I was very excited to win an auction for a pair of designer black leather stiletto boots recently. I've intentionally not mentioned the brand of the boots to protect the identity of the seller, and me, the buyer. However, here is another online photo of these gorgeous boots, which have an original retail of $795 and are hard to find online. This style was also worn by a character on the tv show, "Gossip Girl." And that show featured some incredible boots!
The bidding started at $20 with no reserve (important to note this!) and I won the auction for $62 plus shipping, or so I thought. I had already paid when the seller sent me an e-mail saying that she was going to have to ask me for $75 more to complete the sale or she was going to have to refund my money. Wow, in all of my years of buying on eBay, I have never had this happen to me. There have been sales of my own where I was disappointed with the outcome, but I never thought about asking the buyer for more money.
I looked at the seller's feedback and she's had fewer than 20 ratings and has been an eBay member for less than six months. I chalk it up to lack of experience and apparently not knowing how to set a reserve price or that an eBay auction is legally binding, or so I thought. Just out of curiosity, I checked out the options for reporting the item and came to this:
Exactly what information in the listing exempts the seller from completing a transaction for any reason? It sounds to me like eBay has given sellers a major loophole if they want to get out of completing a transaction. Interesting that I'm just now finding out about this.
I responded to the seller that while I was prepared to spend up to $100 plus shipping for the boots, I could not agree to her price of $150 and suggested that she should have set a reserve. She came back with a counteroffer of $135 including shipping, and it was tempting. However, I decided to refuse the offer on principle, and hopefully provide a learning experience. I couldn't stop thinking that I had won the boots for $62 and the seller wanted more than double that to actually complete the sale!
Although the seller refunded my money the day after I refused her counter-offer, I left neutral feedback when I probably should have left negative. I'm sorry, but you shouldn't be able to change the terms of the auction after the auction is over!
Fortunately, I have these designer boots saved as a "favorite search" on eBay and hope they'll come up again for sale in my size, but from a different seller!
Be sure to post if you've had a similar eBay horror story or if you think I should have handled this differently!
