Ebay Seller "Re-Entry"

Bill - having been a seller on ebay for many years, all I can say is thank goodness that "consumer-friendly observers" are no longer able to contact my buyers. Let's just say there are malicious people in this world who abuse this in every way possible. I much prefer the current ebay set-up where the seller and/or ebay is contacted is case of question.

Jenny2U,
While I can indeed see issues with allowing buyers to be contacted keep in mind that it would not be via public email but rather ebay's messaging system. It would certainly be possible for ebay to put features in this which would limit, or almost remove, malicious messaging. For example, a buyer might have a way to filter out anyone who did not bid on a lot, or add people to a 'black list'. And of course ebay would be able to limit things like spam with their current filters. But at the very least this should be a buyers decision; perhaps the default setting being not to allow any contact.

But I do agree that doing this would have some drawbacks if not implemented properly.
Don

Wouldn't the biggest issue of the ability to contact the buyers the threat of eliminating competition on an auction via scare tactics or similar ?

There is no question that there could be possible abuse if anyone can contact a buyer, but that's the tradeoff. In some cases it could save the buyer lots of money. Because I was able to contact the buyer of a large collection lot from one of these UK sellers a few years ago, it ended up enabling the buyer to get an $8,000.+ refund through his credit card company. If I would not have been able to do so, he would have been stuck. In fact, he publically thanked me on the old Virtual Stamp Club. I ended up actually meeting him at the APS Summer Seminar a year later, so it was a gratifying experience for both of us. The point is that by not allowing anyone to contact a buyer, ebay has enacted a rule which can result in serious financial harm to buyers. Since ebay also has a rule against Malicious activity on their site, such people who might contact buyers could be weeded out if reported. So as I say, it's a trade off.

In fact, I am aware of three separate transactions involving these same UK sellers which saved those buyers over $20,000. total. And one of them was our own Sinclair, who I think got back $6,000.+ on his transaction. So the ability to contact a buyer can be huge.

I have also noticed some "weird" sales from the mentioned seller. I look at Canadian stamps most of the time. Lately two large queens have been bought and sold basically for the same price plus a couple of bucks. That seller was "tenshillings"

Like mentioned they claim to be in the US. Most US or NA sellers quote Scott numbers but these two guys quote in Stanley Gibbons numbers. I only found it when looking at recently sold items on ebay and they came up side by side with a short time between each sale. It was easy to see that it was exactly the same stamp.

I wonder if they are trying to inflate prices by making them look like they actually sold for these very high numbers.

Great thread, thanks for starting it.

OK, so here we have an item from ogstamps.

The sale has ended, so I would suppose it is "safe" to discuss.

The item is here http://www.ebay.com/itm/United-Stat...p=true&rt=nc

US 1909 Lincoln Memorial private vending coil. Looks like a paste up (scroll down in the listing) Very nice.

What's the problem? Perks are faked?

Why does there have to be a problem with the listing ?