Buyer Requirements - Why Limit Purchases?

[gilliankehler]

So I've been bidding on some small rocks and gems from China with free shipping lately, I think I've purchased about 10 of them in the past week (all paid up and shipped out). But I've noticed that when I try to bid on items from certain sellers and even a seller I recently purchased from, it gives me a notification that the seller has decided to not let me purchase from them, and it won't let me bid or buy it now. 

I'm sure wondering if  anyone knows why this might be? I'm using the eBay app, is it a glitch?

Then I was thinking maybe they set buyer requirements that are preventing me from bidding. So I went to my active listings and checked out the buyer requirements, I see there is one that prevents buyers from buying more than a set amount of items from you ("Have bid on or bought my items within the last 10 days and met my limit of Maximum number of items limit")? I am wondering what the purpose of this would be, wouldn't you want buyers to buy as much as they want lol?

Or are there any other buyer requirements that might be restricting my buying ability? Seems strange to me since I should have zero unpaid item cases or marks against me, I always buy what I intend to pay for, and pay for it. 

Just curious more than anything, there's certainly no shortage of gems and sellers 🙂

Thanks in advance

[ypdc_dennis]

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sequinsnvelvet wrote:  ... I see there is one that prevents buyers from buying more than a set amount of items from you ("Have bid on or bought my items within the last 10 days and met my limit of Maximum number of items limit")? I am wondering what the purpose of this would be, wouldn't you want buyers to buy as much as they want lol?

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There is an old saying: Don't put all your eggs in one basket.

Some sellers are unwilling to risk having too many sales to one buyer in a short time span in case things go wrong. They prefer to spread the selling risk around.

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[mr.elmwood]

Most of eBay's current rules are rooted in things that happened years ago. They just never updated. Years ago, multiple purchases must have been some sort of nefarious activity.

There are a lot of very nervous "sellers" out there.

[momcqueen]

It's not a glitch with the app. It's a setting in Buyer Requirements that sellers have the option to utilize.

The reason?

Last year, I had an ebay member buy 25 items in one late-night sitting (stopping only when he hit my single-buyer cap) and then leave without paying. He is not the first to do so. 

To have that many unpaid items sit for eight days while UI strike cases open and close is a waste of a seller's time and insertion fees. 

Preventing this is also a good reason to enable Immediate Payment Required but if one allows Local Pick-up, the two payment methods cannot be used simultaneously. 

That's the reason there is a single buyer cap.

I would have to disagree with Mr. E about it being 'nervousness' but make it more about wasting resources.

Although, the cap would make more sense if it applied only to unpaid items and didn't count the items already paid and shipped. 

Unless that requirement is to prevent a single buyer from hijacking a seller's feedbacks for the month. 

Also, it might be to prevent a single buying from clearing out the whole inventory of their Loss Leaders for the week. Like retail stores employ: one item per family et cetera. 

[recped]

Here's the reason.......keep in mind that block is generally used to limit buyers with low or no feedback.

Let's say you annoy someone, a buyer, a seller or just someone here on the boards. They start up a throwaway id and buy every item you have listed and of course don't pay or make any contact. It's not a pleasant experience and can cost you a lot of money in lost sales and relisting costs.

I use this block (but not to stringent), over the years it's only stopped a couple of buyers, one or two have emailed to ask and I've exempted them, one or two were most likely sport bidders since they never paid for the items they were able to "buy".

While I have quite a few multiple item buyers it's rare for them to buy more than 2 or 3 items at a time especially as I only apply the cap to buyers with 2 or less feedback. This block only works on buyer with 5 or lower feedback score so it's fairly well targeted at either true new users or bogus new users that are just trying to mess with you.

My setting - "Are currently winning or have bought 5 of my items in the last 10 days and have a feedback score of 2 or lower".

[prarie_nerd]

I have a limit of 1 item per buyer and I don't limit it based on feedback. Too many sketchy people out there

[pierrelebel]

I do not have and never had any limit on buyers.

My personal record from a number of transactions by one buyer at one time was exactly 200 from a buyer in Midland Ontario in the process of building his collection.  At the time, eBay limited their invoicing program to 40 items.  I had to send five invoices to complete all transactions.

The largest value though goes back about twelve years ago when a buyer from Qatar purchased from 49 different listings.  Total value was slightly more than US$ 10,400.

Why would I limit the amount of items a buyer is willing to buy from me?

[momcqueen]

Stamp collectors must be an honorable sort, never short for spending money and therefore immune to late-night shopping binges that seem less a good idea on sober second thought.

Most of my unpaid items and/or Cancel Order Requests are one at a time but the pair that hit higher still sting. I've had only a handful of paid orders where the buyer bought ten or more items. My average individual item selling price is fairly high so it limits the temptation despite my Shipping Rule that ten items or more ship free.

[pierrelebel]

"Stamp collectors must be an honorable sort,"

In general terms they are.

In the stamp "approval" business, a dealer would send stamps to a potential buyer "on approval".  Within ten or fifteen days (thirty days in some instances) the buyer would send payment for the stamps kept and return the unwanted stamps.

Back in the early 90's when approvals were my main source of business (before eBay and the internet) I would typically have $50,000 to $100,000 worth of stamps out "on approval" at any given time.  Sales were anywhere from 10% to 40% of stamps sent. Losses (whatever the reason) were less than 1%.

Thousands of dealers around the world used the approval system.

Things are a bit different now with the internet as buyers can see images of stamps prior to buying.  Yet, checking stamps magazines, hundreds of stamp dealers still offer "approvals".