Ebay buyer rights??

[Claytron]

Hey guys,

looking for a bit of advise/help... Just won an auction on eBay and although he hasn't said it exactly i think the seller is trying get out the transaction. Most likely from me winning with a good price... in my favor. He has good feedback and all.

What are my rights as a buyer?

Is there anything else i can do besides bitch & moan & negative feedback if he decides to take this path?

I really want the item rather than my cash!

[bruticus]

Hey guys,

looking for a bit of advise/help... Just won an auction on eBay and although he hasn't said it exactly i think the seller is trying get out the transaction. Most likely from me winning with a good price... in my favor. He has good feedback and all.

What are my rights as a buyer?

Is there anything else i can do besides bitch & moan & negative feedback if he decides to take this path?

I really want the item rather than my cash!

As far as im aware, there's nothing you can do mate. IF the seller wants to pull out (giving excuses like no longer have item due to theft, damaged, natural disasters etc) he does not have to sell it to you and can not be forced to sell it to you. paypal will just refund your money and you leave the seller some negative feedback.

btw, what makes you suspect the seller is gonna back out? i've seen some sellers tank huge losses rather than cancel a transaction. so its not unheard of.

[Eruntalon]

IF the seller wants to pull out (giving excuses like no longer have item due to theft, damaged, natural disasters etc) he does not have to sell it to you and can not be forced to sell it to you. paypal will just refund your money and you leave the seller some negative feedback.


It's not fair to just give negative feedback, even neutral feedback is harsh, sometimes things really do happen.

A few months ago I had some comics for sale which went for a really low price, but I had just moved house and I can't for the life of me couldn't figure out what happened to the comics. The buyer obviously didn't believe me (it sounds like me telling my teacher that my dog ate my homework, doesn't it?) and I was unfairly left with neutral feedback.

Are you really losing anything detrimental from not being able to receive your item? Giving others the benefit of the doubt is sometimes the right thing to do.

[Claytron]

He claims that he described it wrong and found the missing footplate and also realized some other parts were missing that he previously thought were there (its a giftset), i said give me a detailed description and i'm sure we can work it out, i mainly want the box, i don't care about the figures particularly. He claims it misled people and in fairness he should give people another chance. I would of thought that'd decrease the price personally, but like i said i don't care i just want the box

Had he told me it was stolen or such i wouldn't of pursued. But it seems more like he's not happy with the final sale price so just wanted to relist

If the situation was reversed and i said i could no longer buy the item i would receive a strike, and would of been made to look like a p*$#k.


Before i hit the "commit to bid" button i read the text underneath which states...

"You are agreeing to a contract -- You will enter into a legally binding contract to purchase the item from the seller if you're the winning bidder. You are responsible for reading the full item listing, including the seller's instructions and accepted payment methods."

So is this "contract" just a one way thing?

As a buyer have any of you's ever won an auction only to think, "shit, why'd i bid this high", only to just have to grit teeth and pay up?

[1orion2many]

I honestly couldn't tell you but hopefully there is something that'll stop him from being able to relist the item on ebay, if he wanted more money for it then he should have put a minimum amount on the auction, this would have stopped him from having to sell the item for less than what he wanted.

[langzixinxin]

Here a what I usually do,

1, Pay quick and first using paypal. Once you paid, seller will be under more pressure to do his/her part.

2, Check sellers feedback, evaluate the possibility of default your auction.

3, Phone the seller. You can do this in ebay by requesting contact.

4, If seller didn't give you a clear answer, chat with an ebay helpdesk online. This will simply leave a conversation history as record. Tell support you simply "raise the concern". And tell them, "I suspect...because the market price is... my winning price is.... that's why I suspect seller wants to default"

Some of the sellers are just an "ebay selling agent" thing I think. They don't give a sh*t for G1.

EDIT: I had an experience before, I won a MIB reissue Ginrai for 70AUD from a seller in perth. I was worrying about it as well. But after a long delay, I finally got the item. I don't know what 's happening during the delay, the seller told me he got family issues.

[bruticus]

Calling doesnt always work.
I've once tracked down a seller's phone number in US and at my own expense called them up only to get the run around from them.
On a second occasion, the seller's number that ebay gave me was not even up to date anyways.

I've since learned that missing out on bargains is not that of a big deal in the grand scheme of things and the sooner I can move on, the sooner I can enjoy other things.

[Claytron]

Well it all worked out, we talked it out, and i am getting my Gen 1 Menasor giftset........ pheww!

[jaydisc]

Glad to hear it worked out.


Giving others the benefit of the doubt is sometimes the right thing to do.

Great advice. You just never know...

I won a Universe Hardhead for a very good price a couple days before HotHead was announced and three weeks later I hadn't received it. I similarly thought the seller realized they could get double for it and was skipping on the sale. I wrote them politely informing them I hadn't received it and asked when they shipped it. He wrote back apologizing for the delay stating he had MS, had a flareup, and he'd put it in the mail the next day. I received it a few days later.

