Ebay Awareness!!! A banned user from OG messes with my auctions (If you sell on ebay I'd read this)

[Dr. WHAT?!]

Hello all! Most of you know me pretty well and may have even bought lamps from me before off of ebay. Usually I'll post links to my auctions here since it IS the right place to do it, and when selling I'm much rather see my lamps go to a member here.  Well I recently just had 8 auctions end on Sunday. 5 of them went without issue even got a member from here to buy one (Thanks Again Chow :) But the other 3 auctions were all bought by a ebay user by the name of joana.1912 (0) with zero feedback, new user etc. I'm almost always weary about new ebay users, usually they are a shot in the dark if they follow through with paying or not. But that doesn't mean that new users are all the same. One of my 5 successful auctions was a new user with zero feedback, but he came to pick up the globe the next day since he was local guy. And that was fine and dandy by me, his shipping address was all legit and local nothing seemed fishy and he even called me and gave me his phone number. Now when it comes to this joana.1912 character a LOT of things were out of place. For one when you sell on ebay you can the view order details where it'll show the buyers shipping and contact information. So you can prepare your package for shipment when the payment is received and cleared. Now if you look at the screen shot I took and look at this guy's address the zip code its a real zip code. And also note that if you were to google any 5 digit zip code, you'll get zip code of some random city in the US. But what really through up the red flag for me was that fact that the physical address didn't exist in the zip code he listed. Which you can easliy search for it using google maps. Also If you also look at the screen shot you can see the phone number which isn't a US area code plus it has a extension? weird I know

 

So as the story goes on.... this buyer sends me a message through ebay explaining that they'll be in town for the next couple weeks and would like to pick up the lamps to avoid damage in shipping. We arranged a day for pickup at a local restaurant 30 seconds from my work. Now during the correspondence the buyer did have a few weird comments and also ignore 2 of my requests for their phone number. Their comments were weird like they'll be driving a old Studebaker truck which was dark green.  Who would drive a old ass truck from Cali to here?  just didn't make sense. Also when it came time to set up a place to meet I mentioned the local hot dog joint called "Portillo's located here in Vernon Hills, IL" they came back to me with I can't find it listed in on google maps that they wanted the address. Now if you were to take everything I typed, inside the parenthesis, copy and paste it into google, it's the first search that pops up. So at this point I'm beginning to believe that someone is taking me for a joy ride in a shitty old truck to no where. But that's not all, their email address which is as follows [e-mail]. I looked into reverse email look up so I could see where this email came from but all those services cost money. And I've already wasted time on this guy why waste the money? After a while I started to notice that this email was a name so thanks to the savoir of googling (gotta love it) I typed in the name Abi Jamson into the search bar and low and behold look at the first 2 links on the search. (it was the first 2 links no its just one)

http://www.google.com/search?q=abi+jamson&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8...

 

What I found is that this guy has been constantly harassing members here as well as posting vulgar and pornographic links has now taken it a step further and has decided to target OG member's auctions. He's been banned numerous times by the mods here, and it was confirmed, using all different types of user names including one of Abi Jamson. I just don't get why some people act this way nor why they singled out my auctions either. But needless to say the clean up is going to suck and not what I wanted to deal with but I held onto my lamps and offered them to the last bidders.

 

Here are a few things to do to avoid bullshit like this if you ever plan to sell on ebay.

• First do not list your lamps here on OG. I know it sucks and is the ideal place to post them and I've always done it but if you want to avoid situations like this its a good idea to prevent jerks like this messing up your listings. If you want to get the word out I would suggest you send  private messages to all your friends and keep it private as possible.
• Ebay isn't all that friendly when it comes to helping a seller with a new user who doesn't pay or is like this guy. Until you can report them and there is no way to block a new user from bidding unless they have negative feedback. You can cancel their bid(s) as the auction is still actively going but most of us know that a lot of bidding happens with the last 10 seconds of a auction. So to be that quick and delete the bad bid before it ends in next to impossible unless theres a program like snipe that will snipe out bad bids.
• To try to avoid this issue from happening to you the best solution would be to make your auction for paypal users only, that way you know it's a legit account and the users has a real bank account address and contact info with paypal.
• And this is obvious but NEVER ship out your lamps without them being paid for and the payment has cleared and is in your account.

 

I hope this helps you guys.

 

 

 

[Dr. WHAT?!]

Well I did for one of the auctions because the other 2 I sold soon after I found him out. I just wasn't sure how to treat the other 2 remaining lamps but now I know. I called ebay this morning and they helped me out and let me know what to do. I'll post more later.

WeeboTech said:

I would have submitted a non payment alert. I don't think they can cancel it.

It has to be paid or you raise the level of it after 7 days. After that they have to prove it was paid for or they get a non paying bidder mark. 

Obviously it is someone being intentionally mean. 

[Susan]

Hope you get that sorted out, there's some mean people around, sad when they have to get their kicks by being so childish.

[Chow]

I just put it to together with this Abi Jameson person I think.

I have been in touch with Abi (as in Abigail) Adamson from Electric Planet and was wondering if the Jameson person has used Electric Planet also? 

[Dr. WHAT?!]

hmmm that could be I am pretty sure this guy is from teh UK

[Susan]

Isn't Joana a male name?

[Chow]

Joana and the whale... A bible story.

[Chow]

You are right. It's way too late for me I need to go to bed.

[Dr. WHAT?!]

I highly doubt a woman is doing this though.

[Ed Reid]

I am an experienced eBay seller.  If you go into My Account --> Preferences, you can set buyer requirements.  You can block buyers with zero feedback from bidding on more than certain number of items from 1 to 100 in the last 10 days.  I set it to 1 but only for buyers with zero feedback.  There are many other buyer requirements you can set, such as "must have PayPal account" which always should be set because eBay now requires PayPal or credit cards to be accepted for most items unless locally picked up.  Another one blocks buyers with 2 unpaid item strikes in a year.  Thus, if you have a non-paying buyer, ALWAYS file the unpaid report, because you can get your fees back AND it can stop the problem buyer from victimizing other sellers who choose to block non-paying buyers.  Perhaps the best setting is the ability to even stop blocked buyers from contacting you!

 

 

 

 

There is no way to block bidders with zero feedback from bidding at all, but I don't think that's fair -- after all, everyone registering for eBay starts with zero feedback.  Inexplicably, eBay has a buyer requirement that allows blocking bidders with a negative feedback number -- this no longer makes sense since sellers now ONLY can give buyers positive or neutral feedback; this would only take effect if the bidder had negative feedback as a seller.

Unbelievably, the only unpaid item I've had was from a bidder with a 100% positive feedback number of 1621!  The phone number was disconnected and the buyer did not reply to eBay messages.

As an additional precaution, do NOT use e-mail or telephone to communicate with your buyers.  ONLY use the eBay message system.  If you have a problem, eBay support ONLY considers message system communication.

[Arne]

Abi Jameson is a politician in the UK...I got suspicios when her, his, it's email address said "abi Jameson - PRESS GT" Press GT is a newspaper in hungaria...

Chow said:

I just put it to together with this Abi Jameson person I think.

I have been in touch with Abi (as in Abigail) Adamson from Electric Planet and was wondering if the Jameson person has used Electric Planet also? 

[WeeboTech]

In a private communication to me. This member signed the message as Abigale. 

It's clear that it is someone that knows us and was here just to cause trouble.