eBay Hacks, 2nd Edition

Let’s Make a Deal

Handle impatient bidders without losing customers and without getting kicked off eBay.

From time to time, bidders will contact you with special requests, such as those suggested in “Manipulate Buy It Now Auctions” [Hack #31] and “Retract Your Bid Without Retracting Your Bid” [Hack #32] . How you respond to such requests and how you decide to conduct business is entirely up to you, but you’ll want to be careful about some of the steps you take. As a seller on eBay, you’ll have to walk a fine line between protecting yourself from dis-honest bidders, not upsetting your honest bidders, not violating eBay policy, and not wasting large amounts of your time.

Tip

See who you’re dealing with by taking a moment to look at the feedback profiles [Hack #1] of those who contact you [Hack #67] . That way, you’ll know whether you should trust the bidder or cancel his bids and add him to your Blocked Bidder list [Hack #68] .

For instance, an impatient bidder might want to use Buy It Now on one of your auctions, even though the item has received bids and the option has dis-appeared from the page. The following are a few different approaches to dealing with this type of request, each with its own advantages and disadvantages:

Forget it.

Assuming you know the value of your item [Hack #42] , you should be able to look at the current bids—as well as the relative success of your competition—and predict how much you’re ultimately going to get for your item. Your auction may indeed be ...