If you're going to walk away from your winning bid, here's how to ensure I give you a NPB Strike
airplanenut
Posts: 22,286 ✭✭✭✭✭
eBay is always full of fun surprises. I've had plenty of people walk away from sales over the years--with or without telling me--but this is a new excuse.
Message from buyer a day after listing closes:
"Hello. Something went awry, and I cannot pay for this medal. If you look at the bids, the last bid before mine was $106.69, and I registered a bit of 150.00 because I would not be available at the time of closing of bids.
And there were no bids between $1o6.69 and my top bid of 150.00.
Please cancel my purchase.
Thank you"
I reply:
"Hi,
Nothing looks unusual in the bid history. There was a bid of $150 placed at 3:14:58PM, and then your bid of $150.55 was placed at 4:42:53PM. You would have been the high bidder at the closing price of $150.55 from the time you placed your bid until the end of the auction.
Thank you,
Jeremy Katz"
I also include a screenshot of the bid history. I checked while logged in (which shows user IDs), as well as in the app and while logged out. It's the same in every place, calling into question the buyer's story.
Buyer doubles down:
"I checked the bid history online, and as I had written, there were no bids at all between the last bid showing, of $106.69 and my winning bid.
Why don't you just offer the medal for 150.00 to the bidder that you mentioned? I have seen this happen with some frequency over eBay, as I have offered to purchase a medal on which I had been underbidder.
I also question that the bid should have jumped from 106.69 to 150.
I have to tell you that I am not going to go through with this purchase; if you wish, send a complaint to eBay and I will show them the bid history as posted on their site."
You got it. NPB filed.
Maybe if you apologize and come up with a good story I'll let you off the hook. But placing the high bid with time to spare and then pretending the underbidder never existed. I don't think so.
Comments
They just think the $150 is a shill.
Keep us updated, interesting...
I had this a few years ago -> please cancel my purchase, I found another one for $10 less
The buyer's message is really irrelevant. Back out of an auction win for any reason and you're blocked automatically in my world.
Blocked yes, but the NPB is tougher. In theory, I'd like to just give a strike to anyone who backs out. The problem is, you can't just cancel a transaction with a strike--the buyer gets 4 days to pay. So depending on what the buyer says (and the level of excuse), the last thing I want is to file an NPB case and have the buyer decide to pay just so they can return the item (at my expense) and then leave me negative feedback. It's one more way eBay doesn't work quite right, though no matter what, do this and you end up on my blocked list.
Major update: I didn't reply to the buyer, I wated my 4 days, and the buyer got an NPB strike. He has been blocked. I know this is quite the twist in the story!
Are they are confused by the time? 3:14 comes after 3:18?
"A dog breaks your heart only one time and that is when they pass on". Unknown
How about 4:42 comes after 3:anything?
NPB strikes do not seem to matter much anymore
That wasn't my question. Good luck!
"A dog breaks your heart only one time and that is when they pass on". Unknown
@airplanenut - sorry for the hassle you endured. I had a recent issue with an auction on ebay but with an opposite scenario. A bidder on my auction got sniped at the last second and he felt there were some shenanigans:
"I highly question the legitimacy of this transaction. I was the high bidder with no time left according to the time clock on the site and was outbid by someone who had not even been a bidder up until his winning bid. I believe this was a staged or rigged auction and am going to notify ebay."
My response:
"Thanks for the note. I noticed the winning bid came in at the last minute but I did not pay much attention to the order of bidding. The winning bidder sent me a paypal payment almost instantly after the auction. I can assure you the auction was completely legitimate from my side as I only conduct honest and open auctions.
I would also be interested in what ebay has to say. I just believe it was a last minute snipe bid like happens so often with all auctions."
The bidder ended up dropping the issue after a couple of back and forths. It is all part of buying and selling online.
Tim
I'd block that guy. Whether or not he's going to notify eBay, the accusation has two parts. First, that you're up to no good, and as a seller who strives to do everything on the up and up, I don't want to deal with someone who cries foul play. Second, what's in it for you? He'd have a case (albeit one that's wrong) if the snipe didn't win and only served to raise the price he paid. But there's really very little reason to have a winning shill come in at the last second. I suppose the goal could be to prevent the sale, but at least that doesn't cost the buyer anything the way a true shill does. Depending on how the auction page gets refreshed, there can be a few seconds of delay from the time the auction says there are 0 seconds left to the time it shows the auction being closed. A late enough snipe (last 2 seconds or so) can appear to come after the auction ended as a result of that.
