EBay for Dummies (55 page)

www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/business/adv/bus02.shtm

Boxed out of a claim

In my experience, neither UPS nor the U.S. Postal Service will pay on an insurance claim if they feel you did a lousy job of packing. Always use good packing products, wrap carefully, and get ready to plead your case.

Every shipping company has its own procedure for complaints. But here’s the one thing they do have in common: No procedure is hassle-free. Call your shipper as soon as a problem arises.

You have regrets — seller’s remorse

You’ve undoubtedly heard about buyer’s remorse. Here’s a new one for you —
seller’s remorse.
If you’re selling your velvet Elvis footstool because your spouse said, “It’s me or that footstool!” and then decide that your spouse should have known how much you revered the King when you went to Graceland on your honeymoon, you can end the listing. Read “Try canceling bids first” and “If all else fails, end your auction early,” later in this chapter.

Auction Going Badly? Cut Your Losses

So your auction is cruising along just fine for a couple of days when you notice that the same eBay user who didn’t pay on a previous auction is your current high bidder. You don’t want to get burned again, do you? Of course not;
cancel
this deadbeat’s bid before it’s too late. Although canceling bids — or, for that matter, entire auctions — isn’t easy (you have a load of explaining to do, pardner), eBay does allow it.

If you feel you have to wash your hands of a listing that’s given you nothing but grief, it doesn’t mean you have to lose money on the deal. Read on to find out the protocol for dumping untrustworthy bidders or (as a last resort) laying a bad auction to rest and beginning anew.

Many of these functions are also available from the drop-down menus on the right side of the item’s listing on the My eBay Selling page.

Try canceling bids first

Face the facts: This auction is fast becoming a big-time loser. You did your very best, and things didn’t work out. Before you kill an auction completely, see whether you can improve it by canceling bids first. Canceling a bid removes a bidder from your auction, but the auction continues running.

When you cancel a bid, you need to provide an explanation, which goes on record for all to see. You may have a million reasons for thinking your auction is a bust, but eBay says your explanation had better be good. Here are some eBay-approved reasons for canceling a bid (or even an entire auction):

The high bidder informs you that he or she is retracting the bid.

Despite your best efforts to determine who your high bidder is, you can’t find out — and you get no response to your e-mails or phone calls.

The bidder makes a dollar-amount mistake in the bid. (The bidder bids $100.00 instead of $10.00, for example.)

You decide midauction that you can’t sell your item due to the fact that it was sold in an outside venue — or the dog ate it. (You must cancel all bids and end the listing in this instance.)

I can’t drive this point home hard enough:
Explain why you’re canceling a bid, and your explanation had better be good.
You can cancel any bid for any reason you want, but if you can’t give a good explanation of why you did it, you will be sorry. Citing past transaction problems with the current high bidder is okay, but canceling a bidder who lives in Japan because you don’t feel like shipping overseas after you said you’d ship internationally could give your feedback history the aroma of week-old sushi.

To cancel a bid (starting from most eBay pages), do the following:

1. Go to the listing page.

2. Click the Bid History link.

You’re taken to the Bid History page.

3. Scroll to the bottom of the bidding history and click the Cancel Bids link.

You’ll be brought to a page outlining eBay’s policies on bidding.

4. Scroll down to the Canceling Bids area and click the Canceling Bids link.

You arrive at the Canceling bids page, as shown in Figure 13-5.

5. Type the item number, the user ID for the bid you’re canceling, and the reason for canceling the bid.

6. Click the Cancel Bid button.

Be sure that you really want to cancel a bid before you click the Cancel Bid button. Canceled bids can never be reinstated.

Canceling bids means you removed an individual bidder (or several bidders) from your auction, but the auction itself continues running. If you want to end the auction completely, read on.

Blocking bidders

If you have a bidder who just doesn’t get the message and continually bids on your auctions despite the fact that you’ve e-mailed and told him or her not to, you can block the bidder from ever participating in your auctions. You can create a list of bidders to prevent them from bidding temporarily or permanently, and you can edit the list at any time. You can find the page from the same page as described in the preceding section. Click Block Bidders and then create your list. Alternatively, you can go directly to this address:

pages.ebay.com/services/buyandsell/biddermanagement.html

If all else fails, end your listing early

If you put your auction up for a week and the next day your boss says you have to go to China for a month or your landlord says you have to move out immediately so that he can fumigate for a week, you can end your auction early. But ending an auction early isn’t a decision to be taken lightly. You miss all the last-minute bidding action.

eBay makes it clear that ending your auction early does not relieve you of the obligation to sell this item to the highest bidder. To relieve your obligation, you must first cancel all the bids and then end the auction. Of course, if no one has bid, you have nothing to worry about.

When you cancel an auction, you have to write a short explanation (no more than 80 characters) that appears on the bidding history section of your auction page. Anyone who bid on the item may e-mail you for a written explanation. If bidders think your explanation doesn’t hold water, don’t be surprised if you get some nasty e-mail.

Bidding on your own item is against the rules. Once upon a time, you could cancel an auction by outbidding everyone on your own item and then ending the auction. But some eBay users abused this privilege by bidding on their own items merely to boost the sales price. Shame on them.

To end an auction early, go to your My eBay Active Selling page and in the drop-down menu next to the listing, choose End Item. You will be required to sign in again. Then follow these steps:

1. Click the appropriate link: either Cancel Bids and End Listing Early or Sell Item to High Bidder and End Listing Early.

2. On the next page, select a reason for ending your listing.

3. Click the End Your Listing button.

An Ended Listing page appears, and eBay sends an End of Listing Confirmation e-mail to you and to the highest bidder.

If you know when you list the item that you’ll be away when an auction ends, in your item description let potential bidders know when you plan to contact them. Bidders who are willing to wait will still be willing to bid. Alerting them to your absence can save you from losing money if you have to cut your auction short.