Section 6.6. Protecting Your Auctions | eBay[c] The Missing Manual

6.6. Protecting Your Auctions

It's not enough to post an auction and then check back in a week to see who won. In addition to managing your auctions (answering questions, adding photos, or adjusting the price if bidding starts off slow), you need to keep an eye out for trouble. This section describes potential problems that can crop up during an auction, and what you can do about them.

6.6.1. Blocking Unwelcome Bidders

Some bidders seem more interested in messing with auctions than in winning them. They win auctions but don't pay, or they bid from a place you can't ship to. Fortunately, you can head some of these bidders off at the pass by preventing them from bidding on any of your auctionsin other words, blocking them.

6.6.1.1 Blocking groups of bidders

One way to avoid problem bidders is to use your eBay Preferences to block types, or groups, of bidders you don't want participating in your auctions (Figure 6-14). You can block the following groups of bidders from participating in your auctions:

Bidders registered in countries you don't ship to.
Bidders with a negative feedback score.
Bidders who've received two Unpaid Item strikes in the past month.
Bidders who are currently winning your other auctions or have won some of your other auctions in the last 10 days (you can restrict this block to low-feedback bidders).
Bidders without a PayPal account.

Looking at the kind of bidders you can block, you might wonder why anyone would want to prevent someone from making multiple bids on their auctions. Repeat buyers are good, right? Usually, yes. But there are a couple of situations when it makes sense to block a bidder who's blitzing your auctions. Newbies who don't understand how auctions work often "shop" by placing bids on a bunch of identical items, then try to get out of paying when they win more than one. Preventing these buyers from making multiple bids can protect your auctions while they learn the ropes . Also, sellers of expensive items sometimes prefer getting to know their buyers one at a time, so they to restrict the number of items one buyer can purchase before they buy again.

To block groups of bidders:

From the eBay home page, select My eBay page .

Your My eBay page (Section 1.4.9) appears.
On the left-hand side of the page, click the eBay Preferences link you find .

The eBay Preferences page appears.
Under Selling Preferences, find Buyer Requirements and click Change .

The Buyer Requirements page appears.
Select the groups of bidders you want to exclude from your auctions .

A check in the box means that bidders meeting that description (such as bidders in countries you don't ship to) won't be able to bid on any of your auctions. Click Submit when you're done.

Note: Lots of sellers would like to block bidders with a feedback score of zero, but eBay won't let you do this automatically. After all, the reasoning goes, everyone on eBay had zero feedback when they started out. If zero-feedback bidders make you nervous, your only option is to watch who's bidding and then cancel any bids from eBayers with no feedback (Section 2.1), then add each of those individuals to your blocked-bidder list (see the next section). You can state in your terms of sale (TOS) that you don't sell to zero-feedback bidders, but that won't prevent them from placing a bid. More than that, a TOS saying zero-feedback bidders are unwelcome can chase away the bidders you do want; some experienced eBayers will read your TOS, think you're being elitist and unfair, and find another auction to bid on.

Figure 6-14. Blocking buyers reduces the pool of potential bidders. Use this feature sparinglythe more bidders you block, the more potential bids you lose. But if you're sure you don't want a certain kind of bidderfor example, if you're not set up to ship overseasgo ahead and turn on the appropriate checkbox.

6.6.1.2 Blocking individual bidders

eBay also lets you create a blocked-bidder list (BBL) that prevents specific eBayers from participating in your auctions. Use this option when someone has given you trouble in the pastfor example, if they refused to pay for an item they won.

On the navigation bar, click My eBay .

Your My eBay page (Section 1.4.9) appears.
Click eBay Preferences Buyer Requirements: Edit "buyer requirements exemption list "Add an eBay user to my Blocked Bidder/Buyer List ."

The "Blocking a bidder/buyer" page appears (Figure 6-15).
In the box, type the ID of the eBayer you want to block .

If you're putting more than one buyer on your BBL, separate IDs with a comma or just hit the Enter key to give each ID its own line. When you're finished, click the Submit button.

Figure 6-15. If you want to block someone from bidding but they've already placed a bid, you have to cancel the bid first (see next section), then add their eBay ID to your Blocked Bidder list.

If you're really paranoid , you can sell only to bidders you already know. Preapproved bidder lists work best if you've been selling for a while and have gotten to know a group of bidders you trust who keep coming back to your auctions. If you send a newsletter to your customers, for example, you can announce a special sale just for them, and run that auction with only your subscribers as the preapproved bidders.

