What a douche!

So this is hilarious! Some newbie seller on ebay puts a Gateway Desktop computer with Windows 7, a Gateway DX4822...on ebay for auction. Basically you bid on it and the highest bidder wins. So after a few bids, I bid $80. On I think it was Sunday or Monday. So I never got an email saying I was outbid for the item. So while I bid $80, I was actually gonna get it for $66 total considering that was over the previous high bidders number of $65. This used comp would've came with a webcam, 23 inch flat screen monitor, mouse, keyboard, and dust covers.

I wake up this morning and check on my possible win, only to see the seller has cancelled the auction lol! He cancelled all bids and now I won't win the item simply because he cancelled the auction with two days to go. Obviously, he wanted more money for the item and was hoping that he could get the number up to about $400 or more. Well, didn't work out that way. And since this guy is a newbie with like 8 feed backs mostly from stuff he bought himself, he is not familiar with the bots some sellers use to jack up their auctions artificially. Which is actually why I trusted buying this unit off the guy because most sellers who use bots, are selling broken stuff and just trying to gauge the buyer into paying 3 times as much for broken stuff.

Either way, this sucks because I really wanted this comp and was thinking boy, I'd luck out at a $66 bid and price for a bundle like this. But he kills the auction. Which by the way is legal as long as he does it prior to 12 hours before the auction ends. Per E-bay rules. Still, what a douche.

 

To buy electronics and stuff sure. I use Amazon though for food related items or DVDs. It was just so weird because it was 2 days before the auction ended. So he could've gotten his money on the last day of the auction. Which is usually when people flood the zone anyways. I've seen auctions get up from $60 to $182 by the auctions final day. And plus, Ebay has a policy set up for people who want more money for their items. BUY NOW PRICE! That's what I do with my stuff. If I think it's worth $200 I do buy now. Auctions for me are a last resort when I can't sell anything for 6 months.

I auction it off. I've managed to sell an Old Navy giftcard, old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures, and a Fraggle Rock lunch box with a comic. All for a pretty good haul. So surely he can sell this without auctioning it off. A bundle like that would've easily sold for $200.

 

Too bad he cancelled the auction, he obviously wanted more money for his item, so I'm guessing that he will probably re-list that item again, this time with a set reserve amount or a "Buy it now" option. Check his account from time to time to see if he re-lists it.

 

I would be pissed if I had to sell someone a several hundred dollar computer for $66 - I would probably take a hammer to it before I shipped it off, lol. I though you could set a minimum starting price for the bids. I don't use EBay that much, so I'm not terribly familiar with it myself.

 

I feel so uneasy when I buy something online, I've never used ebay... how can you be 100% sure they'll send you your stuff? Also... do you really trust used stuff? Specially computers, I think it's really risky to buy this kind of things online and offline

 

That is more than a little douchey. As annoying as this incident is, at least you know not to bother with character's auctions. Its been rare that I've had problems with eBay sellers in about a decade of using that site, but I've noticed the bad ones are really bad.