How to deal with Competitors?

[GreenBean]

post# 22 Somewhere, dial-up is mentioned. Problems solved.

[dunjapunja]

here in the netherlands, we have this 3g umts prepaid cards for only 7 dollars

and cost about 25 cent for every MB

could be very handy for these kind of activity

[onceuponatime]

"so if you did this, you would need to create paypal accounts as well to pay for items or accept payments?"

Yes, that is my impression and why I consider the "satisfaction" of revenge a bit costly as well as potentially compromising my integrity in being able to function on Ebay without their (rogue competitors) obsessive interference. It's a tough decision for me.

[imjustme]

I do it a lot to my competitors. Most of my competitors list with BIN, so I buy the item, leave them negative feedback 7 days later. If I had to do immediate payment, I just do a PayPal dispute on top. I took down a 12000+ feedback PowerSeller in less than 3 weeks like that. He lost his PowerSeller status, fell below 98% for the last 30 days and finally stopped listing. It's so easy to ruin your competition on eBay. It's beautiful.

[ONE]

Originally Posted by inverser

You do realize that you said something completely different a few posts up, right?

You said you were going research the victims' buying habits and then clone the victims' eBay account to outbid them in auctions that they themselves are trying to win. You do understand that this is completely ridiculous, right?

And that's why I replied to you.

Regardless, now it seems you get it.

Cheers.

Well my reply originally talked about 2 topics and my second post in which you just replied to elaborated more on the second part which was really just an idea we have had.

If you think its "ridiculous" that's understandable if your not being attacked but when your in the position of the OP which I am too... doing whatever it takes can make something ridiculous become more of a clear viable option if ebay won't do their part.

[dunjapunja]

1 question about the 12 pp accounts, do you have 12 bankaccounts? or 3 emails linked to 4 paypal accounts?

and is it allowed to register multiple ebay-accounts to 1 paypal "email"

Originally Posted by ONE

Im in a similar boat with a certain product right now too.
Oh the sellers on ebay are just little Bxxches when it comes to someone else cashing in on their niche.

What I am about to write really depends on what you are selling and a lot of other factors. What we are working on right now for 1 particular item is:

Creating 12 PP accounts. Then open 3 ebay accounts to each PP account. You will only sell on each account for 2-4 weeks tops. Don't turn them into sellers accounts until you are ready to sell. Then after 3 months of opening the PP accounts make another 1 new ebay account per PP account now you have 48 ebay accounts and 12 PP accounts. We have had up to 7 ebay accounts getting funneled into a pp account without issue but they were not opened all on the same day FYI and only 1-2 of those screen names were selling that month.

Put the accounts in rotation to where they chase you if they want but its going to start consuming their time chasing a moving target as opposed to a big bullseye 4500 FB seller.

If you are a no reserve type of product or seller. What we do is run 3 day auctions. Start them on Monday night your time. Then start another batch on Friday night so they end on Monday night. We have noticed a lot of people are on during the week at work or home versus on weekends so we never end auctions on the weekends or fridays. If you do this right you can actually make it to where you can run 2 to maybe 3 batches of auctions before the first person even gets their package to leave feedback. Cause when our monday auctions end on Thursday night we print the label Friday through paypal usps which automatically emails the customer a tracking number but we don't actually mail it until Monday night when our other batch of Friday to Monday auctions end.

I know its a lot of work...however IF you do this right you can avoid 2 things on top of not caring about feedback as much. First you will never give PP a VCC and just give them a bank account to get your money. The second is it helps avoid account lock ups. It will keep you under $500 withdraw a month per PP yes but when (IF) their bots lock your account up and you have to make a call...their arguing point of your a high risk will be something to laugh at if you shipped your goods.

Now after those screen names you sold on for say 2-4 weeks are warm...let them set for 60- 90 days or so and change their ebay id screen name. Let it set for another 30 days so the changed user ID icon disappears. Then boom sell on that account for another 2-4 weeks again as long as it has no NEGS.

Photos are so important! We have someone who works for us who takes photos of the product and just by changing the background to say a desk, then hard wood floors then tile you can actually take 1 picture then make it look like 3 completely different photos. You have to be good with Photo shop though. You can go to google and just do a search through their images and find backgrounds to place your product on that look real like someones counter or desk.

