Testing eBay after years of not using it

[chred24]

Trying eBay after years of not doing it cause of bad customer interactions. Friends who buy off It say its the most streamline and safe place to sell. Just had a bot buy two of my items and now there is no easy way to repost them after I canceled their order. Seems like same bad scenarios just for new bad reasons. If anyone knows that eBay is figuring out a way to keep bots and bot chat off here I may be interested in using it again but seems still not worth it as of now.

[chred24]

Phyllis Bartoletti

[inhawaii]

Only if ebay removes the listing do you have to start from scratch.

Would you care to share the item numbers?

Just go to the listing, there should be an option to "relist".

If you can't go to the listing, then ebay did in fact REMOVE the listing.

[sumsum70]

Yes. And the bot makes mistakes if the item is a mixed lot and then the buyer asks to cancel. So you can list the same thing a dozen times because it happens repeatedly. The only solution is to make the price very high, enable best offer and hope someone actually sees past the high price and makes an offer. Otherwise, you'd have to make lots of like items or singles - then shipping singles or smaller lots defeats the purpose of selling on eBay due to shipping costs. I want to ship 20 or 30 of something to one buyer, not six.

[chevymontecarlo88]

If you enable immediate payments for your listings, wouldn't this prevent these bots from bidding since they are not paying?

[toysaver]

I've been selling over 20 years and never had a bot for a customer that I was aware.  Are you selling robot parts?  Ebay does not discriminate.  Money is green no matter who it comes from.  

[soh.maryl]

Any time, anyone, bot or not, does not pay for a purchase within 96 hours, any seller can then cancel the transaction, using "buyer did not pay" as the reason.  Did you not know that?

If not, you might want to do a quick review of the information eBay publishes for sellers, just in case you've missed other vital points. 

[luckythewinner]

It was bought and never paid and it had me text a number in Texas acting like they had questions about the products it was obvious it was not a human.

That is not a 'bot'.  That is a scammer trying to get you to violate eBay policy and send him your  phone number so that he can scam you without eBay seeing the messages.  

couldn't tell me what the product was and couldn't curse. haha

He couldn't tell you what product because he has done this to multiple sellers and he had no way to connect your phone number to a specific listing. IMHO it was unwise to violate eBay policy and text him; now he likely has your phone number. 

You can avoid this problem by setting up your listings as fixed price with immediate payment required. 

[isaiah53-57]

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@chred24 wrote:

Trying eBay after years of not doing it cause of bad customer interactions. Friends who buy off It say its the most streamline and safe place to sell. Just had a bot buy two of my items and now there is no easy way to repost them after I canceled their order. Seems like same bad scenarios just for new bad reasons. If anyone knows that eBay is figuring out a way to keep bots and bot chat off here I may be interested in using it again but seems still not worth it as of now.

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How would "buying" friends know if this was a safe place to sell?? - I EMPHATICALLY Beg to differ - The risk of selling anything of value here is 100% in our opinion - Its the main reason we stopped listing here - The buyer "Money Back Guarantee" here allows a thief to buy your item, say it was not as described and send you a dead skunk back in a box and its game over with hardly a recourse or resource to go to after the fact... Its pretty much as cut and dry as that from our experience...

No - We would not take our valuable time to list our valuable items here due to our perceived lack of seller protection. And since, without the cushion of selling valuable items, it doesn't pay to list cheaper items on this time, labor, and cost intensive site, we consider this place to be 100% untenable from our business model point of view...

[a_c_green]

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@chred24 wrote:

bought but didn't pay. Had me text to ask questions about the products and was definitely not a human. couldn't tell me what the product was and couldn't curse. haha

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@chred24 : Oh, okay, now that you've given us a bit more detail... Yes, those were scammers. The reason for the near-instant purchase was that they run bots to troll high-value listings for new Fixed Price listings from sellers with low feedback numbers and with listings that do not have the Immediate Payment Required option set.

Your communication back to them (which you should never do except through eBay messages, no texting or phone calls, as it reveals an off-eBay phone number for you) may or may not have been to a live person, but in either case, their main goal was to use your phone number to send completely fake payment notifications, usually directing you to ship the item and then upload the tracking number (someplace) as proof of shipping, after which you are supposed to see your funds deposited. Needless to say, no payment will ever appear.

The easiest solution here, as already mentioned by others in this thread, is to be sure to set the Immediate Payment Required option when listing your item, and then no one can snatch your item off the market without actually paying you for it first.

There are numerous other scams out there for new or inexperienced sellers, so be sure to get back to us here if a bidder seems to be trying to take things sideways. Good luck.

[reallynicestamps]

Use Fixed Price.

Use Immediate Payment Required.

Do not opt for Best Offer.

Try to reinvigorate your former account which has some feedback.

Communicate only through eBay Messages.

Do you have your Managed Payments account  set up yet?
Without your SSN and checking account information, eBay cannot transfer your customer's payment to your checking account.