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How to deal with Competitors?
 

I have one new stealth account up and another almost ready to go. (Questions on another thread). Yet, I am most concerned about a group of competitors who enmasse complain to ebay about me when they detect my items being sold. They are jealous of the types of photos that I take which they claim are "doctored" which they are not. I had over 4,500 POSITIVE feedbacks with rave statements, (less than 10 negative( yet, they complained so much with the most ludicrous accusations, buying to leave negative feedback, return the item, accusing me of being on the "grassy knoll" that I kept getting suspended and questioned with a final coup de grace by a scammer from Singapore who ripped me off to the tune of almost $2000 and I got a suspension for "non performance". I made boo's with using friends accounts and not knowing anything about IP's and cookies etc which got me suspended from those accounts. Now that I have a stealth account I'm leery about selling what I really WANT and need to sell in fear of them progressing a campaign once more. I have a choice...
1. dumb down my photos and be just another in the horde of sellers selling this item.
2. Give no detailed description that I usually give and become another one of the horde
3. Or not sell the item which is my main source of income which I desperately need.



Has anyone had similar experiences, and if so, what did you do to stop the harangue and harassment.

I don't want to lose my stealth accounts and don't want them to chase me away from selling a LEGITIMATE item because I'm not part of their horde.

They post on a huge message board and recruit the horde mentality followers to do their dirty work.

Now that I'm up and selling again (5 days and counting), I don't know what to do.

as you say its either or

If it were me I would do what it took to keep account, easiest route, so change listings and become anon, if they wouldnt let it rest and still carried on I would take them down, as I would have nothing to lose and time on my hands

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.

Really? Is this a new change!!!? :eek: :clap:

WOW One, you are smart. I'm going to print out what you wrote and spend the next few weeks doing what you suggested. These rogues have resorted to every method possible to harm me, including saying the insured package was EMPTY upon arrival, and writing to ebay members who have left me feedback (all positive) urging them to return the item or start a chargeback. Sending the proof to ebay did NOTHING.

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:typing:!

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.

ONE,

When you win from a seller, you only get their name, city, state, zip, and phone. You cannot get their street address so you can't impersonate them. Or, if you can get it somehow, then how do you get it?

And now your plan assumes the sellers bid a lot from the same account they sell on. A lot of sellers don't. But question is, why is just making competiting bids with their buyer accounts using the same info going to trigger it rather than making bidder accounts in their info and bidding on their own items?

Check out the shipping label on the item you bought plus you can call the shipping company sometimes and they will give the shippers address.

Making an account with matching info and then bidding on the sellers items is a way to reveal the ebayer is under attack and they have nothing to do with it...especially if they are a powerseller and call ebay after they invoice out a screen name to a buyer with all their personal info....its already been done.

This won't work either where buy it now auctions come into play cause its not considered bidding to increase the sale price. Again its not something I said works just something we are going to be giving a try.

Shill bidding doesn't work that way. You have to bid on their items. Not the items they are trying to win. You want to make it appear as if they are bidding on their own auctions listings to increase the bid amount. Do it incrementally and when you become the highest bidder immediately withdraw your last bid so you won't win the item. Use the same account to do this and do it on all of their auction listings. Obviously this can't be done on BIN listings.

Also, get the clone account seller-ready, and start listing VERO items. :)

BTW, don't rely on eBay to catch them. Have a separate account with bids in the item you are shill bidding on and report the listing to eBay suggesting that you suspect this seller is acting suspiciously.

One and Inverser,

Thank you for doing such of fine job of explaining. I had been trying to draft up a similar answer, and just couldn't get it right. Between the two of you, you hit a couple of points that had not occurred to me, as well.

Good stuff.

No problem at all! I enjoy sharing what little I know. But I think Jonas deserves some credit here as well. He was spot on. :)

You're right. His post was so skinny I went right over it. Gave it a thumb.

