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Daily Mail: Cancelling auctions on eBay

Happened to me just last week...won a secondhand CD for pennies and it also listed with low postage ( I'm in France so UK to France ) .Paid up immediately . Received an email 24hours later saying the item was no longer available ( ! ) .I didn't think you could do that on eBay as a seller by I can't be bothered to follow up on it.

I have won other things in the past which after winning for not a lot the seller sends email saying " we've just noticed its broken " ( memorably one item was a HP printer ) 'send it anyway' I replied'..." oh its too broken."

If he cancelled with 8 days to go then he only had the listing on for a day....isn't 9 days the listing time ?
 
I believe the DM peddles a narrative that in real life doesn't actually exist. This applies here, my reality is that after using eBay for many years, nothing has gone wrong. Equally, when I leave my home I don't seem to come across hoards of woke eco zealots, just mostly decent people and a few dickheads.
 
It happened to me too a few years ago. I won an item for very little, being the only bidder. The seller said the item – a cassette deck – had fallen and was broken.
I gave up, although I found this really suspicious.
 
TheFlash said:
The buyer is described in both articles as "pensioner Mike Godden". I don't know how many Mike Goddens there are, but one is the head of Sound on Sound recording studio in Southampton, who might know a thing or two about tape recorders.
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Interesting. I used to sell studio gear to Mike, back in the day. Genuinely nice guy.
 
As noted up thread, the story is in the Daily Mirror too.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/german-court-orders-british-pensioner-29550461

Now I’m not vindictive but in this case I’d make an exception. If the auction was pulled because the device wasn’t as described or not working, I’d make damned sure that when it was dispatched it really wasn’t working and had a couple of bits missing. Well the auction was pulled as not described wasn’t it?

On a general note pulling an auction because you’ve misjudged (I’m being kind) the value is a Schitt trick. But even so the actions of the buyer seem excessive to say the least.
 
Again I don’t see the logic here. The German buyer was a customer of eBay, therefore surely any case starts and ends with eBay as long as the seller was operating within the AUP? To my eyes the seller can only be at fault if it was a deliberate scam attempt (which it wasn’t as no money was taken at any point) and at that point it becomes a police matter. The very fact there is an option on eBay to cancel an auction for various reasons proves such an action was within the eBay terms and conditions both parties signed up to when joining the site. As with most websites agreeing to the AUP is a condition of usage. I can’t see the court ruling standing up to scrutiny.
 
Also... the seller claims that bailiffs showed at his house and he had to pay out the money.

Bailiffs from German courts ? I don't think so ...no jurisdiction in the UK.

Bailiffs from an English court ?....on what grounds ?

I would have thought that the most the German courts could do upon none payment of the judgement would be to issue an arrest warrant against the seller should he enter their jurisdiction ?
 
I never use auctions to sell anything on ebay- using a buy-it-now price would have avoided this mess.

Don't auction items without at least putting a reserve price on it. I wonder how many don't, leading to spates of "it's mysteriously become broken" lies after the auction end.
 
Joe said:
Also... the seller claims that bailiffs showed at his house and he had to pay out the money.

Bailiffs from German courts ? I don't think so ...no jurisdiction in the UK.

Bailiffs from an English court ?....on what grounds ?
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Exactly. At that point I filed it as yet more Daily Mail xenophobia. The latest in a never-ending ‘EU Gypsy Benefit-Scrounging Trans Boat-People Stole Our Grandchildren’s Future’ type manufactured moral panic one expects from Lord Rothermere’s shit-rag. The Daily Mail was only pro-Germany when Hitler was Chancellor.
 
I remember I sold a TV distribution amplifier on eBay once for 99p. I always start at 99p as it gets more interest, and ends up with a good final price.
This time, there was only one bid. The buyer was very apologetic, but a deal’s a deal. You win some, you lose some!
 
mercalia said:

British pensioner, 72, who cancelled sale of vintage tape recorder on eBay after noticing it was damaged is ordered to pay would-be buyer £11,600 as German court rules bid is binding under EU law
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...e-recorder-eBay-ordered-pay-buyer-11-600.html
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Both this and the Mirror article use pretty much the same content and narrative and exactly the same photo sequence.

I suggest this story was sent to them by a third party and both rags have published it with some minor editorial work but absolutely no attempt to check it for truth or accuracy.

Smells like hogwash ....
 
Nero said:
I remember I sold a TV distribution amplifier on eBay once for 99p. I always start at 99p as it gets more interest, and ends up with a good final price.
This time, there was only one bid. The buyer was very apologetic, but a deal’s a deal. You win some, you lose some!
Click to expand...

I auctioned a pair of JBL L36s years ago and they went for beer money. When the buyer collected he was very apologetic too - though he didn't feel compelled to pay any more for them ;-)

Like you say, win some, lose some - all part of the fun.
 
Back when I used to sell vinyl on eBay (over twenty years ago now) I always ran a ten day auction with a £1 start bid ending around 6:00 on a Sunday evening and being prepared to ship globally. It was bizarre, some stuff that was rare and valuable ending well under value, a lot of very average stuff making absurd money. I always took a holistic view and I certainly made a lot more than I would with proper fair pricing the way I do a shop listing.

I only gave up as even back then there were so many non-paying bidders etc and the eBay procedure effectively locked the unpaid items out from sale for 28 days to give the timewaster time to pay (which they seldom if ever did). It worked out at about 15% of stock ended up in limbo for a month which added so much work it wasn’t worth it to me even if some stuff I’d have asked a fiver for went for £80! I moved my sales here where I have a regular customer base and no hassle.

PS I made £hundreds from used LP12 springs/grommets too (advertised as used, no scam). Picked them up from a friendly dealer for nothing and they tended to make £40-70 a set! Good times!
 
The Daily Mail story seems bizarre. Ebay offers sellers an option to cancel a sale even after a listing has ended (for specified reasons).

If a binding contract has been created by bidding (several days before the auction ends), then logically you could sue someone for outbidding you.
 
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