Annoyance with EBay question...

[someguy]

There's a car on EBay that I'm interested in. The seller has a "Buy It Now" price of $20. I thought that was too high so I bid $12. The next highest bid is only $3 so far, so currently the bidding is at $3.25 plus shipping.

 

Someone wanted to send a question to the seller, and accidentally sent the question to MY email instead....:

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"I was going to use Buy It Now last night but I was dragged away from my computer and by the time I came back to it today someone had bid on it. I am still willing to purchase it for the Buy It Now price if you unlist the item and sell it to me outside of eBay."

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Personally I think this is very underhanded. If the guy wants the cart that bad, he could put in a bid of $20 and easily outbid me and everyone else.

 

Any opinions?

[MattyXB]

I think if the seller they yes to the other guy, he can delete your bid and then the other buyer can buy it now for US$ 20.00.

 

But I don't know if the seller will do it. Maybe he can get more $$$ when other interesting too. If someone has bid he has the probleme. Not you or the Seller. Then he must bid 20$ and when he has luck he get it when not then he must pay more.

 

I can't help you more. But I hope that will help you a bit.

[Albert]

If you were to forward that message to eBay, they'd probably send him a stern warning or cancel his account, since what he's doing is against eBay's policies. If the guy didn't pay the BIN price when he first saw the auction and someone else bid on it later, that's his own fault. I would hope the seller would have some integrity and wouldn't cancel your bid to sell it to this other person for $20. Who knows, the auction may end up going for more than that anyway. If the auction mysteriously ends then you'll probably know what happened.

 

..Al

[MrRetroGamer]

I don't see how it's possible for someone to accidentally send a BIDDER a question that was intended for the Seller! Certainly not in one click, that's for sure. Sometimes low priced items end up selling for more than the original buy-it-now price anyway, since after the first bid is placed, no one knows that it was a buy-it-now to begin with. As long as you are in the running, don't sweat it. If you suddenly see that the auction was ended early, THEN I'd be suspicious!

[someguy]

I think what I'll do is just hang onto the email for now. Maybe the sender won't realize he sent it to the wrong person; maybe he will and the seller will tell him to take a flying leap.

 

I've had the same thing happen to me when I've been the seller maybe 3 or 4 times, and I've always told the questioner to put in a proper bid like everyone else - it doesn't seem very fair to undercut the people who did bid properly.

 

And if memory serves me correctly, on those items where I received such an offer, I sometimes ended up getting bids higher than my BIN price.