eBay - £4K item to new ebayer?

[HollyBollyBooBoo]

Can we pick and choose who we sell to?! I know everyone has to start sometime but is it ok to accept a £4K offer from someone with zero previous transactions?

I see issues in everything so might well be overthinking it!

They could have joined just to buy your item. What is it that they've offered on? I'm going to guess a vehicle of some kind.

You can decline an offer if you want, but good feedback and stars doesn't mean much now that sellers can't leave feedback. There's no guarantee a more experienced buyer won't also mess you around.

If it is a best offer you can decline.
If it is Buy it Now and they buy it you aren't meant to refuse. However if it looks dodgy don't send it.
You can get a lot of advice on the Ebay topic (on MN) or on the Ebay community selling forum.

However, if they have 'bought' and ended the listing you will have their name and can do an internet search for anything dodgy, see where they are registered. Wait for a scam e.mail and hold of sending, Ebay will often remove the listing and the buyer if it is a dodgy one.

Really? Sellers can't feedback?.

Ebay used to be a great idea. It's not, any more!

Technically sellers can still leave feedback, but it can only be positive so there not much point in doing so.

You used to be able to set a limit re who you sell to, like no less than 10 positives, no overseas etc. Can you not do that anymore?

Sellers haven't been allowed to leave had feedback for about ten years - it's nothing new!

If you're really worried then I'd personally refuse to sell - you might end up with bad feedback, buyer that's surely not add bad as losing 4k!

What are you selling though?

You used to be able to set a limit re who you sell to, like no less than 10 positives, no overseas etc. Can you not do that anymore?

You can set it so it blocks buyers with no feedback and a score of -1 or below. But that's been meaningless for ten years as sellers can't leave bad feedback, so it isn't actually possible for buyers to have a score of less than zero.

If it's a vehicle, then you are not committed to the sale. Just treat them as you would any other prospective purchaser.

Selling a piece of jewellery. I'm just so suspicious of people! Presumably I'd be covered by eBay though if anything dodgy happened?

Ebay normally finds in favour of the buyer, can you hand deliver as its £4K?

No way would I ever sell that on eBay- you are asking for trouble.

If it’s not a cash payment on collection then I wouldn’t sell to them. If they pay through PayPal and either collect or you send they could easily claim they never received it or it was damaged and eBay/PayPal will find in their favour and refund them.
I only sell cash on collection and that’s for little things under £100. I get less money probably but at least I keep it.

For an item of that value don't even think about it ... have they actually won the auction or is it still going?

I'm so confused, there's hundreds of pieces of jewellery for that value on eBay, why is it so bad. I thought it would be a safe way to sell it?!

Can I put collection only on the description? I thought the transaction had to go through PayPal?

Auction is still live.

If the auction is live you can block specific named bidders.

Separately though, for that sort of item, personally I'd ONLY do collection only and cash on collection. Don't let them pay Paypal then collect as you wouldn't be able to prove you'd sent the item.

Ok I've changed to collection in person and then would I ask for the cash upon collection? And issue a receipt that we both keep a copy of presumably?

If you are doing cash on collection make sure you have one of those pens that let you identify fake bank notes. And yes write a deed of transfer of ownership which you both sign and both get a copy of, which states the price paid. And ensure they bring photo ID which you take a pic of too.

Have you had the jewellery professionally valued? It's a known scam technique for a buyer to acquire a genuine expensive item then make a claim to ebay that the item was fake. Can you prove it isn't?

You can block them from bidding OP.
BUT, sadly, there are a lot of people looking to scam people selling high end goods - especially jewellery. One scam is to pay and then return claiming it's not gold / diamonds etc - and what gets returned is a useless piece of costume jewellery.
Selling high end jewellery on eBay really is for long term business sellers with lots of security systems that mean, in the event of a scam, eBay will side with them and protect them.

If you're a small seller then you're better selling this elsewhere IMHO

And yes never ever take payment on PayPal and allow collection - if you take PayPal then the only delivery option needs to be courier with full insurance for the £4k value - likely to be expensive.

My DP was selling a high value watch on eBay. He got an offer they would pay 50 over the asked value if he would send it next day. The guy had asked to chat to him over the phone and emailed him to ask about the item. Then carried on talking on email.,
He agreed then he received a PayPal email saying the money was in his account and would be released upon the tracking number being entered.
Luckily the DP is really sensible and called PayPal. Turns out it was a con.
The email looked like it came from PayPal but was a hoax one. The PayPal number on the bottom would have gone to the person rather than PayPal.
Also the PayPal person said that to keep everything through eBay. Don't talk it off the site.

I googled the address that the item was to be sent to and on street view it was a burnt out pub! It didn't look like a place someone would be living it they were spending thousands on a watch.,
The PayPal person said it's a common scam and they often have delivery people involved.

If you have jewellery worth thousands of pounds, it's much safer to sell it to a jeweller or even through an auction house. No way would I ever sell anything that expensive on Ebay.

I've got a photocopy of the original receipt.

Been valued but of course a jeweller will buy it off me for 50% of that because they want their mark up (fair enough).

Don't know what to do now.

@LIVIA999 what a nightmare!

Proceed but assume everyone is a scammer and take every precaution.

There are millions of genuine buyers but nowadays far too many crooks so protect yourself

Cash on collection is best as others have said, I also like to try and weed out chancers by using the eBay message system to make everything crystal clear, say you've been messed around before and make it clear you know what you're doing and ime bidders will disappear once they know you're not a pushover.