Posted by QuickReadAbout.com Staff in Before you send anything to that buyer, you might want to get to know them, especially if youre selling them a high-ticket item that you couldnt afford to lose. Even if the buyer has paid, the PayPal transaction could still end up being reversed, leaving you out of pocket. So how do you figure out if you can trust your buyer?
Look at their feedback for others. Go to their feedback page and click Left for Others. If they leave a lot of negatives for their sellers, then you should try to get away from them as fast as you can if you do deal with them, make sure not to leave your feedback first. You should consider a negative someone has left to be just as bad as a negative left for them.
Look at feedback from sellers. Click From Sellers. You might find that they have more complaints from sellers than from buyers or, on the other hand, it might be the other way around. Some people really are just better at selling than buying, or vice versa.
Pay attention to bid retractions. If they have a high number of bid retractions, you should regard this as a red flag that something might be wrong.
See what else theyve bought. When someone goes from buying items worth $1 to suddenly buying something worth $1,000, you might want to be a little suspicious of them.
See what theyre bidding on now. If theyve never shown any interest in your kind of item before, and now suddenly theyre bidding on lots of them, then thats cause for concern. You should also be suspicious of someone who seems to be spending a lot of money all at once few buyers have thousands at a time to blow on eBay.
Check their ID history. People whove changed their ID are often trying to get away from someone whos trying to find them. This is another warning sign be especially wary of someone who changed their ID very recently.
Be nice to new buyers. Genuine new buyers will probably have a name ending in a number and a feedback score of 0 dont always think these people are fraudsters. Somewhat counter-intuitively, people trying to commit fraud will almost never do it when they have a feedback score of 0 theyll think its too obvious. New buyers often have problems with being inexperienced on eBay, however, and you might have to guide them through things like opening a PayPal account.
Email them! If you want to get to know your eBay buyer, why not have a little chat with them about the item, what they plan to do with it? Say that how you know theyre going to love it, and ask if theres anything else you can do for them. Few buyers who seem chatty and nice will turn out not to be in the end.
If you keep having trouble with buyers you dont want winning your high-value auctions at the last second, you might want to use eBays pre-approved buyer function. The next email will show you how.