Blocked by seller - how to tell

Hi yibada
eBay will give this warning when you attempt to bid, but as AS does not submit a bid until the stated time, it is too late.

If there is a US-only clause in the description, surely there is no point in bidding (or sniping) on the item? Or if there is any doubt, ask the seller if they would be prepared to sell it to you if you bid?

Or, have I missed something obvious there?

Thanks so much for your quick reply Mike. No you didn't miss something obvious, I just didn't post the whole story. I thought my essay was long enough already

I use a US mail forwarding service that accepts mail/packages etc and then bulks them up and forwards onto me in Australia. Gets around being unable to purchase things on EBay (or US stores) that will only be shipped within the USA.

I give a US address for my purchases and the seller doesn't realise I'm not based in the US.

The "blocked by seller" thing is just frustrating because I don't know until I get the snipe rejection that the seller has blocked non-US bidders. Not AS's fault, just frustrating for me.

I think I might have to attempt to place a manual bid on Ebay for each item before I set up the snipe, and then maybe I can get any warning messages first.

Thanks again for your reply. Much appreciated.

If you uses a US address, why are you being blocked may I ask?

Shirl, I think it's because my Ebay user ID is actually registered with Ebay Australia not Ebay USA.

I'm being blocked when AS tries to submit my bid, so it must be in the seller's auction set up. Before I started using AS, I noticed many sellers say they ship only to the US, but I had no trouble bidding. Other seller's auctions gave me a warning message when I submitted a bid saying that the "seller may not ship to your location" and I could then override the message and still bid. Some other sellers obviously blocked non-US members and EBay wouldn't let me bid at all.

Here are the ways a seller can block a bidder:
http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?BuyerBlockPreferences

It’s kind of a bummer that ebay doesn’t post a warning to a blocked bidder when the auction page is displayed and the bidder is signed-in. It would seem that blocking bidders would have an impact on buyers that bid on the last day or two of an auction, as the blocked bidder might not have enough time to get an exemption from the seller – but maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps it would be too much overhead to check each time the auction page is displayed to see if a bidder is blocked.

How about creating a new eBay account in the US version of eBay, using the same drop service address? This was your account is in no way associated with a foreign address?

Rick, yes it would be nice if Ebay would let a potential buyer know. Surely they should be able to display "blanket" blocked bidders, such as all non-US etc.

Chatter - I like your thinking, might try that. Originally I had a US account but when they started Ebay Australia we were all automatically moved across. I know I can't have a US Paypal account, will check if the same applies to Ebay.

Thanks everyone for all your suggestions/advice, greatly appreeciated.