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Dutch auctions with trap bid increments
Hello eBay folks!!
Sorry, there’ll be a bit to read, but I’m writing in a hurry and a bit stressed by the situation, I hope you can give me a hand.
I’m asking for a little help from you, some clarification... So, over the course of a couple of weeks I got two emails from eBay with two restrictions against me (one for 3 days and one for 7, which I’m still serving) without any apparent reason other than telling me that I placed shill bids on auctions.
Obviously, as you can see from the feedback I have, both as a seller and as a buyer, I’m a private individual who for years has always bought respectfully, through auctions and Buy It Now, and sold in exactly the same way. I use eBay as a hobby and to make a little extra money; I’m not one of those who goes all out just to sell, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know this site’s policy.
But here’s the thing: I got 2 restrictions in not even 2 weeks. Being curious, I both emailed eBay and called them.
Summary of the first call from a couple of weeks ago:
Support repeats what I already knew, about why the restriction was there, so I ask for more details but she can’t give them to me, then I tell her: "look, I only have 2 auction items with 0 bids plus all Buy It Now, the only thing I did was bid on a lot of auctions to try to win something, placing a max bid at the start and letting the days pass" there were 7 days left until the end of the auctions I had bid on, so I was trying to understand where I had gone wrong but I didn’t get a direct answer, the only advice was to create another account just to bid on auctions and use my main one to sell, even though that’s strange because in the end the account has the same name and so on, but oh well.
I do everything and for a week I bid with the new account on lots of auctions to buy, and with my main one I keep selling and I list more auction items (6 to be exact) with a 10-day end date.
Fine, for 9 days everything goes smoothly, then the other night at 11 pm I get an email with a 7-day restriction, and man, I was pissed, because I’d had enough.
So the next morning I call again:
Second call from yesterday:
This time support listens to me more, but tells me clearly that they can’t give me any more detailed information for privacy reasons; at that point I tell them that if that information is the IMPORTANT stuff that could help me understand the problem, if you don’t give it to me how am I supposed to figure it out??
Nothing, as of today I have zero information, I have no clue what the hell is going on and I’m afraid of losing the account if they keep doing this with these restrictions.
The only thing I can think of is, if my auctions aren’t a problem and the bids I made on auctions are legitimate, maybe some other seller in those other auctions did something shady and I got caught in the middle??
HELP ME UNDERSTAND, THANKS!!
sika700
Mentore3 years agoGood morning,
the fact that you buy and resell in the same way makes you a trader... the fact that you do it to make some extra money means that you do it for income... so just like a trader... and right there, that’s not okay.
Then the fact of having another account is not in itself wrong, but definitely the way you use it, and very likely you’ve answered your own question: "...with the new account I aim at lots of auctions for purchasing and with my main one I keep selling..." well, there are clear limits on purchases and since the accounts are linked, it’s obvious that the one where you sell is the one that suffers the harsher consequences.
So get a grip, the next restriction will be the permanent closure of your accounts.
Kind regards.
emvi1996
OP3 years agoGood evening!!
First of all, thanks.
The thing is, I’ve been doing this for years, meaning that apart from the new account thing, everything else I’ve always done: buying and selling, after all that’s the whole point of sites like eBay or Vinted and others... yes, sure, I’ll probably have a bidding limit, but I don’t have a limit where, being a private seller and not a merchant, I can’t buy as much as I want and resell as much as I want.
But here’s the point: the issue isn’t buying and selling, the issue is the unwarranted restrictions...
So, you’re telling me that bidding on too many auctions would be the mistake where eBay then gives me a restriction, so that’s the mistake, the fact that I bid on too many auctions, but if I’m not mistaken eBay has rules specifically for this, at most it can flag me because it thinks I’m bidding on too many auctions, but it can’t flag me ASSUMING that I’m doing it deceitfully, meaning with shill bidding, you get it??
That’s the problem here.
Let’s say that first of all, as I was advised, I’d like to prove to eBay that I haven’t done anything wrong and I’d like to have the restrictions removed; I can’t live thinking that if tomorrow I bid on 20 auctions, or if I decide to put some auctions on my profile, they’ll just decide to give me an unwarranted restriction and take my account down.
So I need to sort this out; let’s say your answer is 50%, very similar to the second eBay operator, so I thank you but everything is still not clear.
I’ll have to do things differently
Also because if, in case, a seller I bid on had been blocked and I got caught up in it, according to the algorithm, then the thing needs to be fixed.
emvi1996
OP3 years agoObviously, for the two accounts, I only followed the first operator’s advice: open another one and use that to bid, and keep selling with the first.
I didn’t do anything more and nothing less.
Sure, if even support can’t give you a useful tip, then all of this is completely useless.
So I turned to the community to sort it out; otherwise, a bit of stubbornness and I’ll try to do it on my own, because this has never happened before and it doesn’t seem right that it should happen now, all at once, a couple of weeks apart.
At this point, they should put a person behind all this and not the algorithm.
Kind regards, Marco