I have had 3 false bidders at: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=2189196 ismar - $500 kevydesigns - $700 sam08 - $1,000 What can I do to keep these bidders honest? The reputation system is flawed as they can return negative feedback if I give them negative feedback.
As far as we are concerned, a bid is not valid unless they actually use the bid system. And the high bidder didn't meet your reserve price anyway, so...
ismar used the bidding system and even if the bid doesn't reach my reserve, isn't it up to the seller to decide whether to accept the bid?
The seller deciding if a bid will be accepted or not is done by setting the reserve price. If a bidder doesn't meet your reserve price, they can of course still buy it for their bid price, but they aren't obligated to. Say someone bids on something... they see they didn't even make the reserve price, so they go off and buy another site instead. By bidding and having a reserve price, they essentially offered you a price, you said no and they moved on. You can't come back later and expect them to give you the money after you told them you wouldn't accept it.
Well, the highest bidder bid via PM so he wasn't notified of the reserve. All I can say is that he's not keeping to his word. I also noticed that the reserve can be edited. So I've now edited the reserve price down so all 3 bids are acceptable.
As I mentioned previously, the only valid bids as far as we are concerned are the ones using the bidding system. A bid via PM (or a post in a thread) is not valid to begin with. As far as editing the reserve price, an edit isn't valid after an auction closed (or valid to any existing bids that were already told they didn't meet the reserve price).