How to Ban or Block a Buyer on eBay
eBay is an e-commerce corporation based in America, San Jose, California. The corporation facilitates sales between business-to-consumer and consumer-to-consumer via their website. According to Wikipedia, for 26 years eBay as of 2021, in the market, has been able to connect and grow its operations in other countries increasing its capacity and success. As the number of users increases it is essential to keep adding new features and as time changes and the world evolves, updating new designs and features helps to maintain and attract new clients to the website. Blocking or banning a buyer on eBay is an essential feature as it gives the sellers and buyers control over who can buy or bid on their products. Read on to know more on how to ban or block a buyer on eBay.
Reasons for blocking or banning a buyer on eBay
There are various reasons why you can block or ban buyers on eBay. If you have been using any website to sell or buy products, you might have experienced nagging buyers who waste your time and reduce your chances of getting serious buyers on time. Therefore, eBay created a way that gave the sellers the power to block buyers from selecting their products, although they can still view the products the sellers have posted. However, it is advisable to block someone once you have had a bad experience with them on various encounters or you have a valid reason to. Some of the reasons include:
- If a buyer has not paid for what they purchased on time and has exceeded the period of payment without contacting the seller.
- If a buyer is your competitor and would like to buy from bidding your products.
- If a client backs out of a bid on several occasions.
- If a buyer is abusive or the interactions between the buyer and the seller are not good the seller can block the buyer from messaging, bidding, and buying his products.
- If the buyer attempts to steal, scam, or fraud products, the seller may block him/her.
- Leaving a negative comment without complaining directly to the seller to solve the issue first.
there are other reasons as to why sellers may block buyers. According to eCommerce bytes, sellers have listed countless reasons as to why they will need to block or ban buyers, as much as some might sound so selfish on their end but it makes sense to them to block them anyway while some have a legit reason for the same.
Steps to blocking a buyer on eBay
eBay has made it easy for a seller to block a buyer from bidding or even buying their products for reasons best known to the seller. Here are a couple of simple steps that you as a seller can use to block a buyer;
Step 1
Head to the block buyers or bidders from your listings page. According to eBay, tracing this link might be challenging. It is advised to go to the eBay website to accomplish this step.
Step 2
Type in the exact User ID or email of the eBay buyer that you want to block from purchasing or bidding on your items. (To ban or block more than one user, ensure you use a comma to separate the users you want to add to the list)
Step 3
Simply select submit and voila you’ve blocked that specified eBay member. You can only block a maximum of 5,000 eBay members. Once you’ve blocked or banned a buyer you can only restore them on your list of bidding after three months, so before you click on the block button be sure to have fully made up your mind on blocking the person, and if they request to be unblocked the seller should explain to them that they have to wait until the three months are over to be able to bid or by any products from the seller’s account.
Can a blocked or banned buyer still contact a seller?
Yes, a buyer can still contact a seller through messages or previous transactions they’ve made through them. Although the seller can block a buyer from contacting them through messages by simply going to the buyer requirements page of their eBay accounts and clicking on the page under site and preference, tick on the box that instructs “Don’t allow blocked buyers to contact me” and boom! you’re done, the buyers can not access the “Contact seller button.” Please note if the buyer had previous transactions with the buyer they are allowed to follow up on it despite being on the blocked list.
How to report an eBay buyer
Tired of that one buyer who keeps on nagging you bidding and failing to pay up? Well, it’s time to report them to eBay. How do you do this? Here are several simple steps to guide you;
- Go to My eBay
- Go to your orders
- Click on the leave feedback option
- The last step is clicking on the Report buyer option
When should you report an eBay buyer
The beautiful thing about eBay is that they have rules that guide their members while purchasing or selling different items. You can report an eBay buyer if:
- They ask you to complete their sale purchase outside of eBay.
- They abuse their bid retraction process in any way possible.
- They abuse the eBay Money Back Guarantee or any of the return policies outlined by eBay.
- They break the Feedback extortion policies, (this means you have to read these policies unlike the norm to most people who just agree to all the policies because, well everyone else clicked on them).
Conclusion
There are many other ways of blocking buyers on eBay, which can save you time, money and relieve the stress from troublesome buyers. However, every coin has two sides and as much as sellers are benefiting from giving out these harsh conditions and banning/blocking buyers it might turn back to them by reducing their sales causing more harm than good to their stores. If you feel like some of the blocked buyers add more good than harm to you it is good to let loose a little and reduce some of the restrictions and regulations you had set previously.
