Beware selling your monitors on ebay.

[Kerrigor]

Just a quick message to those of you who sell on ebay. I recently attempted to sell one of my monitors on Ebay, I placed a reserve (at my cost) which was met by one ebayer( Person A). Then a second bid it 5 quid over ( Person B).
Then Person B said it would cost too much in petrol to come down, asked me to lower the price, I said I couldn't and opted to cancel his order instead. Whilst relisting it.

Then comes in Person A, he bids on the new listing (without a reserve) meanwhile Person B has changed his mind again, if I lower the price of the monitor, he'll chuck in one of his smaller models to sweeten the deal. I say yes, he texts me a bit and I believe we're all good. I contact Person A, and tell him that I can't sell it to him anymore, he told me that I should just sell it to him instead (for a much lower price) and fob off Person B. I tell him I can't, he asks if Person B drops out again, can I sell it to him for £120, I said yes (as I didn't believe that Person B would drop out again.) However, low and behold Person B comes back to me and says blah blah petrol this petrol that, How about you make £120 and we're a done deal!! At this point I feel something's up (why did they both use the same price) and tell him no. Person A then emails me and asks if Person B has dropped out, can I have it for £120, so I lie to him, and tell him it's sold.

So now my monitors listing is totally closed. I'm in the hole for nearly a tenner because of the reserve. But then I see on Person A's ebay account, exactly the same monitor Person B tried to sweeten the deal with. And the mobile number on his page is the same number that Person B was using to text me on!

I'm sorry this isn't that easy to follow on with. But in short, one person, 2 accounts trying to lower the price on a monitor. Shameless display. Anybody else had this problem?

[Kerrigor]

Think I may have put this on the wrong topic! If a mod could move it, if that's the case, I'd appreciate it!

[Guspaz]

A winning bid is an agreement to purchase, and the winner is legally obligated to buy it. You're under no obligation to cancel their bid, or make some sort of side-deal. This is kind of on you rather than eBay. If the listing that the user won had a cost to list it, why did you not ask them to pay for your costs to cancel their bid?

[DoomsDave]

Definitely report him to ebay.

Just start your auctions at the min you would sell it for.

[Kerrigor]

A winning bid is an agreement to purchase, and the winner is legally obligated to buy it. You're under no obligation to cancel their bid, or make some sort of side-deal. This is kind of on you rather than eBay. If the listing that the user won had a cost to list it, why did you not ask them to pay for your costs to cancel their bid?

Because I'm such a nice guy, and kind of a shmuck! To be honest I noticed far too late, and had already sent the cancel order, I'm having some financial difficulties at the moment, so I just needed to have this guy leave, and then relist asap, but the trouble it's all caused me (which I do agree, in part is my fault) has made me just shy away from trying to sell on ebay!

Definitely report him to ebay.

Just start your auctions at the min you would sell it for.

And I absolutely have reported him, both accounts!

[bobrocks95]

Don't attach any sort of mobile numbers to ebay and never ever contact a person through anything but the ebay messaging system. Otherwise, you have no record of what's happening.

If a person buys your item and you had to pay listing fees for it, like Guspaz said, they are obligated to pay the listing fee for backing out I believe. That or ebay will pay it back to you if you report the person for trying to do a backdoor deal (especially if they were trying to do it through text messages).

[Einzelherz]

I summon up my New England heritage whenever I'm on eBay, or craigslist. I instinctively assume everyone is trying to screw me over. It's mostly paranoia, but other people suck

[LDigital]

You still have the monitor for sale? Got any details? I might be interested depending on what it is. Pm me cheers

[Gunstar]

Thanks for the heads up, glad you didn't get ripped off but how frustrating!

[D]

You still have the monitor for sale? Got any details? I might be interested depending on what it is. Pm me cheers

This story might have a happy ending after all!

[BazookaBen]

Side question: What's the point of setting a reserve vs. just setting a high starting price?

[Einzelherz]

Side question: What's the point of setting a reserve vs. just setting a high starting price?

A reserve makes you feel more special?

