Best Offer from Zero Feedback Buyer

[bingbong]

I received an offer on some autographed liner notes from a CD. I listed them at $350. The singer who signed them passed away early in the band’s career, so his autograph though not precisely rare is in limited supply.

The buyer offered me $250 and I immediately noticed it was someone with zero feedback, member since 2018. I feel hesitant to accept for some reason. I think the offer amount is ok, but I’m worried about getting a return and a fake autograph sent back. If something like that did happen, what recourse would I have?

I was hoping folks could give me their thoughts on accepting offers from zero feedback buyers.

Thanks.

[Jay]

We sell items to sellers with zero feedback all the time. People are looking for something specific, find it on eBay, and create an account just to buy it. We’re happy eBay is attracting new customers.

If someone was going to scam you, it could be from any buyer regardless of their feedback. If the item you’re selling is that precious, maybe you may want to sell through another source that deals specifically with autographs that you may feel safer with.

[bcfol440]

I have had more problems with buyers WITH feedback – some with thousands.
Due to the holiday season, we will see lots of 0 Feedback folks.
I sometimes go to see what Feedback THEY have left for other sellers before I accept an offer.

[MDC Galleries & Fine Art]

Yep I agree. It seems those with high feedback are buying on Ebay as a source for reselling, stocking their booths or stores and seem to be the ones we also have that try to create a scene after the fact to see if we are a “scared seller and easily intimidated” and can scare us out of our own fear into giving them a partial refund.

We don’t do partial very much at all. You don’t like it, we want everybody to be the happiest buyer we have ever had, so just send it back. This is how you request a return, do it and we will give you a free return label. Almost every person that tries this now, we never hear from again.

Some comments we get after that is never mind I’ll keep it, too much trouble to re-pack and re-ship to return. what ever, we don’t care. Like it and love it and keep it, or if unhappy, don’t like, or what ever agagin, we don’t care, just send it back, do it this way and here’s your free return label. So some send back some don’t, again just a cost or doing business and one of our standard operating protocols. It has served us well.

And most of the thanks for developing SOP’s is Jay’s calm approach to doing daily business. Just adopt a ” It is what it is approach” and you will be just fine.

Mike at MDCGFA in Atl

[MDC Galleries & Fine Art]

Yep as Jay says.

But staed a little differently:

I once asked here on SL about a pile of clothes our daughter gave us to sell, but they were all size 2 adults. When I asked if they were really worth selling, Linda Sheilds replied, everybody is a size 2 at some point in their life. That coupled with an old “Jay-ism” “Everbody, has to start somewhere”. We too once had zero feedback the first week we signed up”. Well if Ebay has thousands of people signing up per day, then all of them have zero feedback.

If every one of those thousands of daily new comers to Ebay were to buy a one dollar item from you, in their first 30 days, you would have thousands of dollars of sales in that month. You certainly wouldn’t say no to all those sales by canceling them. If this person you speak of had paid full price and you heard, double cha’ chings, bought and then paid for, you would not cancel the sale just because they had zero feedback.

You even had zero feedback the first week you signed up for Ebay.

Now about getting a return and the item being substituted out for a fake or a lesser quality item, especially in stamps, coins, autographs, while it can and does happen, as Jay has said many times, it is a very small percentage, and Ebay has done much better than decades ago to curb this sort of thing. But a trick we use, is on higher priced, unique items we always ask for a return of any and every item, even if we do pay for the return postage. We tell the buyer we need to inspect the item BEFORE we will issue a refund. And inform them we have ceratin hidden chareteristics on the item that we need to see to verify and then we will issue the return.

And we do. Sometimes on metal objects I use a small awl to scratch a very small dot or two dots hidden in the scroll work. Other times on stamps or sports cards, since I can grade cards, we shoot several additional photos that we never post in the listing that shows a frayed edge, the centering of the image or we shoot through a magnifying glass and get a few extreme close ups of a specific detail, a serial number or even a flaw on the item. Then when something comes back we look at those photos to determine if the return is the exact item. But we only go to these lengths on items over $100 or more.

Just a thought to help in this case and also going forward.

Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine art in Atlanta

[bingbong]

Thank you, everybody. This was all extremely helpful. Thanks to you, Mike–I’m definitely going to make sure I capture some images to guarantee I can compare in the case of a return.

Cheers!

[MDC Galleries & Fine Art]

Good deal and it may help if you have to prove something to an Ebay rep. Show the before and after. The photos also have time-dates to them and it can be noticed when the photos were taken. We just keep those photos in the folders we use to store listing photos just in case.

[Author]

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