My reputation was recently called into question by a disgruntled bidder, cflowick (prior userID: beckymerrywell). As you can see in my feedback, he/she posted that I was being investigated for shill bidding. NO investigation is taking place and more importantly, I have NEVER bid on my own auctions and I will NEVER bid on my own auctions.
The reason this bidder decided to trash my reputation is because I could not verify his/her identity. The account is registered to a woman but a boy/man had won the auction. When I called this into question, he stated that he was using his mother's account but they had different last names. Why would someone need to use their mother's account when they are able to get their own? Underage user perhaps? This would certainly be a problem since minors are not able to enter into contracts which could come back to bite a seller in the behind. Plus, he wanted to use PayPal so I didn't feel comfortable getting caught in a fraudulent transaction.
I did file a couple of complaints with eBay in this matter but so far, I am not impressed with their handling of the situation. This bidder posted a libelous statement, which they can review themselves, and eBay is going to let it stand unless I can get a court order to remove the feedback. While the thought of going to Texas just for that purpose is tempting, I have a life and in the end, I hope that anyone viewing my auctions and feedback will take cflowick's comment with a grain of salt.
Due to this comment, I will not make any of my auctions private unless they are for big ticket items. However, if any bidder contacts me to let me know that someone has contacted them to offer the same or similar item off ebay or in another auction, I will encourage the bidder to contact eBay and I will make a complaint against them for auction interference.
I am sorry for the novel but I felt I had to tell my side of the story.
If you have any questions or comments whatsoever, please e-mail me.
Happy eBaying!!!
To protect bidder privacy, when the price or highest bid on an item reaches or exceeds a certain level, User IDs will be displayed as anonymous names. For auction items, a bold price means at least one bid has been received.
Note: Anonymous names may appear more than once and may represent different bidders.