Amiga items on eBay -- advertising auctions on classiccmp

From: Russ Blakeman <rhblake_at_bigfoot.com>
Date: Thu May 3 16:47:05 2001

I fell for that once as a newbie seller. Come to find out that the high bid
was another of his usernames that was obviously expendable and he jacked it
up high on that username to keep anyone else from bidding more. Then when I
couldn't reach the high bidder and got the email I almost went for it but
remembered that ebay allowed you to get telephone and address info on
bidders - I had the email from the lower bidder that made the offer and when
I got the info on the welcher I found that it was the SAME person. Imagine
that, one was listed as the full name, another as the first initial with the
full last name. Guess who got to email customer support at ebay...they let
me relist for free and it sold in between the fake bid and the one he wanted
me to bite on, with a real bidder as both the other bidder's accounts were
closed permanently. Seems he'd been doing this a lot when they went back and
contacted previous sellers.

The thing I love that they've done is to allow up to 1000 usernames to be
barred from your auctions. Had a ditz in Illinois (not that people from Il
are ditzes, I'm a Chicago native) that bid on a 55SX PS/2 that I had on
auction and I was in a "move it out" mood that day and closed the auction
early to get the thing rolling (before buy-it-now was available). He got a
fully tested and nice machine with one little mar on the finish and a small
amount of dust inside (after all they are "used"). He (or she - was a unisex
name, Chris) writes me to say that I sent a junk unit that was all banged up
and dirty. I think the buyer had a junker that they wanted to replace in the
collection and keep the good one while getting me to refund them for the
junker. I don't refund squat. It goes out good (or in the listed condition
if not good) and it's final. If it gets damaged in shipment it has
insurance. This ditz posts negative feedback on me. No problem - that
username is on my "no can bid" list now and apparently it irks this person
too as before I posted the username on the barred list I had to cancel
another of the bids for that name. Problem solved, no more "polbit".

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org
> [mailto:owner-classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org]On Behalf Of John Foust
> Sent: Thursday, May 03, 2001 10:13 AM
> To: classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org
> Subject: RE: Amiga items on eBay -- advertising auctions on classiccmp
>
> To wit, near-winners, too: yesterday I got an e-mail from a guy
> who said he meant to bid more, so if the winner's money doesn't
> come through, he'd gladly pay me double the winning bid to get the item.
> Was he stupid, or expecting me to toss him the auction?
Received on Thu May 03 2001 - 16:47:05 BST