posted on March 18, 2001 07:36:59 AM new
Morning all. I'd say good morning but it hasn't been so far.
I have a bidder with a -1 feedback bid up two items yesterday. I look at the feedback and see that they got it for being NPB.
I go in and cancel the bids and put in the reason box"sorry I do not accept bids from users with neg. feedback"
I go over to someone's house for St. Patrick's Day dinner and come home and found out that the same user went in and sniped two more items that I had listed and so now the are the winner of record for two auctions of mine.
What do I do? Will eBay void them for me since I cant cancel a bid after the auction closes? Am I stuck with this person?
Also, lately I have been having a problem. A competitor has made it known to me that he wants me out of business. For two months my customers were getting annonymous emails from a person that was never registered at eBay. These emails said things like, my desacriptions are all made up and untrue, or that I faked or had fake items. etc etc
I figured, no problem and went to private auction. Well the new trick has been to go into my feedback history and harvest all the people who have left me feedback and have an email addy for a userID and emailing them the same type of stuff. EXCEPT now besides saying my descriptions are faulty and that my stuff is fake, they have added that I am shill bidding and thats why I went to private auction.
I thought about taking off the private auction but then it dawned on me that if I do that, then he will be able to contact and keep a list of who is buying from me.
Since our category is rather small with a handful of dealers of any size I guess someone figures there's not enough room for all of us.
One thing I did note. The neg. feedback user has neg. feedback from another dealer in my category that was having this same problem with this other dealer a few months ago.
Could this neg. bidder be a shill from the other dealer to bid on stuff and then not paying to throw a monkey wrench in a sellers sales?
Has anyone ever heard of these types of things happening? Do you know what or if anything can be done to stop it?
Thanks in advance - chris
PS - When the "annonymous" emailer started emailing customers a few months back, I contacted safeharbor and they told me that there was nothing they could do because the sender of the emails was NARU
posted on March 18, 2001 08:03:02 AM new
Well now that the bidders list is protected, i.e. others cannot see it you don't have to use private auctions. Most everybody who has a Email addy as a user name will be changing over soon.
If you know who this guy is then you could hire a lawyer to send him a threating letter.
posted on March 18, 2001 08:09:03 AM new
You are going to have a great day,wow. When you went to cancel their bid, you should have told them that due to their record not to bid on your auctions. Then send the same note to safe harbor. So if they bid again they will be tossed out. If you do not have a lot of feedback you may want to start a new id. Hope this works out for you.
[ edited by gs4 on Mar 18, 2001 08:33 AM ]
posted on March 18, 2001 08:46:21 AM new
I did post in the comment section when I cancelled the bid that I do not accept bids from bidders with neg. feedback and I put thier userID in that comment all of which was logged into the auction record a full 3 hours before they bid again and won two more auctions.
Will that be considered appropriate notification to the bidder that thier bids werent welcome and prompt safeharbor to censure them at least for bidding after they were asked not to?
I have built up a respectable feedback of about 275 with about another 100 + that dont show up because they are from repeat customers and there's no way that I am getting rid of my established userID
I am also qualified as an eBay powerseller but have not signed up. If I do sign up for the powerseller program, does thier email help work any better or faster than using safeharbor?
posted on March 18, 2001 09:23:33 AM new
chrisvnh,
If someone is at a -1 feedback, it can safely be presumed that they don't know the ins and outs of eBay. They won't know about the Bid History page - they probably think there is some "eBay bug" that is making their bid go away, and they're determined to keep a close eye on things and keep it there.
You will need to sen him and email, with a cc to SafeHarbor. Quote the SafeHarbor Investigations page, or at least the paragraph about not bidding after you're asked to stop.
posted on March 18, 2001 10:10:15 AM new
Glenda - I believe that they knew what they were doing because they did not rebid on the items that I canceled thier bids on. They bid on two items later that day and made sure that they got thier bids in in the last minute of the auction. Even if I had been home and watching the auctions, I wouldn't have been able to go in and cancel thier bids if I had wanted too.
Has anyone ever heard of a case where this happens and eBay goes in after the auction closes and voids thier bids so I dont have to complete the auctions with them and where they cant leave a neg because I refused to sell to them because of thier neg. feedback?
posted on March 18, 2001 09:00:49 PM new
UPDATE: Here's the latest. This neg feedbacker sure as heck does know the ins and outs of ebay. ink noI pulled thier contact info in case they were just a poor misguided soul...well guess what I found out?
This userID comes back to the sister of my rival seller. A coincidence? I think not.
I emailed the registered user and as per ebay rules, asked them NOT to bid on any moreof my items and CC'd a copy to [email protected]
Tonight I had to go out while my auctions were ending and when I got home, guess what I found when I logged into ebay
That's right...the same neg. feedbacker had run another of my items up in price and ended up winning it.
I run private auctions so that my rival cant figure out who is buying from me and so have no way of knowing who was the next highest bidder so that I could offer it to them.
What am I to do? Isn't this type of activity illegal or at least against ebay policy?
This person hasn't responded to any emails that i've sent today.
I have recently become a powerseller. Does anyone out there know the email addy for the 24/7 customer support that is available for powersellers? I'd greatly appreciate it - thanks
posted on March 18, 2001 10:21:31 PM new
IANAL, but what they are doing is illegal, at least under tort law. It's called intentional interference with economic interests (contractural relations).
I think you would rather not wind up having to argue that in court, because it's a rarer bird than your common wet-floor-in-the-grocery lawsuit. But you should be able to get them to stop. Continue to document things impeccably, and if necessary visit a lawyer to get a nasty cease-and-desist letter sent out. Costs about $100 from the cooperative variety. Make sure they take some books on tort law off the shelf in order to cite some suitable precedents; it may cost more but helps immensely.
Short of that, try to get Safeharbor to strike down the new bidder in cahoots. And, pester them about why Ebay doesn't allow sellers to block particular bidders, like the phone companies offer with Caller ID.
Or, self-help version: go to the library and find your own book on tort law, look up the relevant section, and send suitably formal email with CC to Safeharbor warning of the dire consequences in court if they continue to interfere with your business. I do that myself, and my lawyer friend even signs his name to what I write, but I'm an atypical client.
Contact a real lawyer if you want an official opinion; free advice is worth no more than you paid for it, etc.
