[Archive]

Posted By: tbob

is that eBay has very cleverly initiated a Big Brother technique to spy on buyers wanting to have sellers end auctions early and sell to them directly for a fixed price, thereby avoiding paying eBay final value fees, among other things. You used to be able to contact the seller directly through his email if you had a bid down on an item, now you must go through the eBay in house mail system which is closely watched. They won't stop the frigging cheats, scumbags and liars on eBay but they will make damn sure you don't try to do anything which will cost them a penny in fees. What a joke.
Apparently Trevor sent an email to the seller asking him to sell the card to him for a fixed amount and eBay intercepted it and bounced him from eBay. If you'll notice they now list a stern warning about doing this on the webpage where you can contact the seller, so a guy can't say he wasn't warned. Apparently someone also tipped the seller that he was selling the card for way too little.
As far as emailing a seller to please NOT end an auction early because you want to enter a snipe bid at the end, I did that recently on a card and I'll be darned if the seller weren't Leon, our lovable moderator, I didn't know he was using a particular eBay handle. Of course Leon told me he wouldn't end it early and laughed when I found out he was the seller. I have done this several times lately, asking the seller on a card I wanted particularly bad NOT to end an auction early or to at least let me make a counter-offer if someone made an offer the seller was mulling over and trying to decide whether or not to end an auction early.