Heritage Auctions - Boston Garters

[Powell]

I relied on reading the lot, my account confirming I won and experience in bidding on thousands and thousands of items over 20 years. Did I sit down and read the “terms and conditions”? Of course not! Nor will I ever accept that I should have. That’s like the insurance company relying on the fine print to deny a just claim.

[notfast]

Originally Posted by Powell

I relied on reading the lot, my account confirming I won and experience in bidding on thousands and thousands of items over 20 years. Did I sit down and read the “terms and conditions”? Of course not! Nor will I ever accept that I should have. That’s like the insurance company relying on the fine print to deny a just claim.

The whole “my account said I won” argument isn’t great.

I mean…PWCC just had an issue and had thousands of “you’ve won!” emails go out. Does that mean everyone should be awarded those items? Obviously not.

Obviously heritage should have ran this auction differently/better but the wording posted above in the set listing is very cut and dry.

Plus we all know as soon as we bid on something, we are agreeing to their rules, terms, conditions etc…even if they suck.

[molenick]

I don't think there will be a re-do. If the individual bidders like Aaron were invoiced and paid for their lots they now expect to get their cards. The only thing that would stop this is if Heritage decided not to send the cards. But then every individual bidder will say what Powell is saying now....you told me I won, you invoiced me, I paid, I want my card(s). With the difference that Powell was never invoiced.

In the view of Heritage, while at one point Powell was told he won his lot, at the end of the entire auction he was told he did not win his lot. So in their eyes, he did not win and he was not invoiced.

What should have appeared on Powell's screen was a message to the effect of "you are the high bidder on this lot and no one else can bid on it...however, you may not win this lot if the individual lots surpass your bid" (in a shorter version, of course). The problem is they told Powell he won when the bidding ended on the group lot...which he understandably took to mean, it is over, I won.

[Powell]

And here the fine print doesn’t say you must manually and constantly add up the individual lots and can’t rely on the web site or that you are declared the winner in your account or that closing the set doesn’t mean you didn’t win or that you must bid on every lot and against yourself on the set and do so before extended bidding or your shut out.