You have ALL given me great insight into how this process works. You are all to be commended for being GOOD GUYS/GALS. Now, I have to have a big conversation with my conscience and convince myself that resorting to their level (to even the playing field) does not make me like them. Unfortunately, my OWN needs will have to prevail for there is no way that I can sell on Ebay successfully no matter how many accounts that I have if these harassers are not "otherwise" distracted...i.e., worrying about THEIR OWN accounts instead of my auctions.

Thank you all.

Yes when most people think of shill bidding it does not sound like bidding on an item from a seperate seller together would be considered shill bidding but it is. Actually it would really look like the owner of that item was involved but they would not be. This makes it look like you "may" know something about the item others don't if 2 ID's with matching address and name bid on the same item.

This is ebay's definition:

Shill bidding is bidding that artificially increases an item’s price or desirability. It’s also bidding by the people the seller knows—including family members, roommates, or employee—who could have certain information about the item that other members aren’t aware of. To make sure no one gets an unfair advantage, we don’t allow shill bidding on eBay.

To go a step further you could create a second account with no matching information have it put bids on the item....and make that account be the one who reports everything to ebay. For example the non associated account says I feel like there was shill bidding going on. Its a lot of work but if the competitor is that much of a thorn then it would be worth it.

ebay has seen attacks on powersellers before so really I think if you combined what you suggested a more traditional and common type of shill bidding and what I wrote it really could take down a powerseller....

If you could at least get them restricted which you won't be able to see on the outside but could tell by all listings ended at once. You could take another step and open up a third account in this ordeal with their information such as name, address and so on and start bidding on ebay again or selling vero like you mentioned. That will make another mark against them as ebay does not want you to create or use any of your accounts while restricted or suspended.

"ebay has seen attacks on powersellers before so really I think if you combined what you suggested a more traditional and common type of shill bidding and what I wrote it really could take down a powerseller...."

I was a 5 year powerseller on ebay with over 4,500 positive feedback and less than 10 negatives. What my competitors did was band together, start over 100 new names (not stealth I'm sure, but hidden IP's I'm sure) with 0 feedbacks who bid rediculous low amounts ($3, $5, $9 etc on items worth over $100 etc) over and over and over again. Then, under their real(?) Ebay names they enmasse complained to ebay about shill bidding, even accusing my steady buyers of shill bidding which chased some away because of the "investigations". Ebay is stupid, but not that stupid--------- BUT................. if you knew how much grief it caused me with Ebay's incessant phone calls and one or two take downs of my auctions (thanks to their 8th grade Trust and Safety clerks who have no common sense) you'd realize that it's only an annoyance at best to bid on competitors auctions without intent of winning. Some of the rogues actually WON a few auctions, never paid but got access to my feedback with negatives. Some actually accepted delivery of the item and then filed a paypal "not as described" (ludicrous) complaint and sent back an EMPTY box or envelope. Paypal considered it a "return" no matter what I said because of the online tracking of the empty box and I was out of luck.

The only way to get someone taken down in my opinion (especially a power seller) is to STEALTH a new account in their names with any information that you might have about them, then sell items that are high risk and outpriced. Once the new account of "theirs" is taken down, you can rest assured that there will be an investigtion into their standard ebay account. Of course, your other stealth names will have to complain to ebay that the original account is selling counterfeit items etc as well.

Most of the stuff done will just be an annoyance or distracting to them, but, isn't that the goal? Distract them (maybe get lucky and get them suspended) so that they don't bother YOUR accounts? It would take a campaign of many stealth names or people (in their case they had the advantage of horde mentality followers) to get this done...but they did it to me....you can do it to them. What I need to do is just recall what they did to me and give them a dose of their own arsenic spiced with "cool" revenge.

if you gotta do it, you gotta do it - an eye for an eye - what goes around comes around right

just make sure you do it with a smile ;)

<smiling>, I'm not sure I believe in an eye for an eye, but I do believe in PAYBACK to those that have harmed me just because they could. :-)

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.

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

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

Yes, if you were to reciprocate by bidding on their items to win, leave negative feedback, return for ludicrous reasons etc, you'd have to have a full stealth account and a paypal account. It's costly when you think of payback which is why I'm contemplating if it's worth it.

don't you need 48 different ip addresses?