I'm having serious problems with a guy on eBay who keeps undercutting my prices. If I dropped lower, he would drop lower to a ridiculous level, I could make no profit, he could feasibly make no profit.
That is fair enough you might think, but check this guy's feedback.
http://feedback.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&userid=mikes-hobbies-zoneYep, he just plain stopped posting out. He scammed a lot of buyers, got booted from eBay. My sales went back up.
Fair enough? Oh no, he came back:
http://feedback.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&userid=reid8036Note: DON'T put his stuff on your watchlist, don't visit his listings more than once (don't anyway as there's no proof any more to be found in them thanks to his listings on banned account being deleted) as all this will do is bump his interest levels and push my own items down in eBay's search.
Now I've lost a large bulk of sales to the scammer in the past fortnight because he came back with his lowest prices EVER, and he seems to be posting out OK at the moment so has built up some OK feedback. It's probably a blessing I had low sales this week as I was on a gruelling training course, but now I REALLY need to protect my future interests.
I'm working at only a little over minimum wage on these cables. I pay taxes, insurance, fees on a business account. He's not tax registered, sells OK for a bit then runs off with the money of anyone who doesn't know how to claw money back on Paypal. So obviously he can afford to undercut me.
When he came back he used the same pictures in his listings (though for a while he stole chaoticjelly's, probably to hide his identity, but cj reported him and the listings were pulled.) He uses the same large point comic sans font in blue, same listing layout, is selling from the same English county (small state like boundaries of England that are no bigger than a medium US city) sells the same items, etc etc which I reported to eBay. They have utterly failed to ban him. Now they've pulled all his past listings on the banned account (happens when you are perma banned on eBay) so buyers can't even compare and see that reid8036 is definitely the old scammer. Result of this is his sales have shot up.
THe only proof I have to you guys bar my word is this:
http://feedback.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&userid=mikes-hobbies-zone&ftab=FeedbackLeftForOthershttp://feedback.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&userid=reid8036&ftab=FeedbackLeftForOthersNow as you can see he leaves the same bizarre phrase in feedback on both accounts. Both with blatant misspelling of "Carlsberg" too. I reported him again today to eBay with this fresh evidence but they won't do squat of course, this cheeky, brazen git is plainly selling on a friend's old account and IP.
Now reporting this guy is going to do squat. Sabotaging him would be stupid and put me in jeapordy.
If you can help, one way you can do it is find the listings of other legit sellers for these cables. Put them all on your watch list. If this is annoying, just put the four on that this guy is also selling (megadrive 1 and 2 SCART cables, Neo Geo SCART cables) What this does is pushes the scammer down in search. It doesn't stop him selling of course, but it might alleviate some of the damage done to legit sellers who rely on this for a livelihood.
Another way you can help of course is to never buy off this guy when you need a SCART cable, don't be fooled by the low prices. Spread the word as far as you can.
I sold THREE cables yesterday. I usually sell 4-5 times that on Saturday. NONE were the same cable the scammer is selling. He has literally run off with all of my sales. Lowering my price is not an option and woud put me in the same position he put himself in (so many orders he has to run off with some money to break even.)