by Emanuel Weeks
Before you send anything to that buyer, you might want to get to know them, especially if you're selling them a high-ticket item that you couldn't 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.
It means eating your words, this thing of refusing to be a fence-sitter, but I’d rather eat my words than get calluses from sitting.
No one who has not experienced the condescension of a buyer toward an ordinary salesgirl can have any conception of its withering effect.
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
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 they've 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 they're bidding on now. If they've never shown any interest in your kind of item before, and now suddenly they're bidding on lots of them, then that's 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 who've changed their ID are often trying to get away from someone who's trying to find them. This is another warning sign – be especially wary of someone who changed their ID very recently.
I suppose that one of the psychological principles of advertising is to so hammer the name of your product into the mind of the timid buyer that when he is confronted with a brusk demand for an order he can’t think of anything else to say, whether he wants it or not.
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
Be nice to new buyers. Genuine new buyers will probably have a name ending in a number and a feedback score of 0 – don't 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 – they'll think it's 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 they're going to love it, and ask if there's 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 don't want winning your high-value auctions at the last second, you might want to use eBay's 'pre-approved buyer' function. The next email will show you how.