I have annoyed a seller

soolin

I think I may have annoyed a seller, but honest it wasn't my fault.

Saw a widget that I knew my son would absolutely love, it is used but looks in very good condition- this item usually sells for between £70-£90 second hand including postage.

This seller is a new seller, only 3 feedback for selling (lots as a buyer though) and put it up on a 3 day auction Sunday afternoon, so finishing later today. It went up as a 99p start with £22 postage but with a £99 BIN. So I decided to put in a bid of just over £50 and currently it shows I am winning at £25.

Had a really aggressive email from seller accusing me of auction wrecking as I took his BIN away and he demands I retract my bid and put the BIN back. Yet again I am apparently being reported to ebay for hacking him and allowing myself to potentially win this auction at 99p. (When he emailed I was the only bidder so it showed as 99p)

I have responded (possibly foolishly) explaining that any bid would knock out his BIN and that if he does not want my bid he will need to remove it , but that it will not reinstate the BIN and it will mean the only other bidder will then show as 99p. There is less than 12 hours to go so this could get a bit nasty.

Stevie_Palimo

Email ebay with a copy of his email to you and explain this prior to his complaint to them that will be one sided at least if they see how he has behaved it could then sort the issue out and as for buying I'd forget the seller and look elsewhere.

SeduLOUs

It's stuff like this that reminds me why I haven't been near eBay in over a year.

Shame really, it was the first place I'd go to for online purchases and getting rid of old clothes etc for quite a long time but there just seems to be far too many idiots and scammers loitering around it nowadays.

Cyclamen

hum sounds like he has confused a reserve price with a 'buy it now' price.

I have always been surprised thet the BIN disappears when bidding starts.. very much sound slike he didnt mean to auction but have a fixed price an dhas got lost in system. That however is no excuse for being rude to you.

forgotmyname

Lost out on a few items because the BIN vanished before i bid on the item, once i was just comparing the spec with a similar item but slightly different product ID.

Making sure the specs were the same probably took less than 10 minutes, but on my return the auction had a bid which wiped out the BIN.

Wouldnt have been so bad except they had it on a 9 day listing. I didnt want to wait that long so bought another one.

hollydays

Ha ha ha what a prat.
I think it's a lost cause. With people like this I've tried to gently explain what's going on , but it's very time consuming.
The best solution I sometimes find us to give them eBay freephone number and ask them to ring eBay and they will explain to him.

soolin

Just an update. I have been out all day and came back to an email from him. He basically says that ebay have confirmed that a buyer cannot renegotiate a BIN price and a bid is binding and if I win then I am obliged to pay the BIN price as per the listing. He goes on to say that I can either remove my bid or if I choose to keep my bid in place then it will be taken as confirmation that I will pay the BIN price as listed and any attempt to pay less will be reported to ebay who will apparently 'disable' my account.

I've not had a good day (my son's car has been vandalised) so was looking forward to a bit of a fight- unfortunately I was outbid in the last hour and auction has finished at £54 , won by a third bidder.

If I had won I would not have expected to get the widget, but I would have put up a jolly good fight, however I do feel sorry for the seller who has almost certainly met an ebay CS rep who is as clueless as him and who has mistaken an auction with a BIN option, with a straight BIN.

I do hope the winner of this item knows what he is doing!

Contains_Mild_Peril

It's possible that when he made the listing, eBay was showing the start price from a previous auction by default and he either didn't notice or erroneously assumed that specifying a BIN price would remove the auction option. Good luck to the buyer who will doubtless now have to try to explain to him how eBay works. eBay really should make it clearer in advance to sellers and buyers that a bid removes the BIN option.

soolin

Just to update this, the seller now has a big fat negative stating that they demanded more money and refused to sell item. So they obviously did try the whole' you have to pay more' nonsense with the buyer who eventually outbid me and won.