posted on April 20, 2000 11:05:02 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 ]
