I’ve been holding on to my RiD/Armada era Megabolt Megatron for a couple decades now and I decided to let it go.

Two separate times, the auctions ended with a pretty solid selling price, there were multiple bids on the figure and the buyer who won ended up being a 0 feedback nobody who never responded to messages and never paid.

I thought that was weird enough but after letting it sit for a couple months, I put it up again and the same damn thing happened! I’ve sold 100+ TFs on eBay, 100% positive feedback, and never had this problem. Now it’s three times on the same figure?

Any thoughts, theories, strategies for stopping this would be welcome.

 

It's known for having GPS... maybe you've attracted some kind of crusader who's trying to keep anyone from buying it and having it break on them.

Not much help, I know.

 

Is it the same person doing it?

 

ebay seems to be returning to the old wild west days, pre -2000 deadbeat bidders wasteland

Ive noticed a lot of auctions w/outrageous final bids only to be relisted

how much do you want for it?

 

You should have an option to offer the figure to another bidder that made a legitimate bid, right?

 

This seems to happen a LOT with Transformers. It's happened to me dozens of times and I see it with other auctions that end artificially high too.

Not sure if it's bots or what the point is, but it sucks.

 

Block buyers with zero feedback from bidding.

 

Can't you set it so 0 feedback bidders can't bid?

 

It's sheer luck unfortunately. I had the same thing with a Toy Story figure a few years ago - list it again and chances are, it will sell.

eBay is unfortunately becoming more and more unpleasant as a selling platform, what with the legions of bots that roam it these days.

 

You can send second chance offer to any of the underbidders.

That said, I honestly don't know how much longer Ebay will be a viable way to sell collectables. I debate whether it's worth it every time I try.

 

Which version of Megabolt doesn't have GPS? I knew one of them did, but since I never owned it (got out of RID collecting) I have no idea.

 

It's the one in OP's pic. I don't think the grey/red version of the mold had gold plastic.

 

This. A friend of mine has recently been trying to sell some stuff on eBay, but it's been a never ending cycle of fake bidders (that somehow have positive feedback, but when you look at their feedback profile, all the positives are actually negative comments stating that they never pay for items), jacking up the price to crazy levels and then never paying, him blocking those bidders and relisting the item, then somehow attracting a new group of fake bidders that jack up the price/never pay for the relisted items, and so on.

MIKE
engledogg

 

I don't think this is possible. The best feedback score you can limit to is -1.

 

Buy it now with immediate payment required and also allowing best offers is the easiest way to sell on ebay. This negates loads of these never pay and new bidders.

You will always get the realistic market price you want and no risk of undervalue.

 

Not much you can do but block the account. Like people mentioned it happens a lot with transformers either bots/people who don't have money now and want no one else to win it .

Most of the time they use similar account gobot5643, paramountxxxx or tmnt1974, the ones I've has have passwords similar to that, you may just want to keep an eye on your auction and just unbud and block bidders. I had to do it twice as they had 2 accounts but if they get around the block of your previous item thats the only thing I can think of unless they get bored.

 

I've been using Mercari to sell stuff, lately. Simple fee system, easy to use, and you're guaranteed to get your stuff or your money back. (Great for both buyers and sellers.)
eBay sounds like a trainwreck as of late, one I'm glad I wasn't a part of. I'll still buy on there when the seller's legit, but I think I'm done selling on there.

Ah. Thank you.

 

That's happened to me a couple times, most recently with a DOTM Shockwave (annoyingly two other real people bid on it too, but they both cancelled their bids at the last minute). I've heard that often those zero feedback accounts are fake accounts made by other sellers bidding on items other people are selling to reduce their competition. Report the accounts who cancelled on you if you didn't already. I wish you could just block zero-feedback buyers from bidding on your auctions.

 

GPS, are you serious? I have the regular colored version still in box. So I've been tracked for 20 years?

But yeah ebays algorithm might think you are fake bidding yourself to inflate the price. I suggest you do a buy it now open with the option to offer a price. I've had luck selling on Amazon but they take massive fees. You can also try Facebook market place.

 

I haven't sold any on eBay for about a year and a half now. I have a backlog of stuff I want to clear out but seeing all the changes and the horror stories about said changes, I've been leery about using eBay again. I might try to sell some of the lower value items on FB, Twitter, and post them on here.

What I miss is Crave. It was so easy to sell there, prices were fixed, and while there would still be PayPal fees for the seller, instead of Crave charging their fees to the seller, they would charge the buyer and label it as a "Finder's Fee".