ebay verification

[blindguy]

i have been getting some very good deals on ebay lately. last night i won 58 troy ounces .999 fine silver rounds and silver eagles shipped to my door for $15.87 an ounce, $921 for the whole group.  i think the reason is that ebay has been making buyers verify your accout before you can bid. before you can bid you have to click on a tab so ebay can text you a pin number, then you have to enter the pin number and if it works then you can bid.  i talked to a few sellers on ebay and they said they were getting quite a few emails from buyers saying that they could not bid. first off i only buy from sellers on my favorite list who i have bought from before. i have delt with these seller for years and trust them. i am wondering if the verification is stopping last minute bidders?  Jim

[Melon]

Possibly stopping the spam bidders! Nothing worse then selling an item on eBay then never getting paid or getting any response from the buyer. It's such a mess on eBay these days because it's completely impossible to leave bad buyers any negative feedback. Anything that helps scare them off is a good thing in my opinion. 

[blindguy]

i have bought and sold on ebay for years here in the states and in the 20 years i have been on ebay i had 1 buyer that did not pay. i found out a few weeks later that he had a heart attack. it must be bad in the UK from what you say about ebay but in the states not a bad place to shop.  jim

[Tattoedamat]

Yeah the no negative feedback for scammer sellers or buyers is a bad move.

Not had any issues personally though had few nosey PayPal varification notices

[blindguy]

here in the states all the big silver dealers sell on ebay,  apmex, sd bullion, jm bullion, scottsdale silver, bullion exchange, pinehurst coin and so on. do the big bullion dealers sell on ebay in the U.K.?

[Tattoedamat]

Bullionbypost does for certain. Not sure about the others

[Melon]

11 hours ago, blindguy said:

i have bought and sold on ebay for years here in the states and in the 20 years i have been on ebay i had 1 buyer that did not pay. i found out a few weeks later that he had a heart attack. it must be bad in the UK from what you say about ebay but in the states not a bad place to shop.  jim

Perhaps you're very lucky, because the pages and pages I've read on eBay deals gone bad tend to be quite US centric. After all it's a US company. It may also depend on what you're selling, i.e. if it's mainly collectable coins then the likely buyers tend to be a bit more mature/sensible. 

The problem is they've set eBay up to be very in favour of the buyer. A seller can't leave negative feedback, it's impossible. And in a dispute eBay always side with the buyer unless there's irrefutable evidence for the seller's version of events - i.e. it's impossible to disprove the 'not as described' scam that's all to common on eBay these days. 

Most of the worst stuff can be avoided by cancelling bids from low feedback bidders, which isn't very fair but seems the only way to operate with higher value items. But since the feedback changes, even people with tons of positive feedback will happily renege on an auction win if they change their mind, safe in the comfort that they can't get a negative feedback from the seller. I sold a camera 3 times earlier in the year, only on the 3rd time did the winner actually pay (and I'm a squeaky clean seller!).  

Needless to say, I'm not too happy with eBay these days!! 😂