posted on March 25, 2001 07:23:02 PM new
Hey all! Just wondering if a seller has to honor the high bid from an auction ending during an outage. Would appreciate anyone's input. Thanks!
posted on March 25, 2001 07:30:52 PM new
Ebay better come up with some bigtime explaining. Those auctions should have been automatically extended, therefore no one should be liable except Ebay!! I could see my auctions ending and noone could bid! Everyone knows the last hour is when 90% of bidding occurs! I definately do not fee liable or responsible, or obligated to give my stuff away on Ebays lack of ability to come up with a backup system for outages while they rake in money!
posted on March 25, 2001 07:56:34 PM new
This is a tricky one..since the main page works, but people can't bid. Auctions are still going on and ending when they should have been extended. What will they do? I have not seen this before and have used Ebay for more than 2 years. I will bet they will have a totally free auction day to appease all the mad people who will email them. Mark my word!!! I have seen it happen! My main concern is how are they going to think we are going to give up our items when noone could bid and they went cheap? We get the negs and are they going to remove them? I doubt it!
posted on March 25, 2001 08:28:32 PM new
I had put in a proxy bid on some golf clubs that my husband wanted. I never put in a bid until the last 3 mins so this was a real fluke. Anyway the seller lost at least $70.00. If he wants to honor the bid that is ok but if he doesn't I understand. I kind of felt cheated that I missed the heat of the last minute bidding. Also there was a clothing item I wanted but couldn't even bid. Glad my auctions ended early tonight.
posted on March 25, 2001 08:42:58 PM new
They may extend the auctions, but not at teh righ time. Many of us plan our auctions to end st specific times, but ebay may extend them to end who knows when...
posted on March 25, 2001 08:53:38 PM new
Generally, if either party does not agree to all conditions, a contract does not come to exist. Either buyer or seller can "back out". That's what would be enforced by a court of law.
EBay is another story. They cannot force buyer to buy or seller to sell, but they can and occasionally do punish those who don't follow through.
Also, either buyer or seller can leave a neg if dissatisfied with the outcome of the transaction.
If it really mattered (as in several hundred $, and the cause was real clear), I'd refuse to complete the transaction. Otherwise I'd just eat the loss. What I would never, ever do is ask buyer to pay a premium over the ending price of the auction.
could you explain this: "Generally, if either party does not agree to all conditions, a contract does not come to exist. Either buyer or seller can "back out". That's what would be enforced by a court of law."
In my state it was my understanding that if a bid is placed on an auction a contract is made when the auction ends.
posted on March 26, 2001 11:37:45 AM newIn my state it was my understanding that if a bid is placed on an auction a contract is made when the auction ends.
It's nearly certain that the laws of your state covering auctions do not authoritatively cover eBay auctions, even if your state is California.
But let's say that some law seems to suggest something of this kind.
First off, let me say that "legal contracts" range from the absurd to the utterly binding. They all go under the same title, but the absurd extreme isn't worth discussing. No court would enforce them. In the middle are questionable contracts. Let's discuss good contracts, the kind which would be enforced in nearly any court of law.
We know a few fundamental things about contracts in general. One of the things we know is that one does not enter into a contract by accident. A contract is a meeting of the minds; without such a meeting of the minds, no contract exists.
At the end of an eBay auction we have a state where seller and buyer have offered to enter into a contract on specified terms. However, many loose ends exist. So many that at the end of the auction we're still in the absurd category. Either buyer or seller may well have not understood something fundamental.
For example, seller may well have not agreed to sell the item in the context of eBay going down. Surely buyer has no evidence that seller so agreed. That lack of evidence of agreement undermines any contract which might be claimed to exist, and no serious court would order seller to sell. For very similar reasons, eBay's implication that a bidder might be held legally responsible for a bid is a pure bluff.
Back to real world auctions (of the kind most of us attend, the Thursday evening consignment auction house or the going-out-of-business auction). Generally, when a seller consigns stuff to an auction house, seller signs a contract agreeing to sell the stuff in an auction context. That's the agreement we lack above, and the signed, written contract is evidence. It could also be observed that most real world consigners do in fact understand and agree to the auction contract.
Bidders are sometimes requested to sign an agreement to obtain the right to bid. This agreement is much less enforceable, particularly in the case where the auction house might WANT to enforce it, a high value item facing bidder's remorse after the close of the auction. The problem is that bidder again cannot be held to an "accidental contract", or a contract involving deception regarding the description of the stuff. It would be nearly trivial to show some lack of full disclosure on the part of the auction house. Thus, we find auction houses using defenses other than lawsuits against deadbeat bidders...while lobbying their legislature to give them some good bluff cards to cajole "rock" a recalcitrant bidder back into shape.
posted on March 26, 2001 01:08:50 PM new
As a seller, I'd take a negative before I'd allow myself to be fleeced just because eBay can't keep their system up and running. And I think most reasonable people would understand if they saw a negative stating "seller didn't honor bid because eBay went down at auction closing time" or something to that effect.
The only people who refuse to understand the seller's viewpoint in instances like these are buyers who stand to profit from the outage.
posted on March 26, 2001 01:35:49 PM new
How can a contract ot auction be valid if not all bidders can bid ??? Or if,as ebay permits the seller can't even get in to end the auction by cancelling bids. If an auctioner only took bids from a certain section of the room.....there would be mutiny!!!!!
I could see my auctions ending and noone could bid! Everyone knows the last hour is when 90% of bidding occurs! I definately do not fee liable or responsible, or obligated to give my stuff away on Ebays lack of ability to come up with a backup system for outages while they rake in money!