Dodgy eBay Seller? Discuss

I’m honestly surprised they let the seller get away with it. This is a buyer oriented platform. I guess they let it go because the sellers feedback rating is screwed up a bit.

You know I love eBay

Although I've been quite lucky over the 25 years that I've been on eBay, if this had happened to me, I would have blackened this seller's name from one end of the internet to the other.

I think the seller should have taken it on the chin, or have been penalised enough that it stung. We all make mistakes and it hurts but you have to own them. I sold an semi expensive camera a while back that routinely got £300, I listed it, hardly any bidders and got £70. But I have got great deals that way also.

A friend of mine and I saw two Aqua Stars being sold by the same guy. Two different dial colors. No reserve on either. The grey one sold for a pittance. Like $500 or so. But it sold. The next day that one was back up with a reserve around $1200 or so, so this kinda thing happens more often than we think I’m guessing

Oh and I forgot to mention a few years ago I sold a vintage Yema that I’d spent about $100 getting a new crystal put on etc, but didn’t have a reserve and it sold for like $30!! But I bit the bullet and took the hit. That was on me

I don't think it should be allowed in either case. All bids are final and binding is how normal auctions work, and the internet version shouldn't be any different.

I think they should have eaten the mistake, and let the customer have the watch. Your business' reputation is worth way more than a thousand dollars. Very unprofessional and cheapskatish.

I sold a car on eBay once. Went for £1000's below market value. 😞

The seller will most likely get a "mark" on their account, the same way a buyer will if they win a bid and refuse to pay. eBay can't legally make someone pay or ship an item. Further read for anyone interested: https://community.ebay.com/t5/Buying/Seller-canceled-the-action-after-I-won-the-auction-then-relisted/td-p/31056026

As an interesting thought exercise, what would you have thought if the buyer had accidentally put in a bid of say €10,000 or dollars on a watch costing only $1000, and they truthfully thought it was a mistake? Maybe a silly stupid mistake, but it is sort of along the same lines of a seller neglecting to put a reserve.

I think sometimes some common sense has got to play in making business judgment calls

And as we know, common sense, ethics, and law seldom intersect

Not to mention eBay-serving policies!

As a wise teacher once told me, "I don't like this thing where teachers get happy about their learners making mistakes. Mistakes lead to failure."

We all need to learn from mistakes. If the business slipped up, they need to find the person who listed the watch for sale and have a talk with him or her involving his or her payslip and some Tipp-Ex. They are effectively making the seller "pay" for their mistake. Sometimes in life, you just need to accept your loss and move on, especially as a business.

My mantra, be careful, but play nice!

Absolutely a dodgy seller. It happened to me buying a cheap jacket for my daughter. I bid the opening bid price and won it. I then got a load of emails saying the seller didn't know what address to send it to. Before I got my refund I noticed that the seller had the same jacket listed on ebay over 3 separate listings . All with the exact same photos. Money laundering? I don't know what the deal is?

I'm with the seller on this although I do alternative opinions.

I’m with the seller on this one. I’ve had buyers cancel their bids or just not pay, so there’s shady behavior on both ends.

Been pretty disappointed with ebay recently. I was selling a watch, a buyer made a bid and then retracted it 3 days later before the auction ended. Ebay Ts and Cs say you can cancel a bid within an hour, so this clearly wasn't in policy. I asked ebay customer service how that could happen and the response I got was "what do you want me to do".

Anyway, I'd probably avoid the seller in question just on principle. That's bad business practice.

I don't see anything wrong. Seller may have made a mistake and he responded saying that the watch was thought to be at a reserve price. A $1k watch for $120? That's robbery. If a buyer for example bid $1k and then decided last minute they were having second thoughts and retracted their bid, that's allowed. So why would a seller not be allowed to cancel their auction if it wasn't properly listed? I used to sell on eBay and there were times I made a few mistakes myself and was able to cancel. One I remember was I was offering free shipping and all my auctions were listed for U.S. buyers only. Someone from another country ended up bidding on something and then messaged me asking if I could use a certain mailing if they won. I realized it would cost more to ship the watch to their country than it was worth and explained that I had forgotten to uncheck the international sales option. I cancelled the auction and relisted. Yeah he was upset, but that's just how things go.

Nope I disagree, Ebay is a pain in the arse sometimes when making a listing . There is buyer’s remorse, why shouldn’t there be seller’s remorse? At least for an hour or so ? If your listing hundreds of items, mistakes can happen ! If it was you selling your watch and you thought you had your reserve set and it sold for 10% of your expectation would you let it go ?

Yes, I would let it go. It would be my mistake and I'd have to eat it. Just like when I've overbid on something after getting caught up in a bidding war and still paid for it.

I never bid more than something is worth and i definitely know when something is priced suspiciously cheap also , I do my homework, i will agree to disagree with you Dean .

If you don't see anything wrong, you are part of the problem.

Charging £1100 for a watch worth about a fifth of that in reality is also robbery. Outside of eBay, just look at how much Rolex charge for a watch which is worth at best £300. Now that truly is robbery.

In this case, the seller made a mistake and didn't notice until after the auction had ended. Just as you did. You need to be more on the ball when you list things. Same as taking basic safety precautions when you go to a foreign place. Or would you blame the criminals for being bad people? Do you blame your teeth for not cleaning themselves when they become decayed and fall out? It's all about taking personal responsibility.

To err is human, but to pull strokes like this as a business is not acceptable.

What you said has nothing to do with anything above. Not getting it.

I never bid more than something is worth, but I have bid more than I wanted to. Not the same thing at all.

Also bargains happen. Sometimes nice people list things at cheap prices to be nice. I do it, and some of the people I've bought from do it too. For instance, I bought a £200 limited edition watch for £10. The seller just wanted it gone and didn't care about the money, and was just happy that I won it because I was going to keep it. A similar thing happened with an iPhone I bought. And I've sold things to people who I knew had nothing for next to nothing. Stuff like that happens. Maybe not to you, but it does to me.

Dean as I stated not to be argumentative. I am not you .

Well, that's a redundant thing to say too. Of course you aren't me. You probably don't even have a Spaghetti Scameti, do you? 😜

Dean I do not but you enjoy it mate 🙂

I think the seller’s explanation is complete horse puckey 💩

They could have pulled the sale at any time before it closed.

I would never trust a seller who did what they did.

You see so many dubious behaviors on eBay including shill bidding especially on auctions with low start prices.

That being said, there is significant dubious behavior by major auction houses as well who improperly run up the auction when they know the bidders’ maximum bids. This has been going on for a long time. My wife and I have a nickname for it based on an unethical auctioneer named Bob - we call it getting Robbered at auction.

Unless things have changed in the last twenty years, a bricks and mortar store has to honour the sale. (If for example they had priced something wrong, they would have to honour the sale- then a mad flurry of checking tags on any other items and probably someone getting a very large amount of trouble. Or even if a graphics company had not explained ‘sale prices on stickered goods only’ on advertising. I have seen both of these happen.)