Why do some YJA sellers not allow proxy bidders?

I was trying to bid on some artisan-made glass eyes on Y!JA via my usual proxy and got the message that "you cannot bid on items from this seller". After some Google searching I found that it seems to be a fairly common thing for some hobby-item sellers to block proxies in general. Does anyone have any insight into why?

It's definitely frustrating but I'd be slightly less frustrated if I could understand why this happens (i.e. if proxies have a bad reputation with sellers, or don't leave auction feedback, or something).

I had no idea of this. :/

 

I use celga as my deputy, i have a gold account with them, so i can bid any time and price i want, through a yahoo japan auctions account they signed up under my name, ive never had any problems with them

I noticed this in some of my other collecting hobbies. Some Japanese sellers in Yahoo! Japan blacklisted one/some of Noppin's bidding accounts, and maybe other proxies too. I guess some people just don't like the idea of selling their items to proxies for some reason, but I can't really fathom why. I know some proxies like FromJapan have some bidding accounts with names that don't make it too obvious that they are proxies though, to counteract this.

I dont know the specifics but I heard its more common with smaller sellers who need feedback in order to keep selling. Feedback is everything on sites like this, after all. Proxy bidders dont leave any feedback most of the time, so I understand that its frustrating to sell to someone who isn't going to help you in the long run. That's the only of the reasons that make sense to me.

 

EDIT- After thinking about it a little more, I think there's another major reason. I also dont mean to generalise here but one of the major reasons why so many japanese people are reluctant to sell to non-japanese speakers is because of the worry that the non-japanese speaker will misunderstand something, like a description of included items, and then get angry when something isnt included even though it says in the description that it isn't. This happens a lot more than you'd think - not just on Y!A but also on mandarake, and it always makes me facepalm a little. People really need to exercise caution when buying things regardless of the language the listing is written in, and one should never assume things. If a problem with the item is listed in the description and you didnt read the description you're in the wrong, plain and simple, whether you can actually read it or not. If I was selling something with an english description and a non-english speaker demanded a refund because I sold them something as I described and they didnt expect it, I'd be pretty annoyed too.

 

Basically I have heard a few stories about the buyer getting mad and contacting the proxy and getting the proxy to contact the original seller to try to refund the purchase and even attempting to call it 'fraud' when the buyer was the one in the wrong. I definitely dont blame sellers for wanting to reduce the chance of that headache, but theres probably better ways to go about it. Especially cos plenty of people who dont live in Japan who can understand Japanese or otherwise still know exactly what they're getting. (or aren't giant morons that would try to call something fraud just because they didnt bother to read/translate the description)

One obvious reason: Money.

 

On nickle and dime stuff it might not be an issue, since the payoff for the proxy is usually what their base handling cost would be.. The trouble is when you start going at auctions in the 20k yen range when the proxy's are starting to get quite a bit more just for acting as a middle man.

 

Also the method introduced by rinkiya , and also adopted by noppin is the internal user bidding war where, for example a auction on yahoo stumps at 20k yen, but users inside the same bidding service keep going at it within the service, and for arguments sake ends up at 30k yen inside the auction service. Which means the original Yahoo auction seller in theory is left without 10k yen of what someone was willing to pay for it. -- At least this is how I interpreted it, never ended in this kind of situation although a few times at noppin someone had outbid me within the shopping service, and the difference did not at that time end up into the actual auction.

 

Im not 100% sure about how the services handle the difference if something ends up in a internal service bidding duel, rinkya I think rebated some of the handling fee's from the difference if I recall correct, but this loss of profit for the original seller is also something to consider.

 

Granted, for instance Noppin offers buyer protection for the added costs, but try explaining this to the original seller who is still technically left out of some income.

Basically I have heard a few stories about the buyer getting mad and contacting the proxy and getting the proxy to contact the original seller to try to refund the purchase and even attempting to call it 'fraud' when the buyer was the one in the wrong. I definitely dont blame sellers for wanting to reduce the chance of that headache, but theres probably better ways to go about it.

 

Ahh, that makes a lot of sense. I used to have an online shop a long time ago and I know if that something like that had happened to me, even once, I would be immensely wary of continuing to sell abroad. Or to sell at all, really, but I tend to be on the more cautious side of people.

That's such a stupid thing for the buyers to do, though. Is it so hard to accept responsibility for reading a listing carefully, or understanding that machine translators are imperfect? But then I've heard many stories of similar entitlement on the part of American buyers in America, so I guess it is part of human nature >__<

 

I had no idea of this. :/

 

I use celga as my deputy, i have a gold account with them, so i can bid any time and price i want, through a yahoo japan auctions account they signed up under my name, ive never had any problems with them

 

Yeah, the service I was using is Buyee. I will look in to Celga, thanks for mentioning them!

 

Also the method introduced by rinkiya , and also adopted by noppin is the internal user bidding war where, for example a auction on yahoo stumps at 20k yen, but users inside the same bidding service keep going at it within the service, and for arguments sake ends up at 30k yen inside the auction service. Which means the original Yahoo auction seller in theory is left without 10k yen of what someone was willing to pay for it. -- At least this is how I interpreted it, never ended in this kind of situation although a few times at noppin someone had outbid me within the shopping service, and the difference did not at that time end up into the actual auction.

 

...Yeah, I can see why a seller would not like that system at all. It seems a bit...not quite honest to me that they would do that internal bidding system. :/ I don't think Buyee does it that way, since it's the semi-official proxy service for Y!JA now and I figure enough sellers would be upset that the Y!JA company would not want to promote Buyee as they do, but I don't actually know.