ebay gripe for the morning

[Zeppy]

so I happily dropped a $250 bid on a VV-XII motor and tone arm on ebay, and watched the bid sit at $12 for almost a week. I believe the auction was scheduled to end Sunday or today, not sure...but to my surprise, Sunday morning I got a notice that the auction was canceled. Well, I fired an email off to the seller asking what happened..."oh, I put it on a buy it now for $100 and it sold" or translation, someone basically didn't want to risk actually bidding on the item, and paying a fair price, so I put one over on the seller, and made a killing.

Sure, the seller got duped, and probably should have done research, but I'm equally peeved at the person who conned the seller rather than put a single bid on the item. I probably wouldn't be as peeved if there were no bids on the item, but I did bid, and there was plenty of .

OK...done venting

[brianu]

that's terrible. well, I certainly hope in the interests of candor, full disclosure and all, that you enlightened the seller a bit after the fact...

[Zeppy]

I was very polite to the seller, and despite my desire to say, "dude, you've been screwed over," I simply stated, "I'm very sorry to hear that. I was willing to pay more than twice that price. I really wish you emailed me before cancelling the acution at 1am"

[Shane]

I get people asking me to end my auctions early quite often. I never take any of these people up on their offer, because I realize it is often someone who knows what the item is worth (possibly better than I do), and they are trying to protect themselves from a bidding war. I just wish them good luck, and hope they will get involved in a bidding frenzy as the auction nears its close.

Out of probably 40 times that I have received early offers to close down the auction, there has only been one instance where the final bid was less than an offer I had previously received.

[larryh]

I also have had things go "Poof" as I was watching them. I know a couple of people in groups on other topics I have who are surprisingly successful at offering a seller a price and ending a listing. Normally they offer pretty good prices, at least to the uninformed seller, and get the item normally for way less than it might have run. I tell them there lucky, but that I don't much approve of ending an auction where people are waiting to bid. In fact I suggested to another member of that group who was loosing out to this "New aggressive" collector that instead of watching trying to "snipe" something at the last that he put a bid on it for the minimum early, that prevents the seller from ending the sale early in most cases. At least then its a violation of ebay policy to do so.
I have had a number of people offer a price to end one of my auctions, in fact I had one yesterday from a fellow who wanted two little brass kerosene lamp shade holders that are an unusual size in that they are smaller than most. He offered me 30.00 for them. Which frankly is tempting. I somehow doubt they will come close to that when they sell. But I turned it down due to my experiences such as yours where your disappointed to find something gone you wanted to have a fair chance at. I turned another down last week for 25.00 and it ended up the same fellow got it for 21.00. I think that is how my other one is going to go also.
What I was surprised at was in reading ebay policy carefully the other night it says that sellers are welcome to end a sale as long as its done with a buy it now resulting in a price higher or the same as what is ask. I really thought they would frown on it, but hey its making money for them and things are tight right now in a lot of areas.