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People get carried away in Ebay Land. I was watching a piece of LC Smith memorabilia, a nice old vase, sold for $3250!

Joined: 05 Feb 2008 Posts: 184 Location: Dover-Foxcroft, ME

Yeah, all you need is two fools to make an auction.

Here in ME, we substitute another word for fools (starts with an "a").

Sam

Don't be misled by the overbids on Ebay. The shills are at work often enough. You just might see the same or a very similar article up for bid again by the same vender a short time later. Shills are common on the site and will drive the price up. If a real bidder is duped into an unfairly high overbid, a consumation of the sale is commonly pressed by the vender through Ebay administration. Any disputes are settled via arbitration through Ebay for a fee, and are usually in the vender's favor.

If a dupe is not suckered in, the vender just quietly relists the item and tries again. Listing fees are supposed to stop this kind of shenanigans, but don't in most cases. Ebay makes the most money off venders and will almost always rule in their favor regarding a dispute. So its policies tend to encourage unfair seller tactics.

Ebay is also plagued with pranksters playing silly games like placing false bids just to be a pain in the butt. Kids do this quite a bit. Then there is spite bidding by nutballs or folks with a few under their belts who would rather overpay or falsely bid than see someone else get a decent price. I've seen quite a bit of chicanery and foolishness on Ebay. Buyer beware is always the best policy here. If the bids become unrealistic, stop bidding.

One more tip. Always pay with a credit card and never with cash or a prepaid check. If the vender specifies a cash only sale, don't bid. If it's not spelled out in the listing, ask. If no answer comes back, forget the item. you are being set up.

If you pay with a card and your item is not as discribed, return it and demand a refund. If it is not forthcoming, you have recourse. It's the same for items that never show up. You can dispute the charges through your card' fraud protection division. I've had to do this a couple of times. I've always been reimbursed.

I once had a Pennsylvania sporting goods vender in the habit of baiting and switching list a pair of custom grade Browning European hard gun cases for a grossly cheap closeout price on a buy it now deal. I bought them on the spot and sent him my card info. The cases did not show up as agreed. I called him, and he tried to manuver me by some fast talking bait and switch BS into a higher price. He claimed the model numbers he listed were in error. Of course, he offered me the right cases at a considerably higher price and assumed I had agreed verbally to his malarchy. What I uttered to him was "uh huh." He was wrong in assuming that I was agreeing with him. He read into my vague response what he wanted to. I had no obligation to set him straight here either. He made an unauthorized additional charge to my card and shipped both cases.

In a situation like this, undocumented and/or assumed verbal agreements after the fact are worthless. A documented contract had already been made. The listed model numbers, asking price, and pictures of the cases told the truth. I had the original sales agreement documented as well. His unauthorized and assumed adjustment to the sales price was disputed through both Ebay and my card. Ebay was hopeless. My card's consumer protection dept saw to it the charges were put right. I got the cases at the original agreed price. The vender was one very surprised and pissed off cowboy. Too bad for him. He even tried to recharge my card again. He got slapped for that one and lost the right post charges through that card's bank. Some folks are slow learners as well a dishonest.

Joined: 23 Dec 2006 Posts: 22

Joined: 15 Oct 2004 Posts: 787 Location: Indiana

I learned a long time ago at farm equipment, livestock and real estate auctions that the only way to attend an auction that makes sense (as a bidder anyway) is to make a hardheaded decision beforehand as to what the item is worth to you or what YOU can afford to pay...and when the bid exceeds that amount, get up and walk away.
I can remember a very interesting discussion in Farm Management class at Purdue in the fall of 1973 about the runner-up bidder really being the person who pays what an item is "worth"---and the
"winner" having to exceed an item's value in order to get the final bid...we never really settled that one from a philosophical standpoint....in any event, people who can't check their emotional impulses at the door can easily overpay at an auction.

A story I've heard through the grapevine about a successful auction house in a specialized field, is that whenever the top bidder has reneged, it is rare that the runner-up bidder will agree to buy the item. I suppose once out of the heat of a bidding war, good sense finally prevails.
Gil