I purchased a box of premium Star Trek cards on a pre-order. The day after they arrived I was given notice of being laid-off. I then put the box up for acution at $550, a very reasonable price since I was also donating 10% to cancer research. Shortly after the auction began I recieved an email through the auction site from a potiential buyer wanting me to add a BIN option. I even asked him what was a fair amount. I edited the listing for the BIN at $650 and within 10 minutes he bought it.

Here is my problem, he never paid! Would not respond to any emails. I had to go through the auction site to nulify the transaction, give him 5 days to pay or respond. So now I've relisted (at a loss) prices are dropping and he walks away. Does anyone know if there is any penelty other than being taged with a failier to pay remark somewhere on his auction record?

Thanks!

Firstly sorry to hear about your job loss.

On to the main issue now, how long did you wait for him to respond? I've experienced first hand over zealous and pushy sellers demanding their money now, even if they did not specify in the auction. My point did you appear rude or pushy? You may have scared him off or he may have had a family emergency preventing him from contact.

Sorry about the loss relisting, perhaps you should have increased the price a couple of dollars.

As for penalties, yes there are but the site is incredibly lax about them. They send threats (Which are meaningless) and then have the option to suspend the buyer days or months. Usually as a last resort and usually if they have already garnered similar complaints.

If somebody ASKS for a BIN and then buys it within 10 minutes they should have paid straight away as well - no excuses the chances of a family emergency happening in that 30 minutes would be quite low! If you buying with BIN option you should EXPECT to pay straight away.
I suppose the lesson is not to change the auction when somebody asks - in terms of e-bay penalties, unless the person is a serial bad payer e-bay won't do very much

I require buyers to pay immediately w/ the BIN option. It is a nice feature that eBay provides.

Thanks for the input! I waited 5 days for payment and sent many gentle reminders which were ignored. eBay required an additional 4 days before I could re-list.

Sorry you had such a rotten change in circumstance, hopefully it will only be a short detour.

As for your buyer, you don't say what his history looked liked. Did he have good feedback, does he buy cards at that price, has he been around long, etc? I know that when I contact sellers to request certain specifics I always expect them to check me out first before making any concessions. I certainly look at all their data if I have never bought from them before.

Unless you had good reason to think this buyer a reliable person it would have been better to leave your original auction as it was. But of course that's only apparent in hindsight now.

Just a thought, for future use: there is an option to require payment on BIN items before the auction will be ended. I'm not sure about any particular requirements for using this option, but especially for an item with time-sensitive "hotness" it offers a bit more protection.

The buyer was a sports card dealer with 98% feedback. His id ended in a number, when I did research after the fact I found several very of the same Id's with numbers one or two digets off. These Id's appeared to be selling high-end cards ($500) to each other. I can only speculate as to why.

quote:

Originally posted by CardFan:
The buyer was a sports card dealer with 98% feedback. His id ended in a number, when I did research after the fact I found several very of the same Id's with numbers one or two digets off. These Id's appeared to be selling high-end cards ($500) to each other. I can only speculate as to why.

Sounds like "ShillBidding" that is where a dealer with several names lists at a low price but will bid on the item when someone else is bidding to push the price up. This is not allowed by ebay so if you know both IDs it may be worth reporting them.

Yes that is shill bidding. If he's doing things like that, maybe he asked you to do a BIN because he was selling a similar item and wanted to take away the competing auction.

Report the shill bidding to eBay. That was dumb of him to use similar names, but probably didn't think anyone would investigate.

Bit late to the party, but unfortunately I'll have to agree, especially as there seems to be a glut of the boxes on there around $515-$580 mark. It sucks that he tried to undercut you on the price and eliminate the competition, but at least you know what happened. Do report him, but I'm not sure how successful you'll be as there really isn't empirical evidence, just circumstantial. Not to mention that place really does not care. I bet shill bidding is rampant at the moment.

God luck though and I hope you manage to sell the box.

EBay does log the IP addresses of accounts so they can tell if accounts are being used by the same person. You may have to actually call them and complain to make sure something is done about it though.

James using different IP addresses are a piece of cake, so even if he's shill bidding he may have two different IP addresses and nothing could be proven. It's obvious he's been a scam artist for a while so I doubt he'd be using the same IP unless he's sloppy, though you would expect that site would already check IPs and multiple accounts before a complaint.

I agree though, cardfan you should really persist with this issue, you've lost time and money and the scammer should be stopped.

Hiding an IP address is definitely within everyone's means, but I don't know if I'd call it "piece of cake". On the rare times I have hidden my IP using a proxy server or software, it has slowed my internet connection down terribly. Also, if you slip up and log into your account even once from your normal IP it gets logged.

quote:

Originally posted by prospect5k:
I require buyers to pay immediately w/ the BIN option. It is a nice feature that eBay provides.

I hate that. Not because I'm a lax in paying it's just that I usually pick up a few things from the same seller and like to combine the shipping.

I'm getting very frustrated now and this may not be the proper place to vent but here goes. I've re-listed this box for the third time now and am down to $485, taking a loss to pay the bills. What if anything am I doing wrong or could be doing better? Have these cards gotten stale so soon? I wasted a ton of time following proper preceedures and giving the buyer time to pay. AT what time should I break the box and cut my losses.

quote:

Originally posted by CardFan:
I'm getting very frustrated now and this may not be the proper place to vent but here goes. I've re-listed this box for the third time now and am down to $485, taking a loss to pay the bills. What if anything am I doing wrong or could be doing better? Have these cards gotten stale so soon? I wasted a ton of time following proper preceedures and giving the buyer time to pay. AT what time should I break the box and cut my losses.

It's a tough stuation to be in.A lot of these releases are very time sensitive and I suspect anyone who was interested in a sealed box and who had the funds has got it by now .

I would give it a bit longer,there may be someone out there looking for an xmas present.Breaking the box would I suspect result in an even bigger loss as the majority of the cards are of low value and I suspect you would need to pull all three big names(Shatner/Nimoy/Spiner) to make more once you paid all the fees and charges.

Thank you for the advice!

Everyone thinks of eBay first, but if you have a hobby store near you they might be interested in buying a SEALED box at less than SRP, that might be worth more to you. The advantage to the store is that it could sell the cards per pack, if there is no single customer willingly to take the box all at once. Your advantage would be no fees and cash in hand, but you will likely still take a loss.

But I would agree that you would probably lose more if you bust the packs in favor of individual sales, or even if you just try to sell the loose packs on eBay. People are suspicious of loose premium packs now and for good reason. Try to hold on to the sealed box until you get a reasonable offer from someone if you can. Lots of luck.

Just reading this thread i wondered what this said about the percieved value of cards that a product that has only just come out is allready worth less than was paid for it and even at that price there is nobody who wants to buy it.