Won't bid if seller has set postage restrictions

[hotblack]

I've missed out on an item today because Gixen won't place a bid on an item where there are postage restrictions, like "UK Only" and I am in Spain. For this particular item the seller had told me yesterday that the two bids that had been placed were from non UK buyers and he had agreed through the message system to post abroad. I've had this situation many times but if Gixen won't bid for me, that means it's no good for about half the stuff I bid on. Is there a way to bypass this restriction or to just simply remove it altogether? It's not helping anyone (only an idiot bids on an item that is UK only when they live abroad and hasn't cleared it with the seller) and only restricts what we can bid on.
Thoughts?

[Cupid]

This is, and always has been, an Ebay restriction not a Gixen one. It is not enough for a seller to agree 'through the message system to post abroad', they also need to specifically allow you to bid and/or remove the restriction entirely from their auction.

If the seller sets a restriction so you can't bid there isn't any way that a third party like Gixen can override it, because it's Ebay that want the restriction upheld and if any efforts were made by Gixen it would, most likely, cause Ebay to block the Gixen service entirely, and no-one wants that, do they ?

I think the only way you will be able to get around such a restriction is to trick Ebay (and by implication Gixen too, since it just passes on your bidding information) into thinking that you are bidding from somewhere that Ebay does allow people to bid from... So you'd probably have to investigate using a hosted VPN service, and, unfortunately, I don't imagine those are available for free.

You would probably also need to set up a new Ebay id too, with an address associated with it in the country you wish to bid from, I imagine you already have a physical address you can use if your business already requires you to ship via a postal forwarding service ?

Please also see this thread for an earlier related conversation.
_________________
Mark

[Hotblack]

My apologies, this rings a bell and I think I know what I did. It's been a while since I bought anything from the UK that didn't include postage abroad and I have a distant memory of changing my Primary Postal Address to my current address in Spain rather than leaving it as my UK one.

I have now changed it back so I sholuldn't have this problem again. I'm still perfectly happy with Gixen and it's worked perfectly for me for what must be about 10 years. I've finally signed up for the 2 year mirror service earlier today to add my support for this site.

Thanks for the reply, I'll check out the other thread when I have time but you've put me straight so I may not.
Thanks

[Hotblack]

I did read it, interesting, I haven't suffered from the problem the OP was having.

Any reason why we can't edit a post rather than creating a new one? Not a biggy but most forums I frequent give you the option to edit posts, at least for a while anyway.

[Gixen]

[Cupid]

You can't edit posts because the forum is open to everyone to post without having to register... This is deliberate so that anyone can use it even if they haven't used the service yet.

Good luck with your snipes, please let us know how you get on.
_________________
Mark