No Such Rule

There exist some confusion regarding ebay rules. You might think it's as easy as just looking it up, but ebay rules do consist both of written text and a body of behavior. This yields confusion, but some cases wishful thinking and betrayed intuition have yielded multiple people convincing each other that there is some rule.

Feel encouraged to post any citation of ebay text, any pink posting, or any story which supports an alternative view on any of these.

1. If a buyer is blocked, that buyer cannot make arrangements to have someone else buy the stuff for the blocked buyer.

I have no idea how ebay would enforce such a thing, even if they wanted to.

Ebay allows sellers to block buyers, either individually by name, or by a list of characteristics such as country registered.

Conversely, there is a rule, If a buyer is blocked on one id, they are not allowed to buy the stuff from some other id.

There is also a rule, A bidder may not bid with the intent of leaving undesired feedback. If you get your wife to buy it for you, make sure she leaves feedback which is based on how the transaction went, not how you feel about being blocked.

2. While asserting issues with a transaction, buyer is not allowed to threaten bad feedback.

While unpleasant, and likely sub-optimal, feedback was from day one a lever given to buyers to motivate sellers into doing the right thing.

Conversely, there is a rule, Buyer may not threaten bad feedback in an attempt to obtain something not included or implied by the listing.

3. Buyer is not allowed to return stuff if the stuff is not in the original condition.

I don't know where this idea came from, but buyer is allowed to use the stuff and return it if it turns out not to be what was described. In most cases, trying to use it as described will alter it in some way.

4. Buyer is not allowed to leave negative stars (a 1 or 2) while leaving positive feedback.

Just nonsense. Most negs are left as negative stars these days. When there was some particular issue with the transaction, such as a shipping gouge, it is perfectly reasonable to report that the transaction was overall successful, while some aspect was significantly annoying.

Conversely, ebay does promise to detect buyers who consistently leave negative stars while leaving positive feedback, when it appears that this is being done with the intent to harm sellers.

5. Buyer cannot leave negative feedback without contacting seller first.

Some are confused (some willingly) by the fact that ebay requires buyer to check three boxes, one of which says "I have contacted seller", before leaving neg.

This is an unfortunate behavior in the feedback process. Ebay's intent was to encourage contacting seller before leaving neg, which is usually a good idea. Let seller fix the problem. But there are some times when it is pretty clear that contacting seller is not going to be a pleasant interpersonal experience, or that there is no specific request which buyer has of seller, although the overall experience seems negative.

Observe that one of the other questions regards whether an appropriate amount of time has passed for delivery. Again, sometimes irrelevant, when seller has announced that they are not shipping the stuff.

6. Seller is not allowed to offer cash in exchange for revision of negative feedback.

Sellers are allowed, even encouraged to address issues which buyer might have had with the transaction. Sometimes the only sensible way to do that is with a cash offer. There does exist an escrow problem however: who goes first. One side has to trust the other, there is no way to enforce the agreement.

Conversely, there is a rule, sellers are not allowed to buy positive feedback, by simply promising cash in exchange for the positive independent of how the transaction has gone or might go. The crucial difference involves seller addressing some issue with the transaction. We once read of a seller who offered a full refund so long as buyer would leave pos with good stars before the item was even shipped. That seller went NARU.