posted on March 27, 2001 07:54:57 AM
OK, this is a first for me and luckily it turned out alright. (As a point of reference, I do send out "Thank you for your bid" notices when I update auctions through my software, so even the losing bidders still have received my email address despite eBay's new email policy.) Here is the scenario (I'm sorry for the length):
Auction ends 2/27. I send out EOA notice the same day.
On 3/3 I receive a notice from a supposed friend of the high bidder explaining that the high bidder is quite ill with bronchial pneumonia, but does intend to pay for the item when she gets well. I'm invited to check out the buyer's feedback to gauge the sincerity of this, and it is quite good, over 300 positive. No problem here. (I don't bother to check to see if the email address matches that of the high bidder, but even if it didn't, since this was supposedly sent from the friend, that wouldn't necessarily raise any red flags here.)
On 3/14 I receive an email from the supposed buyer explaining that she has just sent a payment via PayPal. She includes the shipping address in the email. However, there is no payment from her in my PayPal account. I respond to her email same day, letting her know of this and suggesting perhaps there is an error in the email address.
By 3/18, I've heard nothing and still received no PayPal payment. So I send a PayPal invoice to the high bidder email address from the auction in which I address her by name and refer to her email to me of 3/14 in which she promised to make payment via PayPal and didn't.
On 3/23 she responds that she will get payment out to me over the weekend and assures me that she isn't ignoring me. All communication at this point has been quite friendly.
On 3/25, guess what? I actually get a PayPal payment for the auction, correct amount and everything, exactly when she said she would pay me. Everything's peachy, right?
WRONG!!!!!!
On 3/26 I send a "Thank you for your payment" with the shipping address I'd been given in the email of 3/14. This notice, like all my other notices I use in my software, went to the high bidder email address. Now, I did notice that the name and address didn't match what was on the PayPal payment notice, but I've often had buyers request shipment to someone else, and I've always honored those requests. I know that some of you don't agree with this practice, but that has always been my policy and all such requests have always been legitimate. I'm not using this as an excuse, just stating why I didn't suspect a thing.
On 3/26 a couple of hours after I've sent the "Thank you for your payment" notice, I get an email from the high bidder (from the actual email address my software-generated notices went to) stating that he doesn't know the person at the address in the notice and to please ship only to him at the address in the PayPal notice!
Well, I was floored! This was the FIRST EVER email I'd gotten from him since the auction closed a month ago! He didn't respond to my EOA notice (which isn't all that unusual from buyers), he didn't send payment of any sort or any emails promising he would pay, or anything! The PayPal invoice was sent on 3/18 and I'd heard nothing from him at all! And on the PayPal invoice, I even addressed the person who had been communicating with me by name, which shows on the PayPal payment notice I received, and he STILL NEVER WONDERED WHY I WAS ADDRESSING HIM AS A WOMAN? I mean, that notice went to his email address, not the woman's.
So, I look more closely into the situation, which I probably should have done before. And in my software, it shows there were a total of 3 bidders on the auction. The woman who had been contacting me all along about making payment was one of the underbidders! As a matter of fact, she was the first bidder, but she never placed another bid and was outbid several times.
I never sent an EOA notice to her, it went to the high bidder. eBay, despite whatever you and I might think of some of the changes and technical problems going on right now, did not send her an EOA notice either. And when I checked her feedback after realizing my near major screw-up with this, she has feedback of over 100 also, so she's not a newbie at this. Interesting thing is she has been NARU'd sometime since March 14th.
This is just an incredible situation to me. The real high bidder ignores my EOA notice and I never even noticed because one of the underbidders keeps communicating with me as though she was the winner. I hear nothing from the real winner until yesterday and don't receive payment until nearly a month after the auction end.
I know, it's my responsibility to make sure I'm communicating with the real winner here. And all my official notices did go to the high bidder's email address. My EOA notice, my PayPal notice, "Thanks for your payment" notice. When I received the email supposedly from the friend, well, I didn't even look twice. You can see from the dates her emails to me coincided with the emails I was sending to the actual high bidder! (And I have had people use different email addresses also, work vs. home, and they generally let me know. Again, never a problem before.)
And when I responded to her emails, I just hit "Reply", so the high bidder wasn't aware of any of this going on. He didn't receive any of my replies to her emails. But her emails strangely were timed perfectly. I mean, I send the high bidder a PayPal invoice, she responds that she's going to pay me a particular weekend, and the actual high bidder does! Incredible!!!!
