eBay: The Missing Manual

Protecting Your Auctions

It's not enough to post an auction and then check back in a week to see who won. In addition to managing your auctions (answering questions, adding photos, or adjusting the price if bidding starts off slow), you need to keep an eye out for trouble. This section describes potential problems that can crop up during an auction, and what you can do about them.

Blocking Unwelcome Bidders

Some bidders seem more interested in messing with auctions than in winning them. They win auctions but don't pay, or they bid from a place you can't ship to. Fortunately, you can head some of these bidders off at the pass by preventing them from bidding on any of your auctions—in other words, blocking them.

Blocking groups of bidders

One way to avoid problem bidders is to use your eBay Preferences to block types, or groups, of bidders you don't want participating in your auctions (Figure 6-14). You can block the following groups of bidders from participating in your auctions:

• Bidders registered in countries you don't ship to.

• Bidders with a negative feedback score.

• Bidders who've received two Unpaid Item strikes in the past month.

• Bidders who are currently winning your other auctions or have won some of your other auctions in the last 10 days (you can restrict this block to low-feedback bidders).

• Bidders without a PayPal account.

Looking at the kind of bidders you can block, you might wonder why anyone would want to prevent someone from making multiple bids on their auctions. Repeat buyers ...