Sick of people ruining Ebay

[Drasher99]

I was wondering if anyone else is encountering the problems with people selling their items before the auction is over. It happened twice to me in the last few days and I am just tired of auctions getting ruined by these morons who cant play by the rules.

[trsent]

I was wondering if anyone else is encountering the problems with people selling their items before the auction is over. It happened twice to me in the last few days and I am just tired of auctions getting ruined by these morons who cant play by the rules.

What rules are you refering to? Please post a link to where these rules are published.

[Drasher99]

are the rules which are constantly being broken with people buying the item before the auction ends

http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/rfe-spam-non-ebay-sale.html

[otismalibu]

It's pretty obvious what the sellers are doing (in most cases, not all) but eBay gives them the option to end an auction early. They can simply say that the item is no longer for sale, even if it's untrue.

I imagine it's frustrating for people who planned on bidding, but it also takes the fun out of watching. There was a Maurice Lucas ABA jersey up for bid a few days back and I was curious to see what it would fetch. But then I saw that the auction ended early. It allows the seller to avoid fees on the final price and also doesn't allow for an exchange of feedback.

[stew609]

As long as ebay gets some money they don't care about the rules, even theirs. They don't care if you are being ripped off, they don't care if you inform them of somebody trying to sell bogus stuff. They only care about their bottom line.

I actually called them once and before they would even speak to me, they asked, "HOW DID YOU GET THIS NUMBER!!" Now that's someone who really cares about the customer.

[Swoboda4]

Does this policy of ending an auction early apply if someone placed a bid already? I've seen an auction end early when there are no current bidders but if someone places a bid does the auction have to continue?

[otismalibu]

The seller can simply cancel all the bids first, then end the auction. I think there is also an option to end the auction and sell to the highest bidder.

I'm sure a regular eBay seller would be able to list all the options for ending an auction early. I mostly buy and just sell once in a while.

[sportscentury]

Does this policy of ending an auction early apply if someone placed a bid already? I've seen an auction end early when there are no current bidders but if someone places a bid does the auction have to continue?

Swoboda,

What sellers will sometimes do is cancel all of the bids and then end the auction early. This way, they are not "locked in" to an agreement with a high bidder (because there end up being no bidders on the auction when it is officially ended).

Reid

[staindsox]

I too have been very frustrated with this in the past. I don't understand why ebay doesn't get a little more hard-nosed about cancelling items when a bid has already been placed. It only hurts them too. They still get their listing fees, but don't get a taste of the final percent of the sale.

[cohibasmoker]

Ending an auction early is not ruining eBay. How about the people on eBay who bid on an item and never pay for it? They then leave retaliatory feedback against the seller. To add insult to injury, when the seller tries to get the negative feedback removed, eBay basically says, sorry we can’t help. I have eBay’s 800 number and it’s about as worthless as their feedback policy. So, until eBay changes their policy on non-paying stiffs, if someone contacts me and offers me a Buy It Now price, I certainly would CONSIDER it, at least if they stiff me, I won’t get negative feedback.

[ham1963]

For those of you who hate to follow the link here is the E-Bay rule that deals with closing an auction early:
Some examples of outside of eBay offers include:

Using information obtained through eBay to offer to buy or sell a listed item outside of eBay.
Canceling a listing to sell to a buyer who became aware of the item through eBay.
Ending a listing early to sell the item at a higher price to the winning bidder.
Offering to sell an item to a bidder in a Reserve Not Met (http://pages.ebay.com/help/buy/buyer-reserve.html) listing.
Offering to sell duplicate or additional merchandise to underbidders

[trsent]

So if you have an item for sale on eBay, and a customer found out about it not through eBay, it is ok to end your auction and sell the item to them, according to the list provided.

I have discussed this issue with many people, and my fellow cigar smoking friend does make a valid point for the seller's sake.

eBay has to prove the seller ended the auction to someone who offered to buy the item because of the eBay auction's exposure. This is not always as easy as it looks. As a seller, I have asked eBay to find a way to put a floating Buy-It-Now button for sellers in their auctions, so when an offer comes in that I can't refuse, eBay can still sleep well with their fees. They have not found this feature yet.

What I think is funny is that many of the eBay bidders who are complaining about a seller ending their auction to see to a customer ready to pay for an item are often the ones hoping to snipe an item for a below market price. You may not like it, but at least the seller is receiving a price they consider to be "fair" or "market".

