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Posted By: rrrowe

David R....

Your not alone, morally and ethically challenged individuals making offers is a dilemma faced by many sellers on ebay daily.

This issue has been discussed several times on this board. Not only is it a form of subtle fraud against eBay, it is against ebay rules to use eBay's "Contact Buyer" email system for the purpose of interfering in an active auction for the reasons you mentioned.

To ever end an auction early is an unwise decision. As many here will attest, your item in all likelihood will go for MUCH higher than any of the offers you receive. The whole point of these unethical buyers contacting you is to get your item cheaper than they know it should sell for in the open marketplace.

I would suggest doing the following:

1) The emails you received should be forwarded to eBay security.

2) Ebay has a feature for responding to questions which will allow you to post your response at the end of your listing. You should use this feature with the following type of response:

Dear <insert their ebay user ID>, I have chosen to let my listing run to completion. Thank you for your offer of <insert offer>.

3) As a follow-up, this board has members that have direct contact with Ebay personnel. You should contact Leon or one of them to have their contacts at eBay look into this specific situation and contact you directly.

4) As soon as possible, consider upgrading your listing to a "Featured Item" so more buyers become aware of your items.

It is amazing the effort some people will go through for these pieces of cardboard, to quote one collector it's "Kill or be Killed". Although most collectors probably would not go to those lengths, many will sacrifice their morals for these little material possessions.....those that do have morals.

Please let us know how you handled this issue and how helpful this board's ebay team was concerning this matter.