Watching Out for eBay Abuses

If you're on eBay long enough, you're bound to find an abuse of the service. It may happen on an auction you're bidding on, or a seller whose listings compete with your auctions may do something really, really wrong. Be a good community member and be on the lookout for the following:

• Shill bidding: A seller uses multiple User IDs to bid or has accomplices place bids to boost the price of his or her auction items. eBay investigators look for six telltale signs, including a single bidder putting in a really high bid, a bidder with really low feedback, but a really high number of bids on items, a bidder with low feedback who has been an eBay member for a while but who's never won an auction, or excessive bids between two users.
• Auction interception: An unscrupulous user, pretending to be the actual seller, contacts the winner to set up terms of payment and shipping in an effort to get the buyer's payment. You can easily avoid this violation by paying directly through the eBay site with PayPal.
• Fee avoidance: A user reports a lower-than-actual final price and/or illegally submits a Final Value Fee credit.
• Hot bid manipulation: A user, with the help of accomplices, enters dozens of phony bids to make the auction appear to have a lot of bidding action. Let the experts at eBay decide on this one; but you may wonder if loads of bids come in rapid succession but the price moves very little

Buy It Now through eBay

From the buyer's point of view, shopping at an eBay store is much different than winning an auction. eBay stores feature fixed-price sales; the buyer will get the merchandise as soon as you can ship it (instead of waiting for the auction to run its course). Even though your auctions show up on your store’s home page, all regular listings in your eBay store are Buy It Now items.

When a buyer makes a purchase from an eBay store, here's what happens:

1. The buyer clicks the Buy It Now button on the listing page. The Review Payments page appears, where the buyer can review the purchase. This page contains the shipping amount that you specified when you listed the item.

2. The buyer provides shipping information (required). When eBay notifies you that a sale has been made, you have all the information you need. You don’t have to scurry around looking for the return address on the envelope when the payment arrives.

3. The buyer reviews the transaction and then clicks the confirm button. The information about the sale is e-mailed to you, and the buyer receives confirmation of the sale.

Your eBay store will be an essential backup to your auctions. It’s a great place to put out-of-season items, accessories for the items you sell actively, and even consignment items between relisting.