Now the accounts that get negatives...are not useless especially if you suspect the competition is the one who did it. Take the accounts and buy something from the competitor who you suspect may have left you a neg. Pay for the item then as soon as it arrives neg them right back. Never use that ebay account again for these products but you will have an account now you can set and let age for future use.

We use Netzero Dial up with the turbo booster and its works great....ebay request automatic phone calls on new accounts but after about 5 feedback they stop. Plus you can do BIN after 5 feedback instead of 10.

Stay organized....you can get away with skipping the changing ebay user id name and just let that account set idle for another 6 months to a year then fire it back up for another 2-4 weeks.

[apconcen]

would love an answer to that 1 too ?

Originally Posted by dunjapunja

1 question about the 12 pp accounts, do you have 12 bankaccounts? or 3 emails linked to 4 paypal accounts?

and is it allowed to register multiple ebay-accounts to 1 paypal "email"

[oompaloompa]

^^^ I dont know about the poster, but yes, you can do it both ways, you can have 3ebays to one paypal account

[Lyda]

It is one thing to resort to such practices in self defense, but it is completely another when the sole purpose and intent is to go out there on a mission to eliminate competition. It is greedy, selfish and unethical. I've read countless stories of people who lost their accounts to such "Ebay predators" and could not put the food on the table for their children any more.. They were not making "millions" and had nothing to fall back onto. They simply had business to help them make ends meet and worked hard at it.

Obviously Ebay can't do anything about it and neither can I. But these are the evils (among other things) that will be responsible for Ebay downfall if and when it happens.

[Hercules]

Thats why you have to diversify all over the net. It's hard work but it pays off.

[dunjapunja]

don't eliminate competitors, maybe those people are also on this forum

[imjustme]

It's a tough world and survival of the strongest. I've never seen anyone making serious money without hurting someone else's business.

[oompaloompa]

Lyda^ , you are so right. These people are nasty....

I will be honest, I am never sure if we are advising the predator or prey on these threads, as they can be used either way........

Some people dont have a conscience, mine bugs me all the time, wish it would take a vacation!

[inverser]

Originally Posted by ONE

Well my reply originally talked about 2 topics and my second post in which you just replied to elaborated more on the second part which was really just an idea we have had.

If you think its "ridiculous" that's understandable if your not being attacked but when your in the position of the OP which I am too... doing whatever it takes can make something ridiculous become more of a clear viable option if ebay won't do their part.

Sorry if I came across as harsh in that post. It wasn't my intent to make fun or ridicule.

My point was simply that taking enormous amount of time and resources to outbid your victims on items that they are trying to win is a waste of time and of no consequence. Not to mention the fact that it's the wrong way of shill bidding.

You're better off cloning an eBay account with your victims information and bidding on their auction listing items.

Something else you may want to consider is using multiple accounts to report your victim. eBay may find it easier to ignore one report of suspicious activity, but imagine if eBay received reports from multiple accounts that a particular seller is acting suspiciously - they are much more likely to take action!

You could think of it this way. AOL was a big deal in the mid-90s. Many of us on AOL that figured out how the TOS system worked would band together, or use multiple phished accounts, to report other AOL members (our online enemies) and have their accounts terminated this way. It was ruthless and devious but it was oh so sweet to terminate people from AOL.

Best of luck.

[Lyda]

Originally Posted by imjustme

It's a tough world and survival of the strongest. I've never seen anyone making serious money without hurting someone else's business.

I have, and am fortunate enough to know and distinguish both - most of the time.

[Lyda]

Originally Posted by oompaloompa

Lyda^ , you are so right. These people are nasty....

I will be honest, I am never sure if we are advising the predator or prey on these threads, as they can be used either way........

Some people dont have a conscience, mine bugs me all the time, wish it would take a vacation!

Oompa, we may advising both, but its hard to tell sometimes who is who- specially if they are not really active on the forum. I'd say that after a while most can't hide who they really are. To those who can...Oh well, they are shooting themselves in the foot anyway. I am firm believer that "what goes around, comes around...." Eventually!
Still, I have little more respect for those with their cards open on the table...

[inverser]

The moral and ethical implications that come with attacking your competition is something each and every person should strongly consider before employing any aforementioned tactics. Attacking your competitors is surely asking for more attacks on yourself. You'll quickly discover that you are spending more time attacking your enemies than working on your business and taking care of your family and that's just not right.