Cards on the table, I think hidden reserves are just stupid/sketchy. Start at your "reserve" price and keep people from guessing/wasting their time.

[bobrocks95]

It's enticing people to click when they see a low current price, but ensuring the item doesn't sell for too low. It's a bit manipulative really, I often don't even see that there's a reserve until the last second.

[Taiyaki]

I'm stunned, what a thief. That's worse than scalping.

[gray117]

Side question: What's the point of setting a reserve vs. just setting a high starting price?

A reserve makes you feel more special?

Cards on the table, I think hidden reserves are just stupid/sketchy. Start at your "reserve" price and keep people from guessing/wasting their time.

I think the idea is for when you don't know the value that something could go for but want to make sure you get a minimum without effecting the bidding process. If the reserve isn't met then it's your bad. Though I *think* there's an option to still offer it to highest end bid. Of course has tradition in art/antique market where item is often a bit of an unknown where it is one-of-a-kind and the idea of a known price/market value is years out of date, and the valuation becomes part of the appeal of the bid - or not if the item is out of fashion and the seller has goofed.

So yeah unless you've got something super exciting I'm not keen on reserve.

That being said, instead of being greedy/sketchy, seller was clearly a little too generous/naive in this exact case; stick to ebay format + rules, or use forums instead

[SukkoPera]

The Reserve price is total cr*p: let's suppose we have an item that a reserve price of 50€, but the auction starts at 1€. Now, I am willing to pay even 100€ for that item, so I place my 100€ bid, but eBay starts it at the base price, 1€. Now, if there are no other bids that raise the actual price to 50€, I won't be able to buy the item, the auction will just end and the seller won't even be notified that my bid was actually higher than his/her reserve price.

This always happens to me with auctions with a reserve price . It happened right yesterday!

[lev11]

That doesn't make sense, whenever I've bid it either says reverse not met, or it jumps up to the reverse price.

[DoomsDave]

Yeah the reserve thing is so stupid and I've never understood why people do it. Like others have said, just start your auction at the min you're willing to sell it for and stop wasting people's time.

[Einzelherz]

And Kerrigor, I hope you're not reading this as us attacking you. We're just voicing our opinion and hope that you sell the monitor smoothly.

[darcagn]

A reserve auction exists for the same reason that auction sniping exists. Why snipe seconds before an auction ends, when you can always just set what amount you're willing to pay? Because people will constantly attempt to outbid you, causing the price to run away. By waiting until the last second to bid, you hide the demand for the item, keeping the price lower.

With a reserve auction, people will still bid on it while the price is low, showing that the item has demand, and this will cause even more people to start bidding on it and at higher prices. Is it completely logical? No, but watch one episode of Storage Wars and it should be obvious that auctions aren't always logical, and can be driven by human emotions.

[Ikaruga11]

A reserve auction exists for the same reason that auction sniping exists. Why snipe seconds before an auction ends, when you can always just set what amount you're willing to pay? Because people will constantly attempt to outbid you, causing the price to run away. By waiting until the last second to bid, you hide the demand for the item, keeping the price lower.

With a reserve auction, people will still bid on it while the price is low, showing that the item has demand, and this will cause even more people to start bidding on it and at higher prices. Is it completely logical? No, but watch one episode of Storage Wars and it should be obvious that auctions aren't always logical, and can be driven by human emotions.

Bid sniping is the only logical way of doing auctions. Anything else, just Buy It Now (eBay).

[DoomsDave]

No, but watch one episode of Storage Wars and it should be obvious that auctions aren't always logical, and can be driven by human emotions.

On this note I just saw a banged up PAL copy of Ghoul Panic go for $45 + $10 shipping on a non ebay auction site. Go on ebay and you can pick it up for almost half that. Sometimes people are looking for the rush of winning an auction on top of the item itself.

[Kerrigor]

Oops, been a while since I jumped on this post, I actually have great news, I found a company in Germany that sells the BKM-61d, so once I've got the cable I need, I'm going to be rocking S-Video on my A20F1M I can't wait! Going to be perfect for my C64 & Master System!