There have been a couple of changes on eBay over the last few days which should make it a little easier for sellers to deal with bad bidders. Firstly on eBay UK, a new link to “report a problem you had with this transaction” has appeared on the page to leave feedback for buyers. The target of this link gives a list of problems which can be reported, including unpaid items, feedback abuses, unwelcome and malicious buying, and customs fraud (asking for items to be misrepresented on customs documentation). Sellers who have set their breach of policy buyer block will not have to deal with buyers with multiple reports; it appears that eBay is just taking sellers’ words for the accuracy of the reporting here.
Meanwhile in the US, there is a new buyer block available to block buyers who are not ID verified. As ID verification is not available on all eBay sites (not on eBay UK, for example), this won’t roll out everywhere just yet, but it should be very useful, for example, to US sellers of big ticket items who want to be certain that only those buyers who take eBay very seriously will be allowed to bid.
10 Responses
I hope these changes come in on the .au site, Sue. They might have helped stop this now-NARUed Ebayer from going on his buying rampage. Check out the feedback for the buyer of this item – 130219502838. Quite a few dollars in unpaid items he’s bought and not paid for.
What exactly happens when you report a buyer to ebay, is it just logged, or do they contact a buyer and slap their wrists ,cos I dont want a neg from the italian and candian buyers who are hassaling me to undervalue the CN22 at the moment
[ I am sick of canadians wanting it undervalued for customs yet wanting full value for insurance ]
North, you don’t need a CN22 for an Italian buyer.
My understanding is that buyers are not contacted on individual reports from sellers, but I might be wrong; I’ll see if I can find someone to clarify that.
whoops yep I am as daft as the guy from turin thats asking me lol
I am going to try it out and dob a canadian in,
cos I just know a negs on the way when Canada customs stiff him for the tax on a 580 quid purchase lol
Norwegians always ask for false CN22 too I find
its quite amazing
buyers want the seller to be honest and genuine ,yet some demand that you are fraudulent and falsify official documents,
It’s the “please underestimate for Customs and overestimate for insurance” brigade that really annoy me. I stick to EU sales only as much as I can these days.
I have a bit in my t&cs on every listing that I won’t falsify customs… requests are almost non existent now. If they do ask, we just refuse and state that it is a criminal offence.
We also get a lot of these requests and have placed it in our T&C’s as well.
As soon as a customer starts to ask for that, we offer the cancellation of the auction.
That usually cools them down, but not always.
Mark
It kind of looks to me as if most of it just takes you to normal ebay help screens, and if you wanted to do anything about it, it would just be the usual email to custard support. Not quite what I was expecting.