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Ebay price question

S

Sandy

TUG Member
Joined
Jun 6, 2005
Messages
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Location
Charlotte, NC (really Fort Mill, SC)
This is a general question. I have put in a bid for a small item on ebay, a DVD set. The large description says Season 5, but the small detail description says "Complete seasons 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. Your chance to own all of the series."

Based on other prices, I believe the seller used a description for only one season rather than all five. But s/he has others for sale using the same (mis)description. Of course, I could be wrong and this is the intended description and product. The seller also has other listings that say "all five seasons" in the large description, and they command a higher price.

Can the seller come back and say that there was a misprint and refuse to sell to me? Or do we have a binding contract according to ebay rules once I bid, buy it now, and pay?
I am sure that this or something like it has happened before, so I seek guidance.


TIA
 
Can't Hurt To Ask.

Sandy said:
This is a general question. I have put in a bid for a small item on ebay, a DVD set. The large description says Season 5, but the small detail description says "Complete seasons 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. Your chance to own all of the series."

Based on other prices, I believe the seller used a description for only one season rather than all five. But s/he has others for sale using the same (mis)description. Of course, I could be wrong and this is the intended description and product. The seller also has other listings that say "all five seasons" in the large description, and they command a higher price.

Can the seller come back and say that there was a misprint and refuse to sell to me? Or do we have a binding contract according to ebay rules once I bid, buy it now, and pay?
I am sure that this or something like it has happened before, so I seek guidance.


TIA
Click to expand...
Have you tried the eBay Ask Seller A Question feature, requesting clarification?

Can't hurt. Might help.

Meanwhile, I'm high bidder in an eBay auction running out in an hour & 20 minutes. One the 1 hand, I'm afraid I might lose out to a last-second sniper. On the other hand, I'm afraid I might win -- then what will I do with yet another horn around here?

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​
 
It isn't clear what he's selling, so yes, you should ask the seller so you won't be disappointed later.

Alan: Start a music school :)

-David
 
School's Out Forever.

Icarus said:
Alan: Start a music school :)
Click to expand...
Nobody sniped in, so I bought the horn for a few bucks less than my maximum (i.e., "proxy") bid.

It's a decent quality instrument -- needing just a little bit of fixa-fixa-fixa.

Fortunately, I'm a steady customer of a nearby brass instrument techncian who does solid work at reasonable rates -- in fact's he's got a prior eBay horn of mine on his workbench right now, so this latest 1 will be next in the pipeline.

Next time eBay lays on a 10-cent or 20-cent listing day, I will be good to go.
-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​
 
Sandy said:
Can the seller come back and say that there was a misprint and refuse to sell to me?
Click to expand...

The seller can come back and ship only season 5, since that's what the auction says. S/he can say that you can buy the whole season cheaply by bidding on all of the auctions. So, arguably, there's no misprint and, unless you won't be disappointed if all you get is season 5, you should clarify.
 
Update

Well,

Ebay pulled this ad, saying that the item was removed and my bid cancelled. Perhaps the seller discovered the discrepency. The matter is being investigated and perhaps the seller's account was compromised.
 
Speaking of which, how does one go about doing that, get a sudeessful winning bid in at the buzzer? (Actually, I didn't hear a buzzer.)

I tried to win an auction this morning and waited until one minute left. I submitted a bid substantially higher than the previous, but someone had submitted one even higher. I had time to try once more and the same thing happened.

So I didn't get a horn. ;)

AwayWeGo said:


Meanwhile, I'm high bidder in an eBay auction running out in an hour & 20 minutes.
-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​
Click to expand...
 
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JLB said:
Speaking of which, how does one go about doing that, get a sudeessful winning bid in at the buzzer? (Actually, I didn't hear a buzzer.)

I tried to win an auction this morning and waited until one minute left. I submitted a bid substantially higher than the previous, but someone had submitted one even higher. I had time to try once more and the same thing happened.

So I didn't get a horn. ;)
Click to expand...

You use a sniping program such as Auction Sentry. You place your maximum bid into it and depending on what time you have it set at (eg: 10 seconds), it will go to ebay and place your bid. As long as the last bidders maximum bid is less than what you set you will win the auction as it doesn't leave enough time for someone to change their bid.
 
Beating The Closing Non-Buzzer.

JLB said:
Speaking of which, how does one go about doing that, get a sudeessful winning bid in at the buzzer?
Click to expand...
First off, I gotta know my absolute top-dollar bid amount before I click it in, mox nix whether it's an opening-bell early bird bid or a closing-buzzer snipe.

Then, if it's some item I don't care all that much about that would be nice to get at a ridiculous price, then I bid my don't-care amount early & forget about it. If an item is going to go for a song -- probably won't & usually doesn't, but no harm in bidding low anyway -- then it might as well go to me as to somebody else. I have "accidentally" bought some eBay stuff that way, including horns, etc., but not any timeshares.

But if it's an item I'd really like to have, then I put it on my eBay "watching" list, reminding myself when the closing non-buzzer is set to go off, & I get ready for a last-second manual snipe. (Automated sniping is for wussies. Real men snipe manually in real time. But that's another story.) For example, a timeshare I really wanted came up with not much bidding because the seller garbled the item description, scrambling in pictures & reading material about a different resort from the 1 mentioned in the title. The maximum amount I was willing to bid was $3,500 -- same as I'd paid for a similar nearby non-eBay timeshare that I wanted to upgrade by switching to the eBay timeshare I was watching. Bidding was up around $1,100 or so as the eBay auction clock started ticking down to less than 120 seconds. I made sure I was all properly logged in. I opened up a second screen. I kept the main item page showing on Screen 1. I had the Confirm Bid Amount page showing on Screen 2, with $3,500 all ready to snipe in. Updating Screen 1 frequently, I was able to watch the auction time ticking down & to notice the bids creeping up to the neighborhood of $1,400. When we got down to 24 seconds, I went back to the bid-confirm screen & -- POW! -- zapped in my $3,500 snipe.

When the dust settled, I had won the bidding at $1,925 & it was obvious that some other would-be snipers had entered down-to-the-wire bids that took the amount up that high from where it had been at the exact second-fraction when mine went in.

I would have been happy to get that timeshare for $3,500 & would have been OK if I had lost the bidding at $3,500.01. All I accomplished by waiting for the closing seconds to snipe in was to conceal my interest in that eBay timeshare from other lookers & potential bidders. That is to say, if I had sent in my bid of $3,500 on Day One of the bidding, I might have been outbid early or my bid might have stood up till the end. But even if I did win by bidding early, I'm sure my winning amount would have gone somewhat higher than $1,925. I'll never know, of course, but that's how I figure it.

Pretty soon we resold our earlier $3,500 timeshare -- for $3,500 (via TUG ad, not eBay). Thus, from our perspective, we upgraded our timeshare & got change back. (Later we spent all the "change" & more on 2 more timeshares. But that also is another story.)

BTW, when I got taken to the cleaners on eBay recently in selling for only $999 an outstanding horn in which I had about $1,600 tied up, I found out later from the winning bidders that they had sniped in with a bid of $1,800 in the closing seconds. They were pretty sure they'd win with that large a cushion over the $999 opening bid amount, but they never guessed theirs would be the 1 & only bid. Naturally, I would have preferred making a little something on that horn, rather than coming up short that way. Nevertheless, if I hadn't been ultimately OK with the prospect of seeing the horn go for only $999, then I would not have put the horn up on eBay, no reserve, with the opening bid pegged at just $999.

Sometimes I bite the bear. Sometimes the bear bites me. So it goes.
-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​
 
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