Blocked from bidding because I'm dishonest

Leeroy has been busy today branding a gold coin a fake.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

I spent some time looking for a particular watch on e-bay and with one seller, he had it listed for (made up amounts) $75 and I offered $50...he responded with $74.99 and I answered with $$50.01 BTW, it didn't sell, he re-listed and I bought it for $60.

 

I think this whole discussion is too hung up on the percentage of asking price offered. As a buyer I am going to offer fair market value based on data from completed auctions and the like. If that is an order of magnitude lower than the asking price then it's the seller who is being unreasonable, not me.

 

The counter argument would be that it would have been listed as an auction if they were willing to take that price and if it is so easy to find at that price buy one of those then. If it's a bullion item or common as dirt thing that is fair enough to go off those, if it is a numismatic item getting overly hung up on other auction results can be to your detriment. There's usually a reason why certain ones will sell cheap and those of course skew auction results where a seller was just trying to get rid of it.

 

That is true to a certain extent but unless the item is thinly traded, there are usually plenty of BIN results mixed with the true auctions. Even considering that BIN's may be higher end for the grade, many are priced so high that even a 20 to 30 percent discount would still be a ripoff. I'm not talking monster toners or anything, just run of the mill stuff.

I understand that sellers don't like lowball offers, but as a buyer I have a right to be put off by highball offers.

 

And if you don't like the straight BIN price, no one is forcing you to take the offer option. On the other hand, if the seller sets auto decline, someone is going to cry, call him a poor businessman, or somehow complain no matter how ridiculous their offer may be. If he doesn't and directly declines, well, the result is pretty much the same. You have a choice while, more often than not, at least on this board, he's damned if does and damned if he doesn't.

 

Maybe, maybe not. There's obviously something about it that caught that buyers eye that prompted them to make an offer over the other available ones.

If it really is run of the mill there's no reason to ever stop at the listing in the first place as a replacement is easily available. If a replacement isn't easily available maybe the seller has priced it more to its actual availability as opposed to an ebay auction who knows when that likely sold for pennies on the dollar like a lot of them do.

You do, just like sellers have the right to be put off by low offers and use the block feature

 

I'm not talking about the ones that sold. I meant the hundreds upon hundreds of listings that keep getting relisted and never sell at the posted price. I wonder how many are posted for free advertising and end up being sold outside of eBay?

 

Most of the ones you see over and over again that aren't details coins are dogs when it comes to eye appeal or barely made the grade. You rarely if ever see that those had an offer made on them

A decent amount do. Pretty much every seller would rather cut ebay out and that will really be the case come March where ebay is requiring a 30 day return period for the discount to sellers now. 30 days is absurd for coins.

 

What? That's unbelievable and wholly ridiculous. It's already bad enough as is; no honest buyer buying for their own collection needs anything remotely close to even 14 days to decide if he wants the coin or not, and is already to the point ebay is nothing more than the world's largest on-approval service. The lack of genuine protection, excessive buyer coddling, turning a blind eye towards abuse of buyer protection policies, zero personal responsibility, acceptable buyer's remorse, on and on etc etc.... the access to such a pool of buyers is very valuable, of course, but when does the cost simply become too high? This type of thing doesn't hurt the dreck peddlers but the straight and honest, particularly smaller sellers who often deal in quality and/or on slimmer margins. Just more nails going into the coffins of those who least deserve it.

There's another collectibles area that I'm familiar with, and there are a few ebay sellers who have for years sold nothing but cobbled-together and/or straight out counterfeit pieces, yet ebay hasn't made the slightest effort to shut them down. One even claims to have been the past president of a collectors organization as a means to deceive buyers (something easily proven false) yet even with many, many complaints, nothing is done about it. As with coins, these schmoes aren't going to be the ones affected as their sales are almost entirely profit; it's the honest guys dealing with the games and BS, and is downright pitiful.

Is this happening later this month or next March?

 

March was a typo on my part. May 1st is when the change takes place according to the email I got today. From that point on sellers will have to offer a 30 day return window for the top rated plus discount. I expect to see a lot of middle to small size sellers close up and pursue other venues or just stop offering returns as it is no longer worth it.

I complete agree and would even take it one step further. Offering a 30 day return window it is no longer an on approval service, you are now nothing more than a consignment service for other sellers and fronting their inventory cost. People can just order whatever they want and shop it around, play the cross over/reconsideration game and if they can't make money on it return it at the end of the month. It's not a trial subscription to a service, no item needs 30 days to decide whether or not you want it. If the standard is now 30 days I can only imagine how long their holiday return period will be when last year that was 90 days.

Judging from Ebays actions or lack their of they stopped caring long ago as long as the seller is making them money and a lot of it. They seem to be wanting to try and copy the Amazon model with only having massive sellers now and frankly they won't win a head to head competition with Amazon.

Everyone always mentions how valuable their buyer pool is and at one time I would have agreed, but I wouldn't agree anymore. Run 99 cent auctions on everything and see just how strong that buyer pool really is. A lot of the buyers now are dealers looking for inventory they can make money off of or people looking for cherrypicks/deals that they can flip. There is nothing wrong with cherry picking or snagging under valued things or even dealers buying inventory, but when that constitutes a large percentage of the buying pool the value to the seller is minimal. Almost everything price wise there is in a race to the bottom unless the seller is shilling or its one of the dreck peddlers juicing photos. I strongly believe they chased off far to many buyers that dabbled in selling as it has changed so much in even the last 18 months to 2 years.

 

@baseball21, you said it. A 30 day return privilege is beyond excessive. Anyone who can't make up their mind in less than 7 days (and, honestly, I've never needed more than a couple days) shouldn't be buying coins on the internet.
The only time an extended return period like this makes sense is if the coin is found to be a fake. In that case, I'd expect an ethical seller would take a return at least as far out as it would take to submit and receive back the coin from a TPG company.

 

Exactly, really you generally know within the first day if you're happy with it. Anything sold as genuine should be taken back by a seller if you can reasonably assure them its the same coin given the nature of those scams on ebay and the good sellers would be more than happy to make their mistake right. But even that is covered already under separate assurances so that 30 day period changes nothing with that.

 

It's a ludicrous policy, but y'all are suffering far too much angst over a condition only required to get an additional discount. Sell stuff that's profitable enough so you don't need to screw every last percentage point of "discount" out of your costs, and set whatever return policy you like. I couldn't care less how Ebay "rates" me; the only ratings which matter are my buyers'.

I work for a retailer whose return policy is more liberal than that.

 

...................ah HA HA! I get it. Had to look it up, though.

 

Or read the entire thread.

 

Yeup. Not sure if gained or lost popularity with that one, but ... here we are