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Sorry guys, Need to have a rant....

I don't understand the new feedback policy on Ebay... How can they get away with not letting sellers list negative feedback...

I have a couple of items on ebay at the moment... One item is collection only... It recieved a bid from a member with zero feedback.. When I did a bit of investigating I find that this person's only other bids (since Sep 07) are three seperate bids with the same guy on the same sort of item... He has obviously been running the bids up...

I also find that the member bidding and the person he is assisting come from the same town...This town also has a seller with whom I had a very nasty encounter a few months ago. (long story sorry)

Its clear to me that they are either all the same person or that they all know each other... The plan being that they bid on my item.. Make no contact and a week later leave me negative feedback.. Ruining a reputation I have built up over NINE years on ebay.. They could do this with every item I list.

I know I could ban them from bidding but there is nothing to stop them opening up other fictious accounts and continuing...

It just seems like madness... Ebay are taking the incentive away from selling...

Sorry Rant over...

Dave 

Rant away Dave. You're not alone.
I also don't like the idea of not seeing the bidder names,  It leaves Ebay wide open for  more schill bidding 

Until sonmething better comes along, I am stick with Ebay.  Craigslist is more an online garage sale, though I have found some gems, in a lot of  gravel, the other online sites don't have the number of avaialble items, though that may change.

The only thing i can sugges is to send all correpsondance through the ebay message system. This way you have an audit trail ebay can verify. i need to read up on the  feedback changes, there has to be some protection for sellers against this  the tactics you mentioned.

Ebay has really become a haven for scams, but, like Kilroy said, until something better comes along....


Last April, I bid on this VMC44 and when somebody with zero feedback bid, I abandoned...
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=140225608490&ssPageName=ADME:B:DBS:US:1123

Yesterday I see the supposed winner of the machine has listed it....
http://cgi.ebay.com/Vintage-Coca-Cola-Vending-Machine_W0QQitemZ250255683702QQcmdZViewItemQQssPageNameZRSS:B:SRCH:US:101
At first I thought the guy just stole pics from the first listing, BUT notice that the new listing has a different picture of the machine, but the same exact hand-truck is in the picture. Now you might think that he asked for more pictures and got them through email, but I asked for more pics and simply got a response saying more pics were added to the auction.

I just sent the seller a message asking if he knew the history of the machine and how long he had owned it. We will see what he says.

Thanks Josh!
I have the first sellers direct email address and thought about emailing them saying something like "I see you have your machine up for auction again..." and see if they slip up on the response.

Below is his response to my email. It was him that bought his own machine.

Dear loman4ec,

Have owned machine for approximately 40 years. Used it for a while. It's about a 1950's model. Hope this helps some.

- djent2600

Thanks Josh,
You should email him back the link to the first auction and see what he says then.

Never trust "0" feedback bidders on high $$ items!!!
I knew something was fishy!