I-Bidder Auction Site

gc4170

A certain stoke based seller has started selling lots on i-bidder, I have won some of these auctions but I am shocked at the 40% surcharge.
If I do not pay what can they do legally?
The items are not guaranteed to work and the seller can no longer list on eBay due to 'problems'
They are threatening to charge me £10 per day extra until I pay.

martindow

gc4170 wrote: »

A certain stoke based seller has started selling lots on i-bidder, I have won some of these auctions but I am shocked at the 40% surcharge.
If I do not pay what can they do legally?
The items are not guaranteed to work and the seller can no longer list on eBay due to 'problems'
They are threatening to charge me £10 per day extra until I pay.

This looks like an on line portal to access live auctions. I assume each auction will charge its usual fees - buyers' premiums and maybe an additional fee for bidding on line. No doubt you agreed to their t&c when signing up on line. The £10/ day is their storage fee which you probably also agreed to.

They can chase you for the money and are likely to win a court claim if they choose to do that based on you accepting the t&c.

I should pay quickly to minimise the bill. It's going to tot up rapidly if you start adding £10 every day.

charlies_mum

As above. The buyer's premium would have been stated in their T & Cs and your bid was a commitment to buy.

What you have probably paid is 20% buyer's premium and 20% VAT if the items were vatable. Plus, another 3% charge for bidding online (I think I Bidder charges this, but not sure)

Edit : You really need to read their T & Cs as I Bidder already have your credit card number, and they may be able to take payment without your consent.

soolin

I use saleroom.com and as Charlies_mum says this sort of site protects it auctioneers, and rightly so, by taking credit card details from those signing up to bid.

At no point are the fees hidden and when you sign up they ask you to check with the auction house before you bid for their t and cs. I haven't used I- bidder but if it is like saleroom.com then each auction house you Interact with has its own percentage plus you pay an additional percentage to the bidding site as well.

Trapdoor

I work for a commercial auction house and we use i-Bidder.com both for live auctions and also for timed sales.

Our standard buyers premium works out at about 38% as most commercial lots have VAT at 20% on the hammer, plus 15% buyers premium, plus 20% VAT on the buyers premium. Any i-bidder bids then attract a further 3% + VAT, and this forms part of the fees that are paid to host and run the sale and are NOT to the benefit of the auction house.

Both i-bidder and the-saleroom.com are provided and managed by the same company based in London and as a rule deal with large, professional auction houses.

Auctioneers T&C can vary wildly, but non-paying bidders are rife and the bane of their lives so most auctioneers will have tight T&C's to cover themselves against non/late payers, or buyers who take an age to clear lots (storage fees) - at the salesrooms I work, 'real estate' is at a premium so we cannot afford to store uncollected lots free of charge as it restricts what we can take in and offer at the next sale; we run 800 to 1000 lots every two week, and some lots are physically huge.

People need to remember that professional auctioneers are not eBay, and whilst many bidders have only ever experienced an auction a-la eBay, that's not real-world auctioneering and things are very different. Many auction houses have been going for decades and the internet is just another part of their business model, not THE main part - that tends to be bidders in the room who many old-school auctioneers feel have 'bothered' to turn up to bid and are therefore more 'important' than internet bidders.

In relation to the OP and the legality of the 40% surcharge, by registering to bid (and therefore agreeing to their T&C's as you'd have clicked the button to say you agreed) and then bidding, you have entered into a legally binding contract (in civil law) and the auctioneer can take you to court to recover costs etc. As a rule, all that will happen is that you will be banned from their sales or as a final resort if you do it to lots of i-bidder sales, you will be barred from the system and won't be able to bid on ANY i-bidder (or possibly even the-saleroom.com) sales.