This story has the potential for a brother in law cameo.
This story has the potential for a brother in law cameo.
Part of me is hoping, deep down, that it transpires the reason the OP now needs this bike in a hurry it's he's sold it on on ebay for the extra £500 and his buyer, who has paid, is now getting upset with him over the delay.
Obviously that would be a horrible thing to wish on someone but it would make a wonderful thread.
Limitation of eBay. People get away with this all the time. Stop crying because you haven’t made the saving you thought, and move on. You won’t get anywhere trying to get what’s yours according to ‘the contract’. Accept that eBay is crap, and allows people to behave like dicks.
...Part of me is hoping...
I hadn’t thought of that.... but now I can’t think of anything else.
That would be brilliant.
Please let the next post be the “new buyer” that’s paid by PayPal gift 😂
IN an auction the contract is mnade the moment a winning bid is accepted. You could sue him thru small claims for your losses. You losses arre what - a couple of hundred? Small claims will cost you IIRC £60 plus your time to prepare the case plus the cost of bailiffs to enforce the judgement. forgert it and move on
I sold a load of kitchen stuff on ebay - brand new but surplus to requirements. One went for far less than it was worth and I also underestimate the postage. I messaged the seller saying - you lucky so and so - you got that cheap and I got the postage wrong ( after I had sent it. the sent me an extra £10. thats how adults sort things out
Cutting to the chase...
what bike was it?
And
how much was he ‘meant’ to sell it for?
I had always assumed the contract was only formed when you pay. Apparently this is not the case. The reason you can get away with not paying/refusing to sell on ebay is more to do with how you interpret what the damages would be.
The OP bid on a collection only item. Then told the seller he was going to get it couriered/collected by a forum member/local bike shop as he could not collect it.
If the seller had asked for advice on here everyone would of said the OP was scamming him.
The OP hasn't lost anything. He won the bid dishonestly, and there is no telling how much the seller would have got if the aucition was listed with courier as there would have been more bidders.
I've sold stuff on ebay previously and not used a Reserve and on a handful of occasions gotten way less than I thought I would, sometimes for expensive items. I don't use a Reserve deliberately because of fees, but mainly because it tends to attract more people and higher final selling amounts most of the time. When it has gone for less than I'd have liked, yes, to answer some people's accusations above, I have sold the item. It's a contract, which is legally binding, but it's moreover the decent thing to do.
I was going to be able to collect it, just not in the tight time frame that the seller wanted me to. Hence, I offered to have it collected from him, and eventually that I'd have somebody collect it on my behalf. Why would I bid on an item that I couldn't collect without checking with the seller first?It would not remotely be worth the hassle, even were it to lead to a bargain. I'm not even sure how that would be per se a scam, as some of you are suggesting.
Again, in terms of my loss and how that might be quantified, I don't claim to be an expert on contract law. As I understood it, where one party breaches a contract, the other is under an obligation to put them in the position that they would have been otherwise. Hence the notion of their encountering a loss, albeit one that is not necessarily intuitively arrived at.
I suppose I've had too many transactions on ebay where one party has cancelled because they've not gotten what they've been looking for. It's frustrating.
I won't be pursuing this, just I was curious as to where you all stood on this, and how you've dealt with it. It's interesting that so many are nonplussed by this behaviour and even going so far as to tacitly endorse it.
If you have plenty of experience of eBay, you shouldn't find this sort of behaviour surprising. Perhaps that is why people are trying to figure out why this case matters to you so much?
People are 'nonplussed' because precedence shows there is no point trying to pursue it. Solutions is not to use eBay to penny pinch, unless you can deal with the significant number of dicks that use it.
Ebay used to be a great place to buy and sell though, especially for rare and hard to find items. It's still the only place to go for such things in many cases.
It matters to me because I am limited to buying bike related stuff on here, which I am increasingly doing. The people on here are brilliant and I've no complaints, but you can have a wait on your hands should it be a specific item that you're looking for as the turnover here isn't as high as ebay. Likewise, I try to use the LBS as much as possible, and occasionally online merchants. That said, I prefer to buy certain items second hand, particularly where they're going to be used in environments where they'll take a beating and where I'd rather not use something newer.