I would have felt awful if I'd have shipped his package to her. There's no getting around that. And I sent an explanation to the high bidder of how this occurred and taking full responsibility for it.
So what do I do now? Well, I think in the future I'm going to have to compare the email address I'm receiving shipping instructions from with the email address of the registered high bidder. As long as they're identical, there should be no reason to get suspicious.
I worked in mail order several years ago, and their policy was for orders over a certain amount, you call the customer if the shipping address was different than the billing address. If the person could give the correct billing address, it could get shipped anywhere.
Just thinking aloud now...
I know that when I used Hotmail as my auction email, and they were down, I'd use my ISP address and CC it to my Hotmail address so the buyer would know I wasn't running auction interference. I suppose something similar could be requested of buyers who are sending email from a different address than they're registered with or want to use a different shipping address. Could they CC their emails to the registered address and forward a copy to the seller? That way sellers would know there wasn't a third, unauthorized party involved.
I still feel awful about this, even though the package did get sent to the right person today. It really would have helped though, if he would have communicated with me instead of ignoring me. Then my suspicions would have come into play much sooner. (I know, some of you would have been suspicious from the beginning, cause you never ship to a different address, I know.)
I'm curious, though. Don't you feel the buyer bears some responsibility to communicate with the seller promptly, pay promptly, and in this case, where I'm clearly addressing him in the PayPal invoice as someone who he is not and referring to an email that he never sent me, to give me a heads up and ask me what the devil am I talking about?
Gonna have to rethink my liberal shipping policy some more...
posted on March 27, 2001 08:45:22 AM
I'm not sure if I would have been suspicious either. However, looking back don't you find the coincidences a little too convenient? Maybe, they are in it together?
Thanks for your opinion! You know, it does look almost like some kind of collusion going on, but I don't know what the point would have been.
And the actual buyer is getting the merchandise at his correct address, not the woman who was claiming to have won the auction. So she's not getting anything out of it.
http://bjgrolle.auctioninsights.com/
posted on March 27, 2001 10:47:04 AM
BJ: Is it possible the "Thank you for your bid" after auction e-mail was interpreted as a winning EOA notice by the losing bidder? Was the first e-mail from this person a reply to that?
Yes, the first email from the woman was in direct response to my "Thank you for your bid" notice. However, in that notice there is absolutely no payment information or contact information or instructions of any kind on how, when, where, to send payment. It's really stretching it to believe it was an EOA notice, particularly as I sent that notice on 2/22 and the auction didn't end until 2/27.
Yes, I'm glad I caught it. Just imagine if the actual winner hadn't read the email until I'd already sent the package out. I'd have to refund him his money, he'd probably be darn ticked off at me, and that woman would be getting a free book.
redskinfan,
Who knows? It sure involved a lot of work on their part though.
The whole thing makes me think twice about taking customer emails at face value. Darn! I didn't sign up to do detective work here!
http://bjgrolle.auctioninsights.com/
posted on March 27, 2001 11:44:38 AM
I think misscandle may be onto something here... Awhile back, I also used to send out "thank you for your bid" notices to my bidders [if it was a reserve auction, I would usually let the bidder know what the reserve was]. But then I ran into a few bidders who mistakenly thought I was telling them they had won or was offering to sell them the item at the reserve price before the auction had ended. Now, in my case these were newbies, but you never know....
Barry
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The opinions expressed above are for comparison purposes only. Your mileage may vary....
posted on March 27, 2001 11:55:40 AM
Yes, this sounds like it could be a scam. He wrote you telling you not to send the book to another address, knowing that his friend requested it sent to such and such, maybe he thought you had already mailed it off??? Then you'd be forced to give him his money back right?? Be very cautious of the aftersale...he might be ready to pull something else. I hope I'm wrong.
posted on March 27, 2001 12:06:22 PM
Whenever I get mail from a high bidder using an email address other than the one listed on the eBay EOA notice, I reply to that email address but also cc the "official" address listed with eBay. Just a safety measure.
This situation seems a little beyond the standard "wrong bidder," though. Very strange!
posted on March 27, 2001 12:27:33 PM
That's an excellent idea, RainyBear and I think I'll start doing just that myself. If I had, this whole situation wouldn't have gone as far as it did.
http://bjgrolle.auctioninsights.com/
