Option C: Somebody contacted the seller and offered to buy the item privately–thus saving the Ebay and Pay-scam fees, which on a brass engine, could be significant for some sellers.
Ebay frowns on these transactions that are “outside” Ebay, cannot be policed effectively, do not have buyer protection, etc. (but most of all don’t make any money for Ebay).
The simple fact is that almost every Ebay seller I’ve ever talked to occasionally completes these “outside” Ebay transactions. The more Ebay jacks up their fees (as they just did another 1%), the more incentive there is for people to circumvent the system–which by the way is still relativelyeasy.
Option D: It is also possible (but perhaps less likely) that someone bought the item in person who never even saw it on Evilbay. It does happen.
When an auction is “cancelled”, Ebay requires the seller to choose one of a few possible selections as the reason for the item being cancelled–but of course anyone may give a false reason. One of the choices is:
“The item is no longer available for sale”, with no additional reason given.
And of course, Option B–seller panic–as discussed in the above post may still be the real reason.
You can find some great deals on eBay. Even if it is not a great deal, but just a fairly priced deal, eBay is an outstanding web site for finding items that are hard to find elsewhere. I am both a buyer and a seller on eBay, and I have no complaints. The power of eBay is often criticized, misunderstood and avoided by some, but most participants come away happy.
It is hard to say why the seller pulled the item and ended the auction with one minute to go.
Cynics would smell a conspiracy to avoid fees. Don’t bet on that. That is not easy to do with eBay’s policing policy.
More likely, the seller priced the starting bid too low and panicked at a last second grab. If that was the case, then the seller priced the starting bid too low in the first place.
As a seller, I always price the starting bid as the minimum amount that I would be content to get (before fees). Some sellers price the starting bid at $0.09 or $0.99 to stir up interest and bidding. That can work, but it can also back fire.
Sorry, incorrect–it is extremely easy to do even with Ebay’s policing policy. All a seller has to do is respond to an interested party’s question by providing a private email address for further discussion–then it is easy to complete a transaction outside of Ebay and save the fees.
Alternatively, once you find a seller you like, it is easy for them to advise you of upcoming sales before the items ever get listed. So perhaps one might buy an item or two through Evilbay and a whole lot more outside it.
For example, an honest Pastor in the southern U.S. is liquidating a lot of HO engines on Ebay. I bought a couple through Ebay–and more outside. He’s sold more than $10000 of his personal trains so far this year on Ebay, and I don’t know how much more outside it.
See that a fair number of times on vintage synths and other instruments as well…I done it because I came across some information that needed investigation before I would post it back up…
E-bay remains one of the few places to obtain one of a kind brass. It was the only way for me to obtain an HOn3, K-28 as none are on the current new market in plastic, pot metal or brass. Got it for less than a new Blackstone K-27 in monkey metal.
Ebay is infested with sociopaths and scamers. It is also the best place to find deals and hard to find items. The trick is to weed out the loons and deal with the good sellers.
The 0 feedback is a red flag so you take your chances with the seller. He could be just starting out or could be a crook. The only way to tell is the feedback rating and since there is none you are rolling the dice.
I have had a couple hundred transactions on ebay over the years. My advice is to always check the feedback ratings and comments. Never deal with anyone under 98-99%.
I have read this kind of statement before from other members and I just haven’t experienced a problem to the degree that others apparently have.
Not disagreeing with you…but I have had nearly 150 transactions on ebay as both a buyer and a seller and have had maybe 5 that weren’t smooth as silk. The problems were due to poor communication and one due to poor packing which resulted in shipping damage. Nothing was intentional as near as I could tell.
I agree with your advice about feedback, but many of the low feedback scores or volume results in the item being less expensive than what I could get from a seller with higher feedback, since other buyers are leary. I can’t recall having a problem with a low feedback seller.
Maybe my 150 transactions is not a big enough universe with which to compare. I don’t know.
