Suspicious Ebay bidder

Hi all,

I'm selling a graded byzantine solidus on eBay and currently have a bidder from Turkey who has zero feedback and who opened up an account yesterday. I've heard some have been burned by international bidders who buy items and say they never received them. Should I cancel the bid?

Thanks.

 

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Unfortunately you should have limited sales to Domestic and a minimum rating before the auction started. This may bite you. But yes, I would cancel the bid.

 

I'm not an Ebay seller, but I've seen sellers ask for at least some feedback before selling an item to them. Of course, how does one get feedback if he can't buy till he has feedback?

 

Thanks fiatfiasco. But if he ends up having a confirmed Paypal address and I send it insuranced with signature confirmation and he ends up saying he never received it or the package didn't have anything in it, would eBay seller protection cover me or USPS for that matter (USPS would probably have to investigate, which would probably be impossible in Turkey). BTW, the coin is worth ~$1500.

 

Cancel.

 

There's no way I'd sell a $1500 coin to someone in Turkey who has no feedback. Add them to your banned bidder list.

 

You can't restrict buyers with no feedback, just those with negative feedback or more than 2 nonpayment cases. I've seen sellers put it in their listing that you need a minimum feedback to buy from them, but eBay doesn't provide any tools to allow that.

I've sold coins to a lot of people with no feedback and I haven't noticed any problems. Of course, for such a valuable coin as the OP is selling it's much riskier than anything I've sold.

 

I'm not an ebay seller but I def would cancel if I were you. Too many chances to lose out on your end.

 

Cancel the auction, relist it with the necessary restrictions.

 

good point.

 

It's illegal in Turkey to own a coin that old.

 

What!?

 

i think they have laws about exporting stuff...but what about incoming?

anyway...please cancel.

 

Here is a workaround that "might" help. State that you do NOT ship outside the U.S., but that you WILL send to the high bidder's designated representative in the U.S., if the name and address are provided beforehand. The representative, of course, would be a friend or relative; then it becomes their problem, not yours. As far as I know, eBay does not prohibit this restriction, and it tends to discourage criminals.

Also, eBay's own global shipping function, while it's very expensive, does that solve the problem? I've never used it, and just because it's eBay's idea, and yet another source of unearned and undeserved profits, I never will.

 

I've shipped internationally if the the buyers went through eBay's shipping program, and everything's worked out fine. Anything else is way too much of a bother, trust me. Cancel and relist with restrictions.

 

"I'm not an Ebay seller, but I've seen sellers ask for at least some feedback before selling an item to them. Of course, how does one get feedback if he can't buy till he has feedback?"

I've been burned too many times by non-paying bidders with zero feedback on coins I sell on eBay. Just to recoup the eBay fees takes over a week, while the other bidders have usually moved on to other items and aren't interested in a second chance offer. Sometimes on a higher-priced coin I'll cancel a bid from a person with less than 25 positive feedbacks or who has been on eBay for a short period of time because of another habit I've noticed, some people like to bid on multiple items, win them, then pick and choose which they actually want to pay for.

I do realize that I myself started with zero feedback, and that new, well-intentioned bidders may become frustrated by this. My answer would be to use the "Buy It Now" option and pay immediately for several low-priced items ($5-$10), so that as a seller I can look at your feedback profile and see you have no problems with paying for items you win.

Do not ship your coin to Turkey. Do not sell to international bidders, period (Canada is my lone exception, I've had no problems whatsoever with packages to and from our northern neighbor). It is routine for items shipped to European countries to take several weeks due to customs delays, and my experience was that some international bidders get impatient very quickly when the item doesn't arrive immediately (within a week or so). Then they leave a negative feedback, involve eBay, only to receive the package and never even bother to thank you.

 

For Canada, isn't there a duty payable by the buyer for parcels over a certain stated value?

 

This wouldnt work, as the US address would be different from the buyers confirmed address and from ebays perspective you (the seller) havent been responsible and sent it to a different address than what was provided through the ebay platform. This is just as risky (if not more so) than just sending it to him. Good idea, just see too many problems with it still.

Best advice? Pull the whole listing and relist with domestic shipping only. Problem solved.

 

For high priced items international shipping may be too risky, but in general if you sell non-U.S. coins, you will get a lot more bids for more money if you ship international.