Ebay ethical dilemma as seller - What Would You Do?

[butchie_t]

I had this happen to me on an unrelated sports item about a month ago.

For me this was not a dilemma at all. Someone had placed a bid on the item and I got a message from another eBay person wanting me to pull the item and sell it to them at a price higher than the bid price at the time.

I do not see that as being fair to the first bidder to pull the auction item out from underneath them IMHO. I told the person that sent me the message that the auction would stand as it already had a bid. It ended up going for much more than the message person offered.

That is just not a good practice from my POV.

Regards,

Butch

[timzcardz]

Personally, if there was no bidder I would consider it.

Once there is a bidder, in my mind the game is underway and you don't change the rules in the middle of the game.




On another note, how did you make out with porting your phone number to a new service provider?

A curious mind wants to know.

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by timzcardz

On another note, how did you make out with porting your phone number to a new service provider?

A curious mind wants to know.

Terribly. Turns out I cancelled things in the wrong order, and they weren't able to recover it.

[Cliff Bowman]

Years ago I listed a 1968 Kahn's Tony Perez on eBay staring at 99 cents and someone bid on it, someone else contacted me asking if I would do a Buy-It-Now for $75, I felt slimy doing it but I ended the listing and relisted it as a Buy-It-Now. A few years after that a seller had a listing of a small lot of 1967 Topps Cardinals with a Ed Spiezio partially missing name, I contacted the seller to see if he would do a Buy-It-Now of $20 on the lot and he did. After I paid the $20 the seller contacted me and said a couple of eBay members sent him not so friendly messages threatening to report him to eBay for ending the listing against their rules. He blamed it on me for taking advantage of him for not knowing about the 1967 Ed Spiezio print error and I felt slimy after that one, but I don't think he actually broke any eBay rules regarding ending a listing and then relisting it.

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by Cliff Bowman

Years ago I listed a 1968 Kahn's Tony Perez on eBay staring at 99 cents and someone bid on it, someone else contacted me asking if I would do a Buy-It-Now for $75, I felt slimy doing it but I ended the listing and relisted it as a Buy-It-Now. A few years after that a seller had a listing of a small lot of 1967 Topps Cardinals with a Ed Spiezio partially missing name, I contacted the seller to see if he would do a Buy-It-Now of $20 on the lot and he did. After I paid the $20 the seller contacted me and said a couple of eBay members sent him not so friendly messages threatening to report him to eBay for ending the listing against their rules. He blamed it on me for taking advantage of him for not knowing about the 1967 Ed Spiezio print error and I felt slimy after that one, but I don't think he actually broke any eBay rules regarding ending a listing and then relisting it.

Yeah, I don't think there's anything there technically against Ebay's rules. They have the tools in place to cancel bids and end auctions. Especially if you relist it with a BIN and it sells, and you aren't trying to circumvent Ebay getting their cut of a sale.

It's more of a personal choice, and I don't begrudge anybody that does what they have to do to navigate the hellscape that is Ebay.

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by butchie_t

I had this happen to me on an unrelated sports item about a month ago.

For me this was not a dilemma at all. Someone had placed a bid on the item and I got a message from another eBay person wanting me to pull the item and sell it to them at a price higher than the bid price at the time.

I do not see that as being fair to the first bidder to pull the auction item out from underneath them IMHO. I told the person that sent me the message that the auction would stand as it already had a bid. It ended up going for much more than the message person offered.

That is just not a good practice from my POV.

Regards,

Butch

This is my general stance also.

This is not the first time this has happened either. I've gotten this request dozens, if not hundreds of times over the years.

It's always a polite no, unless the item has no bids, and they've really wowed me with an offer that convinces me to put up a BIN price. I usually never hear from them again, and they rarely factor into the bidding once the auction actually ends.

What really struck me this time was how insistent and almost "desperate" this prospective bidder was. Wouldn't take no for an answer. Multiple ebay messages, found my e-mail, and dug up my phone number and called multiple times before I had a chance to answer one of his calls.

After I told him I wasn't comfortable stopping the auction and canceling bids for him, he seemed to be convinced it was a negotiating ploy from me.

Wanted to know how much trouble I would REALLY get in with Ebay, if I did what he wanted me to do. I told him I likely wouldn't get into any trouble with Ebay, but that wasn't the point.

I kept on getting e-mails from him, even after I started this thread.

He kept on upping the ante, testing where my threshold might be. He didn't believe I wasn't going to do what he wanted. I probably could have soaked him for waaaaaay more then the lot was worth, but that part of the equation isn't as important to me as it is to others...likely to my own detriment. Honestly, I would have sold it for a lot less then he offered, if I put it up with a BIN, or even if another person didn't already place a bid.

Just a weirder then usual interaction.

[steve B]

I only had a few people ask, and I never did close an auction early.
It's at 50 and you want a bin for 150? Bid 150, and maybe you get it cheaper. Ending early isn't fair to people watching, and more to people who have already bid.

Every one of the things I had offers to end early closed higher than those offers. Usually by 2x or more.

I did have an item that someone missed and asked for a BIN at the min bid amount. Listed it in a totally wrong category so it wouldn't be easily found. Sold to someone else in under 5 minutes. And I didn't have a second one for the guy who asked.