Collection Agency to Keep eBay Deadbeats Honest

by Mike Bevel CollectionIndustry.com

eBay sellers jilted out of their promised cash on that vintage Elvis Pressley lamp and shade will soon have a new and powerful weapon in their arsenal to recoup such losses. A service from ReliaBid promises to hook sellers up with a collection agency, Hunter Warfield, Inc.

ReliaBid uses seals ? not the ball balancing kind, but an online ?sticker? ? to identify serious bidders, and to remind others what the repercussions will be for frivolous bidders.

The reprecussions? Well, Hunter Warfield, once engaged by a seller through eBay, will send the non-payer up to 4 letters to remind them of their legal obligation in paying on their winning bid ? even if, after winning, they thought better of the replica Shirley Temple tap shoes. If the bidder still refuses to pay up, the seller can ask Hunter Warfield to report the offense to the major credit bureaus.

It’s a sad day in Mudville when you can’t buy a house because of a shifty bid on a vintage Etch-a-Sketch.

Not only will the system offer a valuable service to the sometimes dicey world of online auction retailing, it?s likely that the service will better legitimize transactions. Which means that the person bidding on your complete collection of Smurf figurines really wants them, Papa Smurf and all.