Advice needed

[flava]

Hi guys,

I recently put a knife for sale on Ebay. The reserve price was not met but was short of only a few bucks. As I need the money, and fast, I sent an offer to the two top bidders saying "you want it for the ammount of your bid, you can have it". One of them never answered, which is fine even though a "no thanks" would have been nice. The second one said "I"ll take it" and asked for payment details. I gave him the details and never heard back (it's been 4 days). It could be he's offline, it could be he changed his mind, I have no ideea.
I told him I'll sell him the knife and I consider I should do so. How much time without any communication would you wait until deciding he's not buying and put the knife back for sale? All this mess drives me crazy, shouldn't have put the knife on ebay in the first place, but when I asked arround how much it's worth, I had very divergent opinions. Thanks in advance for your advice.

 

[Esav Benyamin]

You never know why someone disappears. Give him the rest of the week and then try to sell it somewhere else.

 

[commodorewheeler]

I would also send him an email telling him how long he has to get in touch with you before you put the knife back up for sale.

 

[RWS]

Does Ebay have any suggestions posted about how to handle this type of situation? I would imagine it's pretty common.

 

[Megalobyte]

Oh, yes, Ebay most certainly has suggestions as to what you should do in these cases, one which allows them to get their cut even though the auction ended unsuccessfully.

It's called a "Second chance offer" and they offer it as an option, and hide all email addresses so that you can only make the offer through them, and thus they can still get their money. Of course if you kept a record of the email addresses of the top bidders throughout the auction, then you can make the offer directly without having to cut them in, they hate that. Seriously, they do hate it, and strongly urge any buyer who receives such an offer directly from the seller, rather than through Ebay's system, to not accept the offer and they warn the contacted buyer that unless the offer came through Ebay's second chance offer option, it's likely a scam, which of course is rarely the case, but they do what they can to stay in the transaction. I both love and hate Ebay.

 

[neotoy]

One thing I can tell you....beware of folks that place bids on e-bay that are NEW MEMBERS and DO not have any feedback listed. I've been a huge ebayer this summer and have been screwed several times- from these types of SHOPPERS.... E-bay has a very poor form of ENFORCEMENT on these types of folks....in other words- N O N E! The Second Change crap...is a waste of my time and TIME cost me money. One of the last big deals I did on e-bay was on an Emerson that had 15 bidders on it...some Jack-A--- bid on it- had 0-feedback and was a NEW member for less then a month..... Several e-mails.......3-weeks and I BLASTED him on the feedback...for whatever good it does. Again- e-bay POLICE are the worse! I place my OWN set of rules on how things go.........A bidder must have at least 10-plus positive feedbacks and a member for at least 6-mos. NO exceptions! I list this plain in my auctions.................Up front contracts- you might say!
So----sorry to hear of your experience! Follow some of these suggestions and I can tell you......YOU will have a more pleasent e-bay experience! One more thing..........funny how they bid very fast when you have the bid going and then suddenly dissappear subsequent their win........all of the sudden its not important to PAY up for what they bid on. Take it form me.........common sense shows.....NO one turns into a ghost that fast after a bid....closes...especially if they won it. Serious- honest e-bayers PAY up almost immediately after a bid closes- or within 24-hours......4-days is ridiculous!