Hi guys,
I'm a new ebay member in the U.S. and like you I'm also frustrated by these scams being perpetrated by various individuals on the site. I was attempting to sell a new laptop and a fradulent bidder basically hijacked my auction causing me lose my sale (revenue) and waste my time and energy in dealing with them and on recovering my fees from ebay. So I've done some research into how these fraudulent scams work, and on how to prevent falling victim to them. Here are some steps I've come up with that may prove helpful:
1) Someone has already mentioned this before, and I would like to emphasize it as well. Somewhere on the auction description area of each of your listings you should mention in big letters: WILL ABSOLUTELY NOT SHIP TO NIGERIA OR ANYWHERE ELSE EXCEPT ________ ! (fill in the blank with the name(s) of location(s) that you WILL ship to). You can do this easily by typing in the following HTML command < h 1 > at the begining that statement, and then < / h 1 > at the end of it. Hopefully, seeing that message in large bold letters will discourage the con-artists from bidding on your items, although it can't actually prevent them from bidding. And while you're at it, you may also want to place an additional message stating that buyers must already have a certain number of positive feedbacks (e.g. 10 or more), or otherwise they will not be allowed to bid on this auction. However, enforcing a policy such as this will require a bit more work on your part, and I will discuss that in one of the later steps.
2) You CAN however restrict some of these would be fraud perpetrators from bidding on your auctions by making certain requirements as mandatory in order for them to bid on your listings. First, you must specify the location(s) you want to ship your products to at the time you're posting these auctions. You will have to specifically choose which parts of the world you want to ship items to and designate shipping charges for each location. You'll know you've done this correctly if you can see the various countries/locations listed under the Ships to section of your auction pages AFTER you've posted each auction. Then go to My ebay -> Preferences, then look under Selling Preferences and click on Show and then Edit for Buyer Requirements. Here you'll have the opportunity to block buyers who are registered in countries to where you don't ship to, buyers with overall negative feedback, buyers who have recent unpaid item strikes, buyers who don't have PayPal accounts (important to me, as I only accept PayPal payments at this time), among other thigs. And you will be able to apply these restrictions to all of your open listings by checking one last box at the bottom of that page. Keep in mind however, that defrauders who are registered in nation(s) to where you'd like to ship to may still be able to bid on your items.
3) So in order to restrict these con-artists that you can't block based on the characteristics I mentioned above, you'll have to rely on certain clues as well as your gut instincts, and then manually cancel their bids, and add their ebay user IDs to your buyer block list so that they'll not be able to bid on any of your items again. The easiest way to do this is to click on the Help tab located on the top section of most ebay web-pages, and then type in "block bidders" and click the Search Help button. This will reveal various links, and you should click on the first one that says something like Managing Bidders: Preapprove, Block Buyers or Cancel Bids. Doing so will take you to a page where you'll then find 3 more links to cancel bids, block buyers (by their User IDs), and also pre-approve byuers who you know are trustworthy. And so by using the appropriate links here you can then visit the specific pages where you'll be able to cancel bids by defrauders on your existing listings, as well as block them from ever bidding on any of your auctions altogether. This by the way, is also how you'd enforce your personal policy of only allowing bidders who already have a certain number of positive feedback to their credit to bid on your auctions (as noted in Step 1 above). By using the cancel bids option, and the block bidder list, you can easily weed out unworthy buyers who have placed bids on your auctions despite your positive feedback requirements that you've clearly mentioned on your auction pages.
As for relying on clues to determine just who are possible fraud perpetrators, my suggestion is to check their feedback as well as any other information that they have on their ebay profiles, such as their date of registration, location, and their overall transaction activity. If they have very little or even zero feedback, have never sold an item (as selling requires registering a bank account for more thorough identification and security purposes), and are now bidding on your relatively popular high-priced electronic item, then there is certainly grounds for suspicion on your part. Also for instance, let's say you want to sell a product within India, and you have a potential buyer contacting you who claims to be registered there, but wants you to ship to some other country (e.g. Nigeria). That should immediately send off an alarm in your head, and you're probably better off cancelling their bids, and blocking them from bidding on your auctions altogether. Just use your sense of logic and follow your instincts about who seems like an honest buyer and who is a defrauder, and then act accordingly.
Best of luck, guys!
A. Ward
ebay Member: andyward420