I buy pretty generic HO scale stuff. I wonder if the difference in experiences has anything to do with what we are buying and selling? Perhaps more niche items are susceptible to scammers and the like.
I’ve been on Ebay since 1998 & during the first 10 years of that I made a sizeable portion of my income there. I have over 4,000 transactions. During the early years I was on Ebay, it was more or less like the wild west. They had very few rules & regulations. Ebay only had a little over 2 million users when I first signed up & now they have over 100 million.
Currently Ebay has rules regarding ending auctions early. There are only two circumstance that permit ending an auction early that has LESS than 12 hours to go.
If the item has no bids.
If the item HAS 1 or more bids, but only if you agree to sell the item to the current high bidder.
Tecnically, if the item has more than one bid & you do NOT agree to sell it to the highest bidder, you cannot end it early if it has less than 12 hours to go. But, when you’re talking about a seller with “0” feedback then all bets are off. If he wants to end it during the last few minutes, he has nothing to lose. If his account gets cancelled by Ebay for policy violations, he can just start a new one.
But, there are lots of other reasons that the listing could have ended. It could have been ended by Ebay because of some form of policy violation, either on that listing or on others that the same seller may have had. It could have been ended early if someone complained of plaguerism (either the item itself or the photos in it were “taken” from someone else’s active listing…it happens more than most people realize). It could have been a technical glitch. Lately, in the past couple weeks, some sellers are claiming that their listing disappeared from search results & item pages during the last hour. That IS entirely possible as Ebay is in the process of making a number of changes right now & it’s been my experience that when they are, site problems & glitches are rampant.
Hmm, I sold a 99 cent N scale item to a pastor in the southern U.S. earlier this month. Took him a week and a half and a reminder to get him to pay for item he won. He apologized for lateness. A few days later, a person with the same “eBay user name” made multiple identical 99 cent bids on the same items, one day after the next. Matched his own bid… Now he has won three items for 99 cents apiece and I haven’t heard anything after five days. Maybe only checks his eBay account once a week?
It could be the second one, OR he could have had a buyer in person last minute willing to pay more than the bidding on line at EBAY… maybe even an email bidder with higher price.
I don’t trust EBAY at all. Too much what do they call it? sniping? too much garbage at high prices. To much low bidding on good items, Items pulled like you say here, People not knowing what they are selling, ripping off on shipping costs, etc.etc etc. At least About once every other month someone complains about Ebay here.
If a person puts X item online at Ebay, they ought to sell for the bid price, high or low. good or bad. adn shipping is what it is. That is an “auction” for you…“yous enters yer stuff and yous takes yer chances”.
IF, and I say IF, here, as not all items are taken at auctions this way, IF the item has a “reserve” then it should be posted that the item did not meet reserve, not just pulled like that.
I avoid EBAY AT all costs, and don’t much trust Craig’s list either.
80% of my best deals was found on e-bay…Where else can you buy two Atlas Precision designed boxcars for $16.55 used? That was my highest bid for the pair.In other words I got 2 for less then the price of 1…How about a long oop Atlas Southern GP38 for $74.95 BIN?
e-Bay has its good side and that’s the side I use…
Unless, the seller and buyer already know each other, or at least one of them knows the other’s personal email address, correspondence is handled by eBay, and eBay can and does monitor those emails. That is a fact. So, it is correct to say that it is not easy to do with eBay’s policing policy.
That’s a whole different situation where a buyer already knows a seller or vice versa.
But, in this instance, the seller had the item up for sale and ended the auction at the last moment. So that likely did not happen here. Either the seller got cold feet and pulled the plug or an offer was made to buy the item at a fixed price to end the auction. The latter happens more often than you might think, and it usually, though not always, happens through the eBay system.
While I might challenge your use of the word “infested”, I generally agree with you.
A lot depends upon the category. If it is new golf clubs, buyer beware, the golf auctions are littered with counterfeits. But, as far as model railroading goes, the integrity level is a lot higher.
