Why You Should Cancel "Zero Feedback" Bidders on Your eBay Account

If you are an ebay seller like my partner and I , you may have noticed that since the new ebay rule change, you have suddenly seen lots of "zero feedback" bidders bidding on your items. The question is are these bidders legitimate? To our surprise, we have found that many are not at all! We did our research and founf that 99% are scammers attacking!

eBay is a great place to sell and buy. As buyers you get awesome deals and as sellers you can make some money. As a seller, no matter what item you are selling you are bringing another seller competition. Although many seller, like ourselves, welcome competition because it forces us to continually raise the bar on our listings, our customer service, our prices and our items, many sellers find competition to be upsetting. These sellers are generally people who don't like change and often have no desire to improve. So these sellers go out of their way to cause problems for the new sellers by doing things like harrassing them through different accounts, sending them rude, disheartening messages or threats or even going as far as creating fake eBay accounts to bid the new sellers items up to high amounts then not pay for them...eventually causing the new seller to lose hundreds of dollars in a matter of weeks.

Then there's a second scenario. People from outside the country create a fake account with an in-the-country address. They win the item for very, very little money...maybe a penny auction with $2 shipping. They then immediately pay. You have no idea they are from outside the country until the time comes to print the shipping label. When you go to print it, it charges you $20 to ship this item to Africa, New Zeeland or somewhere else overseas. You then try and contact the customer and ask them to remit payment for the $18 additional it will cost you to ship. They now threaten to leave you bad feedback which will lower your search standings. If this seller has won multiple items, they can leave multiple bad feedback and get you suspended! So as a seller you are forced to ship the item to them and lose $18 plus the cost of the item, mailers, etc. Or you can take the bad feedback that cant be removed. This scam is becomming far to popular,

Most of the time it's easy to spot fraudulent accounts. These accounts are generally created the same day of bidding. As a seller you will notice a "zero feedback person" bidding like a mad man on multiple items. Often these items are bid up to simply unrealistic amounts - far more than retail value.

Now of course, everybody has to create an account at some time. We were all feedback zeros at one point in time. But these days it's hard to determine who is real and who is a fraudulent competitor trying to scam you. So the only solution is to cancel bids. This is crummy for the legit person trying to win a real item but also a sign to a scam artist that they're NOT going to rip you off.

Our company has found that what works best is to cancel the bid and send the person an email asking them to telephone us and not block their phone number. Generally, a fake bidder wont waste their time. They can't hide an out of state number and a competitor is too afraid of the reprocussions.
When the bidder calls we ask for their screen name and address. We then use this to cross referance ebay and see if they check out. We also ask for their phone number. A phoney usually cant provide this information without sounding like a lair.

Since we have began canceling bids we have alomst eleminated our problems!