Deadbeat Bidders Hurting eBay

from the the-other-side-of-the-coin- dept

There have been a ton of stories about fraudulent eBay sellers, but here's an interesting look at deadbeat bidders on auctions. These are people who bid the auction up to ridiculous levels, and then simply disappear - never responding to any attempts to contact them. This basically voids the sale, makes the sellers lose their listing (and possibly marketing placement) fees, and forces them to take the time to relist the items. Some people think the deadbeat bidders are just kids with too much free time on their hands who think they're being funny. However, others have a more sinister theory. Since there has been a large number of Cisco routers faced with deadbeat bidders, some think that a rogue eBay seller of Cisco routers has purposely bid up the price on many other sellers to force people to buy from him at higher prices. It actually does make a lot of sense. eBay says they're looking into it, but as with many things of this nature, many sellers think eBay is moving too slowly.
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  • identicon
    Clouser, 6 Sep 2002 @ 1:19am

    Very Interesting Story

    Love it, good find, Mike.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 6 Sep 2002 @ 7:31am

    I'd beleive it...

    In the last year, I've sold about 70 low end Cisco routers on ebay. There are tons of them out there too, many of which are sold by refurb shops. I do lots of ebay sales, and have had my share of deadbeats, but when selling this Cisco gear, I'd say that 5% of the people that bid never would respond to me until I threatened them with negative feedback. In my experience, I generally don't have to hound people... maybe 1% deadbeats in the past...

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Janet Rojas, 22 Oct 2003 @ 6:57pm

    Deadbeat bidders solution

    There seems to be more of a problem with Cisco equipment than most other things, but here is a solution. If you are a auction seller and you do want to protect yourself from check bouncers , deadbeat bidders , stalkers etc. you can.

    This can be easily accomplished by doing what is essentially a credit check on your bidders before the auction ends. You can do this at DeadbeatBuster.Com by simply copying and pasting the user names of your bidders and pressing the submit button.

    The database is a real time collection of deadbeat bidders , stalkers , check bouncers and other people you would not want to do business with on all internet auction sites and not just ebay. It also allows you to anonymously post information so that other sellers can avoid these problem bidders. To access the database go to http://www.firewallx.com or simply type DeadbeatBuster.Com into the address bar of your browser.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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