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Hack 52 Let's Make a Deal

How to handle impatient bidders without losing
customers and without getting kicked off eBay.

From
time to time, bidders will contact you with special requests, such as
those suggested in [Hack #26] and [Hack #27]. How you respond to such requests
and how you decide to conduct business is entirely up to you, but
you'll want to be careful about some of the steps
you take. As a seller on eBay, you'll have to walk a
fine line between protecting yourself from dishonest bidders, not
upsetting your honest bidders, not violating eBay policy, and not
wasting large amounts of your time.

See who you're dealing with by taking a moment to look at their feedback and investigate their history, a process explained in [Hack #53]. That way, you'll know whether you should trust the bidder or add the bidder to your Blocked Bidder list (see [Hack #54]).

For instance, an impatient bidder might want to use Buy-It-Now on one
of your auctions, even though the item has received bids and the
option has disappeared from the page. The following are a few
different approaches to dealing with this type of request, each with
its own advantages and disadvantages:

Assuming you know the value of your item (see [Hack #33]), you should be able to look at
the current bids as well as the relative success of your
competition and predict how much you're
ultimately going to get for your item. Your auction may indeed be on
track to fetch a higher amount than your original Buy-It-Now price,
in which case you'll want to politely tell the
bidder that you prefer to let the auction run its course. Naturally,
you'll run the risk of not getting as much as the
bidder is offering, or, at the very least, driving the bidder away by
making him wait.

If you cancel all bids on an auction, the Buy-It-Now price will
reappear, and the bidder in question can buy the item. Unfortunately,
this approach is not without risks. First, you'll
need to get the timing right; if the bidder isn't
quick enough, someone else may place a bid and the Buy-It-Now price
will once again disappear. But what's worse is the
possible flight risk; if the bidder doesn't end up
using Buy-It-Now, you've essentially canceled a
bunch of honest bids on your item for no reason.

You can also make an under-the-table deal with the bidder, agreeing
to end the auction early for a certain dollar amount. But this, too,
is fraught with peril. First, eBay may consider this to be a
violation of their "fee avoidance"
policy, and as a result may suspend your account. Second, since it is
an off-eBay transaction, it won't be covered by
eBay's fraud protection policies, and neither you
nor the bidder will be able to leave feedback.

As a seller, you should never solicit an off-eBay transaction from your bidders, either in your auction descriptions or in any eBay-related emails. There are several reasons for this, not least of which is that it's a common practice by scammers and spammers (see [Hack #20]) and may unsettle otherwise interested customers. It would also violate several eBay policies put in place to protect bidders. This doesn't mean that you can't agree to such requests from bidders, only that you should be careful about how you proceed.

Probably the safest approach is to create a second listing, identical
to the first. When it's ready, send the URL to the
bidder and instruct him or her to use the Buy-It-Now option promptly
(before anyone else bids). Only when that auction has closed
successfully should you cancel bids on the original auction and end
it early. This way, you and the bidder can complete the transaction
officially and enjoy the protection of eBay's buying
and selling policies. And if the bidder backs out, you can simply end
the superfluous listing or modify it to accommodate a different item.

Although the preceding example is the most common request of this
sort, it's not the only one you'll
receive. Bidders often contact sellers to ask for alternative colors,
versions, etc., as well as related items and accessories, and a
cooperative seller can stand to make quite a bit of extra money. Just
be careful about how much you reach out to bidders.

If you're selling shoes, for example,
it's generally acceptable to mention that you have
other sizes and colors, either in other auctions (see [Hack #47]) or for sale in your online store.
But this is different from posting a
"dummy" auction whose purpose is to
simply direct customers to your off-eBay store. Bidders
won't buy it, and eBay won't
tolerate it.