posted on April 20, 2000 10:54:01 PM new
I ran across the deal of a life time on a major auction site (not person to person but big company).
I found 3 mountain bikes that were about $300.00 EACH (retail). The auction had JUST opened so I took a look.
Bare in mind this auction is always experimenting with reserves, bid increments, quantities etc.
You never know quite what to expect. Anyway these 3 bikes were listed as "english Auction" NO RESERVE high bidder wins. Simple.
I was amazed and excited when I saw the opening bid was $5.00 and nobody had bid yet and there was NO RESERVE!! I was MORE amazed to see a bid increment of $199.00. That's correct, a $199.00 bid increment.
That meant to win, a bidder would have to bid $204.00. WOW.
I'm no fool so I quickly bid figuring I had a great chance of winning at least ONE. It was a 2 day auction.
I checked the next day and no new bids. All day I was chomping for the results.
When I got home I had an email and it said "you were OUTBID by another bidder". I was bummed.
Curious I went to see what they went for and , low and behold I'm the SOLE BIDDER on ALL 3!!
I emailed them and asked how this could happen. They told me they listed the bikes by mistake and realized only a few hours before the auction closed that the had listed them in ERROR and DID NOT HAVE THE MODEL IN STOCK.
I was still bummed and just a bit curious. I asked them WHY my Email notifacation said I was "outbid" by another bidder and they blamed the computer system.
Still bummed and feeling a bit cheated I decided to sit back and watch because they DID have the identical bike in a slightly different size and their written policy says when an item is out of stock they will replace it with an item of equal or greater value. I asked about that and they just said "NO".
Here is were it gets interesting. The VERY NEXT DAY, you guessed it, 3 identicle bikes. Minimun bid $199.00. I felt cheated.
For the next 4 days they had those bikes, that were "never in stock", on the auction. They are still there and I stopped printing out the auction page on the fifth day figuring if 5 days wasn't enough proof I didn't need any.
I KNOW I was LIED to, and MORE THAN ONCE. I figure either they were listed improperly or they were trying something cute and it backfired. I told them it was frowned upon to cancel an auction that already had bids and they said "tough". I asked them why the let a 2 day auction go on for 45 hours before cancelling and they just didn't answer at all.
We know I was lied to. Was I cheated out of my WINNING BIDS or did they have a right to cancel an auction they saw was going to be a loser????
[ edited by peachypie on Apr 20, 2000 11:01 PM ]
posted on May 1, 2000 07:07:04 PM new
technically, you were cheated out of your bikes. In your heart, you know those bikes were incorrectly listed and human errors can be forgiven. Which auciton site did this, by the way???