I think some people just don't understand the automatic bidding process. If you ONLY look at the bids made, and the dates/times they were made....it can confuse the novice and/or feeble minded.
i stopped doing no reserve auctions over 20 years ago because i got burned pretty bad once. don't have any problems at all with buy it now, no non paying bidders yet after several thousand transactions
sadly there is nothing to do in the case of a deadbeat bidder / person with no integrity. The NBP and block is the only action and maybe he will get enough of them to loose bidding privileges for a while. I hope the item sells for more the next go around to a legitimate buyer. The buyer cant do anything other then try to get the strike removed I bet he has many for such behavior.
i would relist at 150 or 199 or best offer. i just had someone buy something i had listed for 8 months
I would be happy to add them to my BBL.......if I only had their ID
The vast majority of what I sell goes off without a hitch. Of course, it's those few bad buyers who take up the vast majority of my time...
Yep that’d do it for me too, Jeremy.
Sorry but sometimes you have to deal with the weirdos that pop up when you least expect em. Especially nowadaze.
Guy shouldn’t even be looking at coins if he can’t afford $150. JMO
"I spent 50% of my money on alcohol, women, and gambling. The other half I wasted.
I feel like he could of given a better excuse for changing his mind, something like "My cat jumped on the keypad just as the auction was ending"
Wisdom has been chasing you but, you've always been faster
I think some people don't understand that an auction is binding...and by not letting sellers block bidders with zero feedback and by using an arbitration system that favors buyers doesn't help either...I was just selling some Apple ear pods for my son and got this from the winning bidder:
New message from: xhawend_0 (0)
Cancel they were for my for kid and he wasn t behaving for like 10 days so you can cancel give it to somebody else.
I once got something along the lines of "my kid bid but he wasn't allowed to." I really wanted to tell the guy to be a good parent and use it as an opportunity to teach his kid about consequences, rather than shifting the punishment to me, which doesn't do much to help the kid learn, and also makes me a victim for no good reason.
It seems when I used to frequent ebay (as a buyer), I must have been the ideal customer. Never complained, never returned an item, never backed out....Just paid the next day and done. All these stories make me wonder why sellers bother with ebay....Then, thinking about it, though they get a lot of press, they are in the minority. Cheers, RickO
I've been buying/selling things on Ebay for about twenty years and every once in a while I run into a real wackadoo. Years ago Ebay would post the sellers phone number under the contact information.
I sold a meat slicer to a guy in New York and it arrived damaged, he called me and said that he was gonna drive down here and take it out on my hide if I didn't refund his money. I told him that I would split the cost of the damage to the slicer with him and if he didn't like that idea, go ahead and drive down here because I've had my ass whipped by bigger guys than him. He started laughing and agreed to the $20 refund.
Wisdom has been chasing you but, you've always been faster
True ...different generation of bidders ..npb matters less
Maybe just forget it and move on? Is it really worth your energy and time?
The stories about transactions going just fine aren't interesting. But I could flood the board with those if you'd like. "You won't believe this guy who paid and I shipped and that was it!"
I haven't sold much on eBay (between 100 and 200 times) but had a few similar stories.
One buyer claimed they were "disappointed" that the GMM 1793 large cent they bought for about $12 wasn't the real thing, even though I explicitly stated this in the title and description. I refunded their money.
A few other buyers have attempted to renegotiate terms after the auction ended. One wanted me to ship the coin to South Africa understating the value on the customs form to save him VAT. I declined the once in a lifetime opportunity to have the coin stolen by their post office where I wouldn't be able to collect on the insurance. More recently, an eBay coin dealer from Spain who lists at obnoxiously inflated prices asked for free registered mail. I wasn't about to give it to them on a $225 coin and he paid.
While I agree winning an auction should be a binding agreement, this scenario clearly shows that there is no accountability when on eBay.