is this a legitimate request by a seller?

[patken123]

[patken123]

in case this gets edited:
The seller is asking the potential (buy it now)buyers to contact him/her before buying,or bidding .

[pjcdn2005]

There's nothing visible in your first post...at least not to me.

As far as being a legitimate request.... the seller can request buyers to do that but he can't force someone to contact him first.  But if I wanted the item I would probably contact him and decide what to do from there. He may just want to make sure that the buyer is serious or perhaps he is trying to get around some ebay rules but there is no way to know unless you contact him.

[patken123]

There's nothing visible in your first post...at least not to me.

Sorry,I knew that would happen,anyhow this is basically what it says as I'm paraphrasing it so it doesn't get deleted:

don't bid without my approval,unauthorised  buyers will be cancelled,he says  he has had too many non-paying customers.contact before buy it now purchase.

I have never been asked to contact the seller before buying anything,I thought sellers could block "undesirable" buyers anyway , it just looked weird to me.

Thanks for your reply.

[mater721]

"don't bid without my approval,unauthorised  buyers will be cancelled,he says  he has had too many non-paying customers.contact before buy it now purchase."

I don't even bother with sellers like that.

As soon as I see odd conditions, or a wall of text... next!

[reallynicestamps]

Yep. Honest people trust others.

Sellers can set an automatic Block on bidders with Strikes for non-payment, from countries they don't want to ship to, or who don't have active Paypal accounts.

A moment's thought will tell you why those are usually sensible Blocks.

Your seller's demands are paranoid and to my mind based on how he knows he would behave.

[2011limey1]

 I've never seen that before but legitmate or not, it would make me wonder so much that I wouldn't bother, however much I wanted the item and move on.