eBay

jahankins · ‎05-25-2018

There's a seller that keeps listing the same cars over and over in a no-reserve auction. When the auction ends, the seller demands a much higher price for the car (like almost double). When the buyer balks, the seller just relists it.

This same cars have been listed many times. The completed items search for this seller shows that:

If you look at the seller's feedback, a few people have left negative feedback:

One of them actually said that he claimed that he forgot to set a reserve. That same car has sold twice since then. Obviously, he did not "forget".

My question is why does ebay allow this flagrant behavior to continue? This sort of thing means that you can't trust that if you're the high bidder on a no-reserve auction that you'll actually be able to purchase the item.

None of the reporting tools allow you to actually tell ebay what you're reporting. You can only choose from a list. I tried reporting one of the listings for "fee avoidance", but the ebay drone that looked at it probably spent about ten seconds and said "I don't see anything wrong with this listing."

legitimate_bidder · ‎05-25-2018

I doubt that Ebay cares. They have so botched-up Ebay Motors, that it's become unfruitful to try and sell here, legitimately- so at this point, Ebay is probably just happy to collect listing fees from anyone who will still list.

Plus, there's really no way to prove what the dealer is doing, unless you win an auction, and then actually pay for the vehicle and don't get it- and who is going to risk their money doing that?

The only thing that might help, is if every winning bidder to whom they refused to sell a car to for the auction price, were to file a non-performing seller report with Ebay. Enough of those, and Ebay might do something. Otherwise, to Ebay, it probably just looks like the all-too-common non-paying bidder scenario.

And why bother, anyway? If the stealership wants to waste their money perpetually listing cars that never sell, I'm sure Ebay is happy to collect their fees....while the dealer advertisises his own dishonesty.

mr.elmwood · ‎05-25-2018

Vehicle sales are non binding. eBay pretty much gave up on vehicles years ago. Then they changed the rules about fees so that all of these non-completed transactions generated a fee. To dealers, this is very cheap advertising. All they are really doing i smining for leads.

Bid all you want, that will lead to nothing. They want you to call, visit, test drive, get in their cl;utches, make an offer.

eBay is fully aware of all of this.

atikovi · ‎05-25-2018

@jahankins wrote:

My question is why does ebay allow this flagrant behavior to continue?

Because Ebay gets paid for every lisiting.

atikovi · ‎05-25-2018

@jahankins wrote:
This sort of thing means that you can't trust that if you're the high bidder on a no-reserve auction that you'll actually be able to purchase the item.

Any no reserve vehicle listing will end up like that or the seller will have his own bidders pushing up the price. It didn't help that Ebay slapped an exorbitant $40 fee on reserve auctions recently.