Ebay: Buyers canceling orders in minutes

Not sure if this is some sort of scam or money laundering scheme.

I have this TV on sale. Its stated as pickup only and with only buyers from USA, all in caps, you cant miss it. In less than 24 hours I get offers from people in India, South America, etc; saying that they want the TV and will pay extra for shipping. I say no thanks. Finally someone buys the TV, pays for it, and cancels the order in minutes.

I relist the item and the SAME THING HAPPENS ALL OVER AGAIN! I've been going through this charade three times already.

What am I missing here?

 

I get requests like that from overseas people when I list online locally from time to time; even when I say pick up only. So that part, not weird.

But buyers cancelling more than once? Could be some disgruntled overseas guy but I'm pretty sure you can set your auction/BIN to only accept bids/buys from those in the US.

Have you checked to see where the buyers are located?

Might be worth not relisting the ad as is. Create a new one as relisting the same ad means anyone watching will get a notice that it's been relisted.

 

I can't see how you can do anything to stop the nonsense. Of course restrict buyers from outside the US and block any bidders that have caused problems, won't help much but I can't come up with anything better to stop problems I am having with buyers. Since eBay doesn't allow negative feedback for bad buyers, I never know until it is too late and I have lost several dollars on the transaction.

I wish I could have the ability to prevent anybody from bidding without my approval. The couple thousand buyers with a history I know and trust would be whitelisted, everybody else would need to meet a required standard or get my approval before bidding. Two of my last 10 sales were bad, item exactly as described was returned at my expense and I lost $6 each time, shipping each way and the PayPal 30 cent fee. I think eBay is a sanctuary for bad buyers and much of what they do appears to be nothing more than deliberately causing problems or buyer's remorse but they don't lose any money, the seller does.

Business sellers that make selling on eBay profitable, I have to tip my hat to them, it is clear I could never do that. My 15 items sold each month the last few years have been more trouble than it has been worth but I have things I need to move out so I continue to deal with the problems.

 

Are there no other local avenues for you to sell? If you're on Facebook it might be worth searching for any local-ish based buying/sell groups. There are so many locally, for records and pretty much anything else.

I seldom sell on eBay and it's usually in spurts. I'll sell nothing for months, maybe a year or two, then there will be a month or so of activity, sort of thing. Every time I sell something I think about it until the Paypal 6 month return period ends! But since I last sold on there, there have been a lot of local groups popping up on FB. There are a couple of other online classifieds I can use. Granted they attract morons but I just lose time rather than money with them.

The OPs problem is a weird one though. It might be bad luck and he just managed to find 3 idiot buyers in a row. But it also sounds like some a-hole pulling a prank. It would be interesting to see the buyers profiles. I'd be surprised if they aren't all related in some way.

 

Yes I do list items on Facebook and Craigslist, overall a little better luck than eBay and with eBay increasing final value fees on CD sales I am going to have to find more ways to sell.

 

Isn't it in the sales setup where your listing appears ?
I sell to Australia only by a tick box.