Again, in terms of my loss and how that might be quantified, I don’t claim to be an expert on contract law. As I understood it, where one party breaches a contract, the other is under an obligation to put them in the position that they would have been otherwise. Hence the notion of their encountering a loss, albeit one that is not necessarily intuitively arrived at.
You are still in the same position you were before you won the auction, you just are not happy about it.
@aidensmith I was going to post a rambling message then I thought ah stuff it. I think that's what you should do in this case. Move on dude.
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I suppose I’ve had too many transactions on ebay where one party has cancelled because they’ve not gotten what they’ve been looking for.
Do you mean like this .....
..I’ll likely have to ditch the transaction, and my spidey senses are telling me that it’s for the best
I honestly can’t believe you are on here moaning about the seller, and waffling on about contract law after saying that just a few days ago.
You and the seller deserve serve each other frankly. Both people I’d not want to sell to or buy from.
"You are still in the same position you were before you won the auction, you just are not happy about it."
That isn't how contract law operates. It seeks to put the party in the position they'd have been in but for the breach, namely in my case in possession of the specific item or one like it.
nealglover, seriously, I am trying to be patient, but can you explain what you're not understanding? I was willing to cancel the transaction, as my schedule had changed, or rather the schedule of the people I was going to visit, and I was unable to collect the bike within the seller's tight time limit, which they didn't specify in the listing but no matter. I said that this was fair enough in the post you lifted the above quote from, so let's not be selective in order to misrepresent me. The seller was already trying to wriggle out of the sale prior to this, and, frankly, I was being philosophical about the cancellation, as they didn't sound like they were going to be a good person to deal with. I eventually arranged somebody to collect it for me, and when I informed them of this, they then came up with a new excuse. They thereafter simply stated that they didn't want to sell for the amount it went for.
Seriously, explain what's escaping you, or what you think precisely it is that I've done wrong? Indulge me.
Indulge me
Ive explained it pretty well already. If you don’t get it by now, you never will 👍
I was willing to cancel the transaction
Is that how contracts work then ?
One party is “willing” to cancel (because they screwed up basically) so the other party has to accept ?
Well, now the Seller is taking advantage of the same “loophole” you seemed to think you had access to, when it suited what you wanted.
Happy days.
That is how contracts operate, in fact. At least as I understand it. Not all contractual terms are specified, such as how quickly an item needs to be collected. Where there is ambiguity and the seller, says, after acceptance, that it needs to be collected pronto or I'm not selling to you, then, yes, I was willing to abort it. It's important that both parties in such a situation are reasonable, which I think I was, but clearly you think I wasn't
That isn’t how contract law operates. It seeks to put the party in the position they’d have been in but for the breach, namely in my case in possession of the specific item or one like it.
That is simply one possible interpretation of the 'damages' due to the breach. The other is that you have your money and no bike. The same situation you were in before the breach.
the seller, says, after acceptance, that it needs to be collected pronto or I’m not selling to you, then, yes, I was willing to abort it.
So what exactly is it that you are complaining about then?
He doesn’t want to sell it to you because you can’t collect it, and you are willing to cancel it
What is the issue. What are the losses you are supposedly suffering ?
You're either not understanding or being deliberately obtuse.
I was, as it turns out, able to collect it within his stated time frame. He then found something else to cancel it over, namely the broken caliper. Then he was straightforward and said that he simply didn't want to sell it for that amount. Read more carefully my now numerous above posts
The correct spelling is "fuelled" drlex. This isn't the USA you know. Tsk.
The correct spelling is “fuelled” drlex. This isn’t the USA you know. Tsk.
Well done, have a biscuit.
You’re either not understanding or being deliberately obtuse.
On STW, Shirley not?
Apologies, davosaurusrex. [strike]Cookie[/strike] Biscuit for the source?
Seller doesn't want to sell it for whatever reason and as you will have difficulty making him sell it to you just get over it.
If you accidentally listed a Buy It Now item for £10 instead of £1000 as you got the decimal point wrong would you still sell it for £10 ?
If you accidentally listed a Buy It Now item for £10 instead of £1000 as you got the decimal point wrong would you still sell it for £10 ?
Probably not, because it's a genuine mistake. You'd pull the ad as soon as you saw it, not wait till it sold and then certainly not suggest that the buyer recognises the mistake and pays £1000 as that's what you meant.
