Is eBay's Blocked Buyer List Adequate to Protect Sellers?

by: GetAGrip

Our practice is to cancell any order and block any buyer who has opened the account within the past week. If your to lazy to have a real account we don't want to do business with you. Ebay needs to get rid of their guest buyer accounts. Most of the guest buyers are people who have a terrible time paying for items and are trouble makers.

by: Shanna

A mass BBL will be quite impractical. There are millions of eBay accounts, the chances that you will encounter someone else's bad buyers is almost nil. The best thing you can do, if you are a serious seller, is to join a group of sellers of similar items, whether on Facebook or other online forums. There you can discuss strategies of selling, have others with similar interests who can help research items for you, and you can share your BBLs, as those bad buyers are more likely to buy from you. Also, if you have had bad experiences with the same buyer, multiple reports from different sellers makes it more likely that buyer faces consequences, up to account termination, for their actions.

by: GetAGrip

Do you seriously think account termination or anyother of Fleecebays penalty's stop a serious scammer. The just use the buy as a guest and steal from you. Easy Peasy.

by: AddyUp

While the blocked bidder list helps a bit ............. how does that saying go - stable gate horse.

by: pace306

The problem HERE is the question, not the answer.

eBay isnt interested in "protecting" sellers from buyers. For eBay, thats illogical as the entire game is to fleece sellers out of their items and funds for eBays "real" customers - the buyers.

Its much easier to just pretend, then let buyers run rampant and blame sellers for it all. Especially if you can get them to cross the %5 defect rate line and get more out of them.

by: Snapped

Oh sure.  The handful of the gazillions of buyers out there a seller may not WANT to sell to - eBay can’t manage to hide THOSE from that ‘buyer’.  They get to be ‘surprised’ and the seller gets to be potentially harassed by a please exempt me plea.  

In one fell swoop of their disdainful lack of any real concern for this issue, they manage to annoy both parties to a transaction that’s not going to happen anyway.  

by: Fruitylovesyou

how about don't sell there?
You're more powerful than you realize. Shine bright

by: ox-mix

The best way, I think, would unfortunately require eBay's assistance. I think eBay should keep a count of how many times a buyer has been blocked. Sellers should then be able to adjust their settings so that any buyer with a certain number of blocks is prevented from bidding on their items.

by: Paul W

''any buyer with a certain number of blocks is prevented from bidding''
YES!  Best idea I have seen!

by: Ihatethebay

Many, many years ago I went to add yet another cyber-bozo to my burgeoning list of BBs. Funny thing; my list was gone. I contacted ''Customer Service'' and they asked me if I have my cookies enabled for the site. I replied: ''Cookies, shmookies; you guys are so greedy that you would erase my BBL to increase your sales''.

After that, I kept a parallel list on my hard drive, copied to a CD-ROM. A few years after that incident, it happened again. I calmly opened up my MS Word document, highlighted all the bozos's usernames, copied and then pasted them into my list of BBLs on the ebay website.

I do the same thing for my list on Gunbroker and I would do it for Etsbay if they had a Blocked Buyer List; one of the few GOOD things that they DIDN'T copy from Sleezebay....

by: Marie

The Site Preferences under Buyer Requirements is OK IMHO.  But the BBL [blocked bidders list] only works with buyers that are unaware they can just open another account or use some other account to purchase from that seller that blocked them.  

Ebay allows this even though it is against the rules.  You can call and report a buyer that is clearly using just another account, the name and address is the same as the one you put on your BBL.  Ebay's response most of the time is "Oh Well"  

So while for many the BBL will work fine, but if you run across a more creative buyer it is worthless.

by: wrslss1222

I don't agree with this idea.  I block eBay buyers for non-payment, bad feedback, annoying or repetitive messages, ridiculous returns, and possibly any other reason that the buyer may do to hurt my reputation or business.  So, other eBay sellers might not agree with these buyers being blocked and since eBay only allows for a certain amount of blocked buyers/bidders if all the eBay sellers share their listing and all of the eBay sellers include all of the people being blocked, there probably won't be enough space to do it.

by: CT Bay

I use the myip.is blacklist. Its a top Google search result for ebay blacklist but I seem to be only one of a few people using it.
The problem with a blacklist is that many times the seller is clearly the one whos wrong and you can glean that from their own report.
I would certainly suggest sellers read each entry individually and not add the whole blacklist to their blocked list.

by: Surplus

Absolutely not.  I use the blocked bidders list all the time but it not enough.  Don't pay Blocked! Stupid Returns where you clearly had no idea what were doing Blocked! Lying Blocked! Questions I am ok with, because if the questions get too strange I just suggest we are not the seller for you and send them elsewhere.  Negative Feedback left Blocked!  I had one buyer beg to be unblocked because "You have stuff I need to buy" my answer NO you should have thought about that before you stalled on paying for 30 days.  Sellers should be able to leave negative feedback for buyers as there are a few that deserve it.  If the Snowflakes can't handle negative feedback they can go cry in the corner.    

by: CT Bay

One person said odds of two sellers having same bad buyer are nil. Not true. I have had a buyer ask me why they are blocked and I went back and found them on the blacklist. Blacklist has helped at least once. It probably stopped others that didn’t message to complain because they know they are thieves.

Another guy says his block list got deleted twice. My blocked list is nearly full. Over 4000 users added since 2003. It has never been deleted.

by: Disgruntled_Seller

When i was very young in my first retail environment, a wise boss imparted to me that the best revenge is to take more of their money. Obviously that was years ago in face to face retail before all the NAD, etc tripe that exists now.

We use the eBay BBL as well but don't rely on it, now I also use a custom written software routine that uses a database entry of what I call problem folks we have experienced and it examines all incoming orders presented to my shipping software (best way) as well as arriving email notices (2nd best way) for Name, ID, Address amd other unique criteria that would tip us off to a repeat or prospective buyer we need to further review. It works rather well for Amazon and website orders.

You can so something similar but more limited if you have a email program that can filter based on certain terms etc and route that to a folder you can review. As long as the order email contains the buyers info and address pieces of info you can catch the sale even if the user ID or name has changed but it has other factors such as a address, etc. Of course, if this info is removed from the order email notices it isn't worth much.

by: Valaset

I use the blocked bidder list all the time.  Over the past 10 years I have probably added 200 ebay id's to that list.  Having problems with a seller ONCE and I am done with them.  I add them to the list and move on.

Just added one yesterday.  First they returned a computer monitor for "I changed my mind".  I HATE that.  It costs a lot of money when I shipped it both ways for them to say "I changed my mind".  That automatically goes on my blocked bidder list.  But then this customer sent the box back with NO MONITOR. I opened a case with eBAY.  

I like the idea of banning an ebay id who is added to too many blocked bidder lists.  That is a great idea....

by: 1desertrat1

there's a sellers group already on facebook ''blocked bidders on ebay'' . sellers explain exactly what the buyer did with screenshots of the messages so you can see that they are telling the truth. other sellers also offer helpful tips on how to handle situations when buyer is trying to scam you. By the way, ''ebay for business'' is another useful facebook page. the group is made up of ebay CS employees that are in the u.s. (and can actually speak english). Many times when I get nowhere by contacting ebay's online CS team, messaging 'ebay for business' on facebook will get the problem solved quickly.

by: Alexdgr8

A long time ago we had open discussion boards and it was possible to post info of bad buyers - ebay took that away.

by: Marie

@wrslss1222

Ebay allows up to 5,000 buyers on your BBL.  If you run a bit close to that number, you can clean it up a bit and delete those members no longer active.  You will see them when you look at your BBL.  They will have the word "delete" in the member name somewhere.