Beware the eBay Selling Scams

A non-selling seller is one who might advertise in their item description that they 'reserve the right to end their auction early if no decent bids are placed'. This is unethical if bids are placed, so they might also be unethical in other ways too. Spotting them is easy.

Before bidding with a seller, read the negative feedback they leave for others. If they call buyers abusive names, like "idiot," or "stupid" you might want to consider how you'd feel reading feedback about yourself using such abusive and mean-spirited terms. Avoid a seller like that as if they were verbally violent abusers.

Next, look up the seller's business dealings in the "Find a Member" section. Pick "Find a Seller," enter their ID, check "List all items completed," and click to display 200. If the seller has numerous auctions or sales they have cancelled all at the same time, giving reasons like they put a wrong reserve on it, or they had no bids (when you know they did), and you look through their history and find out they do this chronically, you can bet this is a non-selling seller. What they are really doing is preventing bidders from winning the auction at a price they don't like.

In other words, the seller doesn't want to sell the listed item for the bidder's highest price as it gets towards the end of an auction. So they put an "I reserve the right to end the auction" notice in the item description and then a day or so before an auction ends they will write a false report to eBay stating they made a mistake on the item description, or forgot to place a reserve, or nobody bid. This way they get out of selling in a fair auction what the highest bidder has bid and they may be attempting to circumvent paying eBay's listing fees. When you read in their history that they do this scam all the time, say fifty times out of 200, report it to eBay. Don't bid on their items.

If this happens to you, and you've bid on an item that simply disappears, check it out. If you find the seller does this chronically, report it to eBay's Trust and Safety customer service or go to the eBay home page and chat live with an eBay representative to find out for sure if what the seller is doing and saying is up to par with eBay's rules. (It isn't). There are certain eBay criteria for ending an auction early. Not liking the pridce the bidders offer is not one of them. So the scamming seller tells eBay untruths. Apparently eBay is not aware that the same scamming seller is doing this chronically.

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