Letting only a select few bidders participate in your auction may feel safer, but it limits your options. Would-be bidders who aren't on the list can email you for approval, but many won't bother. They'll just find another auction where they feel welcome. Besides, experienced eBayers know that scammers love preapproved auctions (Section 1.4.7), so they avoid auctions where the bidding isn't open to all.

Here's how to set up an auction for preapproved bidders only:

From the eBay home page, select Help Selling Managing Your Item Managing Buyers Pre-approved Bidders List "create a list of pre-approved buyers ."
Click "Add a new item ."
On the Pre-Approve Bidders/Buyers page that appears, type in the item number (the auction you want to edit) and the eBay ID (or list of IDs) you want to block .
Click Submit Item .

Figure 6-16. To create a list of preapproved bidders for a particular auction, go to Help Selling Managing Your Item Managing Buyers Preapproved Bidders List. "create a list of pre-approved buyers." From there, you can create a new list or edit an existing one. You need the item number of your auction and the eBay IDs of the bidders you approve.

6.6.2. Canceling Bids

Occasionally, you might notice a bidder in your auction who makes you nervous. Maybe you're selling something expensive, and a zero-feedback bidder who registered yesterday has bid what seems like a ridiculously high price. Or maybe the high bidder has OK feedback overall but recently has been collecting negatives for nonpayment and has retracted a dozen bids in the past six months. Or you notice the bidder has a history of leaving nasty feedback over petty issues. Or you check to see what else the high bidder is currently bidding on (Section 3.1.2) and see that not only is she bidding on your Xbox, but on eight othersand is winning three. Any of these suspicious bidders is unlikely to follow through if they win your auction, leaving you high and dry. The solution? Cancel the bid.

Note: Even though eBay offers only a couple of examples of when it's a good idea to cancel a bid, you can cancel anyone's bid for any reason you like. But once you've canceled a bid, you can't change your mind; you can't reinstate a canceled bid.

To cancel a bid, go to Help Selling Managing Your Item Managing Buyers Cancel Bids "cancel bids and fill out the form shown in Figure 6-17. When you finish, click Cancel Bids.

Figure 6-17. To cancel a bid, you need the item number, the bidder's eBay ID, and a reason for the cancellation. Your reason appears in your listing's Bid History. Reasons to cancel a bid might include "Insufficient feedback," "Uncomfortable with bidder's feedback practices," "Could not contact bidder," "Too much recent negative feedback," and so on.

Tip: If you plan to cancel the bids of eBayers with zero feedback (or a score of less than 10 or whatever cutoff you choose), say so in your listing's terms of sale (TOS). That way, low-feedback bidders won't be surprised when you suddenly dump them from your auction.

Use bid cancellations wisely. Canceling a bid is the opposite of building a longterm relationship with good customersit's more like throwing someone out of your store. You might want to email the bidder before you cancel a bid to give him a chance to explain whatever's making you nervous. And after you've canceled a bid, it's good form to email the bidder and let her know why. In the end, if you decide that this bidder is someone you just don't want to deal witheveradd their ID to your Blocked Bidder list (Section 6.6.1.2).

Note: If you're ending a listing early (Section 5.6), eBay gives you the option to cancel all bids as part of the process. If you end a listing early without canceling the bids, you've agreed to sell to the high bidder at his or her current bid.

6.6.3. Defending Your Auction

It takes a lot of time and effort to get your auction looking just right. So when you come across someone else's auction that looks just like yoursanother seller has stolen your photo, your description, or bothyou have a right to get mad.

You also have a right to report the auction thief to eBay and get the stolen listing removed. You can report eBayers who copy your title, the text of your item description, or your photo; you can also report sellers who link to your offsite Web page that hosts your images (Section 6.2.4.2).

From the eBay home page, go to Help Contact Us, then select "Report a listing policy violation or prohibited (banned) item "Copying of your listing and choose the problem that you're having. Click Continue.

When a lazy seller steals another seller's photo by linking to pictures hosted on another site, the offended seller sometimes gets revenge by uploading a new image: a similar item smashed to smithereens, another item altogether (such as a diamond solitaire replaced with a gumball-machine ring), or a heartfelt confession ("I am a thief. I tried to steal a picture from good_seller42, who's replaced the image with this admission of my guilt"). If you decide to avenge yourself on an auction thief in this way, don't forget to change the image link in your own auction!

Tip: To discourage thieves from stealing your photos in the first place, use your image-editing program to put a watermark on your photos. A watermark is text superimposed on the photo; you can still see the item, but the photo is clearly marked as belonging to you. It's easy to create a watermark; any image editing program lets you add text to an image. State something like my_ebay_ID or Property of honest_ ebayer , and image thieves will look for another auction to rob.