Greetings to you all, I use ebay sometimes to buy or sell watches but i can't say i have much experience in the platform. Today a watch i had listed sold at the buy it now price (note i had the option 'make an offer' available). I checked the buyer's page and realised he has 0 feedback (he hasn't had any visible transactions) and his account is about a year old. Since i've read some ebay horror stories i'm a bit preoccupied about this being some sort of a scam. What are your suggestions? Thank you in advance!
Hello, There is an option at the account settings of your profile, where you can exclude buyers out of your transactions. For example, having 0 or low feedback (less than... *), users who live in other countries, etc... At this time and if you don't feel confident, you can cancel the transaction and send the payment back.
Thank you for your response! If i cancel the transaction is it possible for the buyer to leave a negative feedback?
It may depend on the reason you give for canceling the transaction, however there are definitely ways to do it where no feedback can be given. Mainly I know this from the perspective of a buyer. For example, there are those people who annoyingly cancel the results of no-reserve auctions when they are unhappy with the results by selecting the option that says the object was lost or damaged, or no longer available, etc. On several occasions I have won auctions and then had this happen, and was never able to leave feedback. Believe me, I would have liked to leave feedback, because on one occasion the person actually contacted me with an eBay message and tried to extort a higher price from me after canceling the sale.
You could try sending the buyer a message trying to gauge of he's trustworthy or not. The scams I've seen is usually the buyer sending you a message asking for a different sort of payment and outside of ebay. If he's bought the watch through eBay with payment such as PayPal it should be fine especially if you document puting the watch in packaging etc... I'd try contacting the buyer saying something along the lines of "hello, I see you have purchased this item and you have no feedback on ebay. Are you a new ebay buyer or did you create a new account?" Something along those lines. You have to start somewhere as a buyer and seller. Ultimately though if you're not comfortable with a sale don't go through with it. My unsolicited 2cts!
It happened to a friend 3 years ago... He had a watch for sale on ebay and through another watch community. He finally sold the watch through the community and he forgot to cancel the sale at ebay... The next day the watch was also sold through ebay. He directly cancelled the transaction on ebay and sent the payment back to the buyer with apologies. Then the buyer decided to leave him negative feedback for cancelling the transaction. He told me that after contacting ebay, the negative feedback was deleted by the ebay team.
You risk paying the auction fees even though you cancel the auction. As for feedback, I suppose it's possible. It's also possible that the buyer has purchased things before, but no one bothered to leave feedback for them (it's not as good as it used to be). You are not without risk here, sending him the watch after PayPal payment. He could claim that it's fake, return it and ask for a refund (sending you a box of rocks) or a multitude of options. Be sure to send it signature required, so you have that record. However, that said, the vast majority of eBay buyers and sellers are honest and everything goes smoothly. As mentioned, we're all a virgin once, and there's a first time for everyone. It wouldn't hurt to email the buyer and see what they say, if anything.
I just had a seller cancel an item I purchased, they used "Buyer requested to cancel" as the reason (even though the item I purchased was not available and seller offered me a completely different item in it's place). I was not able to leave feedback. However, I'm not trying to encourage dishonest behavior – just providing information if you feel you're in a corner without options. I also just sold a pair of hands to a buyer with zero feedback in Italy. Shipping took quite a while, but the item eventually arrived and I haven't had any issues. To @mjb 's point about how infrequently people leave feedback these days, I usually try to follow up with a buyer the day the item arrives, making sure it arrived smoothly and everything was in good condition. I also ask them to leave feedback if they are happy with our transaction. I'd say less than 30% of buyers take the time to leave feedback. But if they respond and say everything arrived in good shape, at least I have that message to fall back on if they open an unjustified case against me.
Thank you for taking the time and responding. I contacted the buyer and everything appears to be ok. I will ship the watch but i will make sure to document everything.