Ebay Seller refuses to sell despite being paid

Hobbington

Incredibly, I won an auction for a car on Ebay for 99p. It was a fluke - the car was advertised in the wrong section and there was no reserve.
The minute the auction ended, I paid for it via PayPal.

When I contacted the seller to arrange collection, he said there had been a mistake - he was using Ebay to advertise the car but wanted potential buyers to contact him directly.

Naturally I have contacted Ebay and PayPal but having done some research, the best I can hope for from them is a refund!

Does anyone know of any legal precedent for the seller to hand over the goods?
And dare I say, I would be grateful for facts, rather than opinions...

19lottie82

Come on now the guy made a mistake do you really expect him to sell you a car for 99p? These things happen. What would you do if the roles were reversed.

Ask for refund or raise an "item not recieved case" and if you really feel the need leave him negative feedback.

Paypal advice is correct, you can't force him to hand over the car.

I

campdave

Hobbington wrote: »

Does anyone know of any legal precedent for the seller to hand over the goods?
And dare I say, I would be grateful for facts, rather than opinions...

If you want legal facts, get them from a solicitor, not an internet forum.

glentoran99

you cant force someone to sell you anything, be it a shop, a person or whatever they are under no obligation, im sure you have seen the stories of people taking advantage of glitches in flights, and tvs etc and them not being honoured

giantmutantbroccoli

There is no legal precedent for a retailer to be forced to sell an item at the advertised price. A retailer is legally allowed to make an error in pricing, and to rectify that error by cancelling the transaction.
I had a customer like you once. Accidentally listed something on my ebay store for £8 when it should have been £800. It was up for ten minutes, in which time I got three messages asking if the price was real, and one guy bought it. We had a few messages back and forth wherein he told me that ebay would ban me, trading standards would close me down, etc. When I called ebay they told me that of course it was obviously a mistake and they wouldn't do a thing. The guy eventually calmed down once he realised it just wasn't going to happen.

You can't force someone to honour a mistaken price where it's obviously a mistake and not part of a larger scheme of misleading pricing. If you took it to court, they would look at whether a reasonable person would know that it was a mistake. No reasonable person wwould normally expect to be able to buy a car for 99p.

ElefantEd

To be fair I've had cars which, if someone had paid me 50p for, I would have felt guilty about ripping them off.

nicholaswitchell

Hobbington wrote: »

Incredibly, I won an auction for a car on Ebay for 99p. It was a fluke - the car was advertised in the wrong section and there was no reserve.
The minute the auction ended, I paid for it via PayPal.

When I contacted the seller to arrange collection, he said there had been a mistake - he was using Ebay to advertise the car but wanted potential buyers to contact him directly.

Naturally I have contacted Ebay and PayPal but having done some research, the best I can hope for from them is a refund!

Does anyone know of any legal precedent for the seller to hand over the goods?
And dare I say, I would be grateful for facts, rather than opinions...

So someone made a mistake, an error, and you want to force them to sell you a car at a ridiculously low price.

I'll give you a fact: you are exactly what is wrong with society today.

samanthaknd

Do you seriously expect a seller to just hand over a car for 99p? He probably had his contact details in the description and wanted potential offers to call him. I think the only thing you can expect is your 99p back.

[Deleted User]

It is totally unrealistic to expect a car for 99p unless its a Dinky toy.

But if the seller has posted it up with contact details to deal outside of Ebay surely this is also wrong(fee avoidance etc) and should have been a Classified or buy it now option,

If it`s a genuine mistake fair enough no neg but if it`s a come on to deal IMO it`s a neg and move on OP .

VanyaHargreeves

If the advertised price is clearly made in error, the seller does not have to honour the sale. They just have to refund you. I would say that 99p for a car is a clear error, so no, they do not have to hand over the car.

Also, I'm not clear on eBay terms and conditions - it may be that a contract is not even formed until the goods are dispatched (although I doubt that), so you'd REALLY not have a leg to stand on.

Basically, contract law 101, no you do not have any recourse. Just get your refund and call it an amusing story!

Contains_Mild_Peril

I once "bought" a BIN item improbably cheaply, suspecting at the time that the price was a mistake, but I didn't want to query it and wait for a reply just on the off-chance that it was genuine and I could miss out because someone else would just click BIN while I was awaiting a reply. I paid via Paypal and was refunded, with the expected apologetic message explaining that the price had been intended as an auction start price but they'd mistakenly listed it as BIN.
I then got on with my life because I know I'd be wasting my time trying to force the sale even if I were the type to take advantage of an honest mistake.