[Claytron]

But just because the final sale price wasn't anywhere near as high as he had hoped doesn't mean he should get the right to refuse sale to me and re list. That's what set starting price bids and reserves are for.

If i place a bid, win, and then decide i paid to much... not bad for me really. I don't get to say, hey i think i could get it cheaper can you relist so i can try again.

If he had said ( or made up even) that it had been lost, or stolen etc i wouldn't of had a leg to stand on, except maybe if he re listed shortly after. Even then i guess he could say its another one he had or something.

[Tetsuwan Convoy]

It's not fair to just give negative feedback, even neutral feedback is harsh, sometimes things really do happen.

... I was unfairly left with neutral feedback.

Are you really losing anything detrimental from not being able to receive your item? Giving others the benefit of the doubt is sometimes the right thing to do.

That's what neutral feedback is for though isn't it? Leaving positive or no feedback if the transaction is a dud defeats the purpose of feedback for other buyers. Accidents happen, and the seller can reply to feedback left.

Personally I always check negative feedback to see if its just a wally buyer or whether the seller is a fraudster.

Anyway, glad to see it all worked out in the end.

[Sky Shadow]

I just had a similarly dodgy thing happen to me. I was winning this auction and then not too long before it was supposed to end, the seller cancelled all bids and put a stop to the auction.

http://offer.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&item=200475034364

I tire of this rubbish and should give up on eBay.

[griffin]

Sellers shouldn't be able to retract sales, just like bidders shouldn't be able to retract bids. This sort of second chance option of both parties, makes a mockery of the auction concept. Real life auctions don't allow sellers and bidders to have second chances, and those auctions are a lot faster paced. Plus, in real life auctions buyers aren't made to check and confirm their bid, and sellers aren't allowed to retract their listing if they don't have a reserve.
Ebay should employ those elements to make it fairer - I too have been the victim of an auction that ended this way that I was winning cheaply (due to a spelling error in the listing), and then it was re-listed.

If you see that seller list the item again, you know he is just trying to get a better result. He doesn't realise that 'rare' doesn't equal 'value', especially when it comes to Euro TFs located outside of the US. Even with the current Wreckers/BotCon fad for that era, the demand just doesn't exist for these rare figures because they were never mainstream enough for the US fandom.

[5FDP]

There are exceptions to the above as well. I remember winning a MISB TFC Prowl for US $12. I was half expecting the seller not to send it, but to my surprise it actually turned up.

I guess it would also depend on the seller. I would assume that a seller with 1000+ feedback (majority positive) would be more inclined to let the auction run it's course and cut their loses if sold below value as there would be many other examples of profits made. It's good business.

[Sky Shadow]

I just had a similarly dodgy thing happen to me. I was winning this auction and then not too long before it was supposed to end, the seller cancelled all bids and put a stop to the auction.

http://offer.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&item=200475034364

Surprise surprise, he actually let it sell when it was going for double the price:

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200477670165&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT

And he's set his bidding history settings to private, almost certainly so he can happily shill bid on his own items: http://offer.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&item=200477670165

(I would insert an angry face here but for some reason, clicking on the smilies hasn't been working for me since yesterday.)

[Sharky]

Surprise surprise, he actually let it sell when it was going for double the price:

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200477670165&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT

And he's set his bidding history settings to private, almost certainly so he can happily shill bid on his own items: http://offer.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&item=200477670165

(I would insert an angry face here but for some reason, clicking on the smilies hasn't been working for me since yesterday.)

somthing similar had happened to me about 2 years ago i won an auction for a pretty good MOC set of g2 minibots.. for a cheap price, i actually went through and paid, only to be told that the items were posted.... a month later they were declared lost in the post and my money refunded... within a week there were individual auctions for G2 MOC Minibots up by the same seller and they sold for almost 5 times what i had won them for....

unfortunatly its part of the eBay culture at times

[griffin]

Shill bidding sh-ts me too. A dealer didn't spell a toy right in the auction title, so I was winning it at a great price - at the last minute someone new with no feedback outbids me... and surprise surprise, the seller sends me a second chance offer within the day. BUT, not at the price I would have won it at - the offer was at my max bid, which he now knew. And since he wouldn't haggle below my max bid, he relisted it and blocked me from bidding. (same thing happened on the relist - he got limited interest from the wrongly spelt name, but the relisting was cancelled at the last minute - probably didn't want to risk the same trick twice)

[1AZRAEL1]

Shill bidders annoy the heck out of me too. This goes back a while but my missus wanted a pokemon digi pet tomagochi thing, and I found one on ebay. Starting bid was $0.99 (as usual) and we put a max bid of $20 on it. In the last minutes of the auction, there was someone bidding on it, the same person, and by a few cents each time. In the end, they pushed it up to just under $20, which was still fine. Then it took maybe 7 weeks to get to us from somewhere in Australia. Gave us plenty of excuses, everything under the sun. But it did finally get to us. A few months later she lost it anyway :p

Not the first time it has happened to me, but the only one I can remember.