[otismalibu]

What I think is funny is that many of the eBay bidders who are complaining about a seller ending their auction to see to a customer ready to pay for an item are often the ones hoping to snipe an item for a below market price. You may not like it, but at least the seller is receiving a price they consider to be "fair" or "market".

If the seller has "fair" or "market" price in mind, they could simply list the item with that opening bid or with that BIN. But the sellers don't want to pay the fees associated with those two options, so they offer a low opening bid. But a seller never knows how many bidders are waiting to snipe, so fear of a low final price might set in. Sniping is the only way to bid. Bidding early is foolish.

[trsent]

Bidding early is what many eBay users do, this is not our business to determine if people should snipe or bid early and often.

The Buy-It-Now disappears after the first bid is placed, and we all know how reserve auctions just do not work. There has to be a better way, but those hall monitors from the 6th grade will continue to complain about people ending their auctions early without evidence that the item was discovered by someone who saw it through eBay.

Some of us do have other retail outlets.

[otismalibu]

Bidding early is what many eBay users do, this is not our business to determine if people should snipe or bid early and often.
Sure, people can bid how they please, but as a buyer you want the lowest price, so you don't want people bidding early on the item you're interested in. When I sell something, I love those nibblers who think there is some sort of prize for being in the lead all week.


Some of us do have other retail outlets.

Yeah, if someone walks into your store and asks about a piece that they see in the window, then they probably didn't find it thru ebay. Even if it happens to be listed at the time.

In most cases the item was found thru eBay, the contact was made thru eBay and the deal is done outside of eBay.

But I don't think eBay really cares, because they got the listing fee and they still might get the Paypal fee.

Let's say Joel has a pair of Dr. J. game worn goggles listed on eBay. I email him and make him an offer he accepts. So he ends the auction and I pay him via Paypal and copy and paste his auction title (from the recently ended auction) into the Paypal subject title. You'd think that might be a red flag for eBay, but I can assure you neither of us would hear a word about the transaction.

Greg

[bat_master]

Hi Everyone,

In my opinion there are several other things on ebay that "ruin" it far worse that just people ending auctions early.

1. The Buy It Now - It isn't the buy it now option that I don't like. It's that as a seller it takes 2 to 3 hours for an item with a Buy It Now option to even appear.

2. Misclassification of items - I don't care who the player is...an Upper Deck game used bat card does not belong in the "GAME USED MEMORABILIA" category. In my opinion this really clogs things up.

3. Ebay cancelling auctions that they feel violate some rule. Now I've read the rules, and agree that I was in violation. But why only cancel 3 of the 29? Especially the rule about not listing a website in a listing. I've seen several sellers that have their site listed in the auction listing. Those never get canceled.

I guess that's about it. The sad thing is that I really believe that ebay could be a great place to buy and sell. Just too many idiots with free reign and too much time on their hands.

Just my two cents

Tim Byington
www.tjsportsmn.com

[worldchamps]

I feel cheated too, when I am wanting to bid on an item and I go to bid on it and it has been ended early...oh well.

What really drives me insane is when I am selling something and someone contacts me with an offer that is so low to end the item. If the min. bid is $100 why would you contact someone to end the auction at $60. I get this all the time, everytime I respond back the same. I want to let the auction at least get a chance to reach the min bid, it serves me no purpose to end the auction early at a lesser price.

Do you all get these crazy offers too?

[sportscentury]

I feel cheated too, when I am wanting to bid on an item and I go to bid on it and it has been ended early...oh well.

What really drives me insane is when I am selling something and someone contacts me with an offer that is so low to end the item. If the min. bid is $100 why would you contact someone to end the auction at $60. I get this all the time, everytime I respond back the same. I want to let the auction at least get a chance to reach the min bid, it serves me no purpose to end the auction early at a lesser price.

Do you all get these crazy offers too?

WorldChamps,

I have been thinking long and hard about the same question. I have come up with a theory and I want to run it by you: There is an incredibly high number of whackos, crazies, flakes, tire-kickers, scam artists, frauds, game-players and straight up nut-jobs on eBay.

Well, what do you think? Might I be on to something?

I get the same crazy offers you do ... and I agree with you that it's hard to make sense of it all. With that said, I've met some of the coolest guys around on eBay (several of whom are regular contributors to this forum), so, like many things in life, you just have to take the good with the bad. But I don't even respond to the more ridiculous questions any longer ... it's bad enough to have to waste your time reading them!

Reid

[stkmtimo]

I have gotten the crazy offers as well. I sold an item for $400+ lately and an offer towards the end of the auction was for $225!

Tim