When you just *know* an ebay buyer has wasted your time...

Cirrus

Sold a pedal by auction on Ebay yesterday. The winning bidder appeared at the very end, and promptly didn't pay. Which rings alarm bell number 1, because in my experience very few people bid with 10 seconds to go, win an item, then think "nah, even though I'm here and logged in I'll pay for this later".

Alarm bell number 2 is that the user ID is a nonsense stream of letters separated by periods - in the style "hm.ewof.efov.f43". What the fuck is that?

Alarm bell number 3. They have 26 feedback, all positive. But most of the feedback comes from 3 ebay shops - one of them leaves positive feedback 8 times in a row.

And here's the bit that's most likely utterly unfounded paranoia;

One of the recent positive feedbacks was left by a guitar parts store that I'm currently returning something to. Last week I ordered a bridge, it turns out to be different to the dimensions on their Ebay listing so it doesn't fit. I ask to return it, they try to ignore the whole "seller needs to pay for return postage because they're the ones who messed up" thing. I politely say they need to issue a return postage label through the ebay system, and also that I notice the incorrect dimensions are still up on the listing, they might want to change that before someone else orders one under false pretenses. They issue a return label...

It's very unlikely, I know this... and yet, the "join the dots in the worst possible way" department of my brain wonders if this *could* be a revenge bid through some shill account, and they've no intention of paying.

Hopefully I'll get the payment notification email through this afternoon and it'll all be fine, it's been a very expensive few weeks and I could really do with being able to fill my car up to get to work next week. 

Strangefan

Yup bloody annoying, and it seems to have increased in the last couple of years, I have literally stopped selling on there now apart from buy it now collection only, as much as it's a bad thing to rely on cash you don't yet have sometime you need to, so makes it even worse! I have found I sell most stuff on here now, 

Gassage

I had one this week; 6 feedback bidder; Paypal held the money, I cancelled the trans immediately and refunded. EBay's loss not mine.

Whitecat

Regarding your first point - immediate payment is fairly common, but if I've ever used a bid sniper to automatically place a last-second bid I've done so because I'm *not* going to be online when it ends. Usually the alarm bells go off for me when I don't get payment within about a day or so, because I know other people do this too.

usedtobe

Gassage said:

I had one this week; 6 feedback bidder; Paypal held the money, I cancelled the trans immediately and refunded. EBay's loss not mine.

I didn't know you could buy them on eBay!

scrumhalf

usedtobe said:

Gassage said:

I had one this week; 6 feedback bidder; Paypal held the money, I cancelled the trans immediately and refunded. EBay's loss not mine.

I didn't know you could buy them on eBay!

Yeah, but there's usually some bits missing.

Cirrus

The chap paid late last night. Maybe all is not lost?