Crazy eBay rules! (slightly OT)

"Richard Brookman" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@individual.net:

Even if yours was the winning bid, I cannot see that you can be bound to accept an item that had been incorrectly described. That is pretty basic contract law, even if it is an auction. That is one point.

The limitation on withdrawing your bid is a completely different matter and should not be confused with the fact that the item was incorrectly described. That is poiunt number two.

Could it be that you got (as you suggest) an automated response to what "the machine" guessed you'd said?

All has apparently turned out OK in the end -- but if it hadn't, and in your position, I'd have been inclined to walk away. What would you have had to lose? It is the seller who pays Ebay's fees and he is also the one who misrepresented (albeit by genuine mistake) the item. Ebay rules are correct!

Derry

I've only had two issues with ebay. Firstly with a guy who was shill bidding - myself and another bidder reported him. I got no response but he (and his aliases) have been kicked off ebay.

Second was recently with a camera lens found to be faulty. Seller agreed to take it back and reported a 'dispute' to ebay and instantly marked it as 'resolved' - I assume this was a way to recall listing fees.

Sounds like you got a happy ending. Key thing is that ebay's rules cannot override UK contract law - the worst that could have happened was negative feedback. You could then potentially have sued for defamation of course....

so Derry Argue was, like...

My point when I wrote to Ebay.

This is my bone of contention with them.

Yup - all the hallmarks of a "personalised" (Hi Richard!) automated response, yards of crap about how to contact the seller when I had already said I had spoken to him.

A totally undeserved neg would ruin my day, for one. :-)

Not sure I fully agree with you here, but...

Ebay's automated response said that I could not withdraw the bid due to timing reasons (no explanation why this was so) and suggested I (1) contact the seller and try to resolve it between us, then (2) suggest to the seller that he uses second chance offer or (3) the procedure called "mutual agreement not to proceed" (the seller has to initiate this, so you'd need to be on good terms with him). This all seems very clumsy and unsatisfactory, when all it needs is to say that if the description of an item changes significantly during the course of an auction, all previous bids may be cancelled, as they were placed on the basis of a false description. For the life of me I can't see *why* Ebay insist on this rule. If I could see a reason, I would be fine with it, because, as you correctly say, there is nothing to stop me refusing to complete and offering to see them in court.

Luckily, this one ended well. The new roof rack looks bloody great, actually.

so Tim Hobbs was, like...

The guy turned out to be really helpful and nice, both on the phone and in person, so I was happy to slightly alter my plans and go ahead with the purchase. If he'd been an arse over the phone and insisted that he had told me of the change and he expected me to compete, it would have been totally different.

BTW, how did you work out that a seller was shill bidding?

Wonder if his Uncle Albert was the other bidder.

Lee D

This is done to prevent "bid shielding", where two accounts conspire to raise the current price to an abnormally high amount to discourage other bidders, then both withdraw their bids in the last minute and re-bid, winning the auction at an artificially low amount.

I don't believe the seller can add to the auction description in the last 12 hours, just as you can't retract, so you have a perfectly valid reason not to pay because they can't deliver what the auction represents. There's no way eBay is going to get involved in deciding if an item description has changed "significantly". They can't even answer an email intelligently.

Things usually work out better when eBay's not involved.

Ah - I'd heard of bid shielding but didn't know how or why it was done. I can see the reason for the rule now, although I expect eBay won't explain it half as well as you. Thanks.

No, they can't. What the guy did was to message all of his bidders with the changed description after eBay had refused to let him end the auction and relist with a modified description. I'm certain he was a decent guy and did all he could under the circs.

:-)

True, although without eBay I wouldn't have known that a guy up the road (FSVO up) was selling a Genuine Parts roof rack that would go so well with my Disco after a c*ck-up with the listing, to be fair. I'm putting this one in the box marked "serendipity", or happy accident.

It was t'other bidder who spotted it and emailed me. It was apparent (from feedback) that the second-placed bidder had only won a handful of other auctions. All from - guess who?

The big giveaway was that he answered a question from the other bidder in the wrong name! Whoops...

Of course, ebay can see all bid history for all auctions (won or otherwise) and the source IP address of such. So once alerted they can quickly make a judgement and take action.

so Tim Hobbs was, like...

Makes it well worth doing the research and being a bit suspicious - on eBay as in life really.

Cheers

so Richard Brookman was, like...

Final response from eBay (snipped):

"Please understand, if a seller changes his item's description within last 12 hours, you will not be held responsible to honour the bid as it is the error done on the seller's part. "

Apart from the fact that, according to eBay's own rules, a seller CANNOT change his description in the last 12 hours, and the crap English (when you cut-and-paste, you should at least read the final text before you send it) this seems fine. I'm keeping a copy of this mail, just in case, however.

This is nonsensical, meaningless bollocks.

Fixed fee thirty quid silly-sodders letter usually acts to enlighten, awaken and modify such clueless and officious corporate idiocracy.

On or around Sun, 04 Sep 2005 22:27:01 +0100, Tim Hobbs enlightened us thusly:

ISTR in that case, he didn't get much more money anyway - you'd already (with no doubt others) bid the thing up to a reasonable price anyway?

Some times its also useful to see what other items someone is bidding on. If most of there bids are for items from the same seller chances are its the seller bidding up his own items. Can't remember how you do this on EBay properly but replacing USERNAME in the following link (with the obvious!) will show a list of recent items they are bidding on.