 2019.

When I was dealing with a similar situation, the person who was targeting us would mix up a few letters in their first or last name to make it just slightly different, but every order was shipped to the exact same street address, city, state, and zip.

When I talked to eBay support and asked them why they couldn't block that person, I was told "well you know with modern technology they can use VPNs to mask their IP addresses, so it makes it very difficult to prove it's the same person." My response was that as far as I knew, VPNs didn't mask shipping addresses and maybe this issue required the deployment of the Common Sense App for proper resolution.