But that isn't what happened here. The seller listed without a reserve in order to avoid the reserve fee, and as stated several times above because (for some reason) low starting bid / no reserve gets more bidding, and more bidding generally begets higher prices https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=722484
So the seller clearly got it wrong to not have a reserve (rather than 'made a mistake'), opting to game the system knowing that if it didn't hit his unstated reserve he'd pull out and ebay would do SFA about it. And then when pulling out, appears to have fibbed about why he's pulling out (damaged brake) and then finally come clean.
So while I still think drop it and move on is the right option on the basis of there being SFA chance of getting anything out of this situation, I still side with the buyer as being morally and possibly legally in the right having won an auction in good faith that the buyer has now pulled out of, and don't see why he's now being painted as the bad guy.
[The collection / collection later / collection by a mate (helpful bloke off STW) muddies stuff a bit, but doesn't change the bones of the problem]
It doesn't muddy anything. It's part of the 'contract' that it was to be collected by the winner. It hasn't - that's the 'breach of contract'.
OP should pay seller compensation for wasting his time.
and don’t see why he’s now being painted as the bad guy.
He isn't the bad guy but just needs to see it from the other side. Reserve prices are fairly high which is why you can't expect people to pay them so this is the sort of thing that happens because of that. We just have to live with it or not use eBay if it upsets you.
I sell a fair bit on eBay and buy even more and sell pretty much every thing Buy It Now with immediate payment as to me the buyers are much more of a problem than the sellers.
OP should pay seller compensation for wasting his time.
Hilarious. Should I get compensation every time a buyer has wasted my time? How do I go about claiming that?
As hilarious as the notion that the OP is somehow in a worse position and should take the seller to the small claims court - as has been suggested..
Should I get compensation every time a buyer has wasted my time? How do I go about claiming that?
I think the first step is to get all indignant on an online bike forum about contract law, and invent some non existent “losses” that you can apparently claim.
The second step is to do nothing else about it.
OR
Waste a lot of time and money taking a bloke of eBay to court to claim some fictional “losses” off him.
The OP is just at the end of the first step at the moment. Will be interesting to see how he gets on.
Ive just had a buyer pull out of buying my flat on the day of completion, having strung me along for 6 months. What can I claim?
On the day of Completion or the day you were exchanging contracts ?
If it’s actually Completion, then you can claim a fair bit. Read the contract 👍
that it was to be collected by the winner. It hasn’t – that’s the ‘breach of contract’.
Strictly (and assuming the buyer has provided all the details accurately, as I'm just going on that side of events)
* Auction was collect only and buyer was going to collect
* Seller then said they wanted immediate collection, which created an issue for the buyer
* Buyer then arranged (or was in process of arranging) for a local collection who could then arrange onward delivery instead
* Seller then created a new problem about the brake damage, and then finally admitted the true reason for pulling out
I suspect if the seller emailed him now and offered to sell it to him at the agreed price, for collection only, then we'd be back on. I can't see in any form that the failure to collect a bike from someone who won't sell it to you is contract breach on part of the collection!
The 'muddy' bit was more in reference to the starting to sound like a contrived ebay scam scenario where the man with a van collects for you to ship it to the Ukraine, you get no paperwork and then a chargeback request comes, etc. Which i don't think is the case here, it's someone who genuinely is trying to keep his side of the deal, pay what was agreed, and get it collected from the seller asap. Just not by his own hand.
slow day theotherjonv? 😉
the house buying-selling process is ****ed up, it's disgraceful that people can (and do) pull out on both sides leaving not just you but also everyone else in the chain messed up both in having prepped for a move but also the costs of surveys, mortgage advice, etc. To draw an analogy to this situation - it shouldn't be allowed but the government (who make the laws*) / ebay (that decide what is and isn't accepted) let it happen.
* in fairness, not everyone that pulls out of a house sale does it because they got cold feet, and i don't know how to improve that process, i just know it's ****ed up having been on the end of it twice. Urine-footwear or Bombers, I'm afraid.
slow day theotherjonv?
Just fighting injustice wherever I see it 😉 I'm an low rent internet Matt Allwright (I was at school with him, FWIW)
And yes, this teleconference is going on a bit......
I’m an low rent internet Matt Allwright
Bizarrely I keep seeing him do piece to camera shots in the rec behind my house - unless its you out there!