ebay members that buy and don't pay

[purplemotoman]

I hate scumbags that bid on stuff and don't pay. Situation: yesterday I bid on 3 different smoking pipes from 3 different sellers and one ebayer (I know who you are) over bid me on all 3. I found out after that they bid on a whole bunch of auctions and then pick which ones they want and have ebay retract the rest of the bids because they also have a store on here which does really well and ebay gets their cut. This person has 31 bid retractions on here in the last 6 months and 5 in the last 30 days.

Ebay needs to ban them, not change their account status so they think I can't see them

[toby_le_pue]

Read the following link and use the report button at the bottom of the page

http://pages.ebay.ca/help/policies/invalid-bid-retraction.html

[reallynicestamps]

You may have found a seller who is bidding on his own auctions.  Reporting the retracting bidder will notify eBay that this may be happening.

When a sale is cancelled, the seller gets his selling fees back. If he is also using the Free Auction promotion, eBay is not making any money from him. Actually if you count labour costs and rent at the mainframe farm, they would be losing.

More likely the bidder is indulging in "auction interference' with his competitors. You might want to contact them and encourage them to look at the feedback page of the bidder. At least they can then put him on their Blocked Bidder Lists.

However, since you say he is a dealer and is out-bdding you, I wonder if the real problem is just that you are bidding below the market.

A dealer must buy wholesale in order to sell retail. Collectors can pay whatever they want, with no need to markup or profit.

If you are bidding less than the wholesale value of an item, you will be outbid by dealers.

[purplemotoman]

The bidder that I dealt with is well known for his antics. He has pulled it on other members on a forum I am on. I reported him to ebay and all they did was pull his word (private) beside his name and put his feedback at 0, but left a red star beside his name.

Ebay won't kick him off or discipline him because they are a big seller on here. Their store has done over 5000 customers. That would be money out of Ebays pocket.

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[femmefan1946]

Umm. EBay didn't make his feedback private. The member did this.

The most usual reasons are purchases of a potentially embarrassing nature, and amazing numbers of negative and neutral feedbacks.

Sellers cannot have private feedback, so he is now a buyer only.

5000 feedback is not a particularly big seller, depending on how long the member has been active.

It is a very active buyer, but eBay does not make money directly from buyers, since they only collect fees from sellers.

A high number of bid retractions especially with a single seller does indicate a shill account. These suspicious bids should be Reported to eBay.

EBay will never tell you what action they take, although a seller who is suddenly no longer allowed to sell tells us something.

[tyler@ebay]

Hey everyone,

Due to the length of time that has passed since this thread began I have locked it from future replies. If this is still an issue that warrants discussion, don't hesitate to begin a new thread!