With regards to Karma, I can't say I really believe in it, per se. Why? Because clearly bad things happen to good people all the time. How could that be if Karmic law was real? But I do believe that we, all of us, have ups and downs in our lives no matter who we are or where we're from, and in that sense - what goes around, comes around.

Although I'm not religious, I usually try to follow the Golden Rule as best I can, even in business matters. I've taken losses just to make things right with clients and I can't even count the number of times that people have messed up and went out of their way to make things right for me. I wouldn't feel right not reciprocating in good faith.

Just last week one of my private shippers lost two items off his truck on the interstate, which is pretty much the mortal sin in truck driving. He could've said, "Screw you, man!" but instead, he replaced my items out of his own pocket and went on another run, on top of the first run, to deliver the lost items to the customer. When I thanked him for making things right, he said "I am a man of my word."

The world would truly be a better place if more people were like this guy.

Real talk.

[Lyda]

I don't have this kind of problems myself, but I've read it happens too often. I don't depend on ebay and auction selling as my main income, so I look at this from different perspective -I think.
Heck, I don't even know how would I react if competitor takes my auctions down...On other hand those few that were indeed taken down over all these years and for no valid reason, might have been from malicious competition making up something and reporting to Ebay, But how do I know? Ebay never tells you the reason or gives the name of the person who reported...
I dealt with few difficult people, but I always made them happy in the end and no negative feedbacks.

[onceuponatime]

Something else you may want to consider is using multiple accounts to report your victim. eBay may find it easier to ignore one report of suspicious activity, but imagine if eBay received reports from multiple accounts that a particular seller is acting suspiciously - they are much more likely to take action!

You could think of it this way. AOL was a big deal in the mid-90s. Many of us on AOL that figured out how the TOS system worked would band together, or use multiple phished accounts, to report other AOL members (our online enemies) and have their accounts terminated this way. It was ruthless and devious but it was oh so sweet to terminate people from AOL.

For the 5 years that I was on ebay as a powerseller. These competitors banded together to complain to Ebay with fatuous claims (photo doctoring, counterfeits, item not as described etc). You can BET YOUR BOTTOM dollar that ebay counts the number of complaints, valid or not, and takes your auctions down and THEN investigates.

The rogues knew this (just like on AOL in the old days) and got their horde together once ever few months or so and did this to me.

[xfishx]

Originally Posted by ONE

Hope it helps....I could have put more details in there but trying not to go overboard. I know exactly how you feel...I take it personally though when these other sellers start pulling stunts....its like them touching the food on my plate and they don't even know me like that.

Another thing we are getting ready to experiment with is getting sellers kicked off of ebay via shill bidding. If you have ever noticed even big sellers do a little buying on ebay....whether it be shipping labels, jewelry for their wife or whatever. Well ebay has a search function where you can see everything that ebay user has bid on and more importantly WHAT THEY ARE CURRENTLY BIDDING ON. This takes time and can not always work but we have all our competitions contact information registered with ebay and paypal....all you have to do is buy something from them and BOOM you got their address, phone number and email.

Well we are going to make some buyers accounts via dial-up with the same exact information as our competitors except email of course and slight variation of phone number but still keeping the phone number within their area code used on ebay. We have been tracking some of our competitors bidding habbits and are going to start bidding on the auctions that they are bidding on and winning them. This won't work on the BIN style auctions only on the bidding format style.

So not only will we be registered on ebay as a buyer but we will look exactly like the sellers second account who was trying to take us down. So we win the auction...don't pay and then get reported to ebay....and hoping it will trigger ebay's system eventually and do a take down or limit their account to where they have no idea why they got a shill bidding warning thus making them a little leary of reporting our auctions to begin with.

I don't have links on how to find what a ebayer is bidding on but it can be found on their website you just have to really dig!

If I get this to work I will for sure make a post about it....I think it will do some damage....if not I will just keep dumping negs on the competition like they have done to me in the past.

Dude YOU!.....ARE BAD ASS!! You F'n Rock!
LOL!
Please keep us posted when you take some one down.
ROFL! LOL....I am Going to go grab some Popcorn when i read your post about taking Other sellers out!
Keep up the Great Work And Please Have No mercy on any of them it's the American thing to do.