Dratted ebay retracty trick....

So, there's two nearly new DS125's listed on ebay for sale with the dual TTL cord, July 16th. $800 starting bid, no reserve, which seems pretty reasonable. Check with seller and both strobes are recent serial #s (higher than 7200). Wait a few days and bid. Auction was supposed to end today about 3pm-ish (central time) and as of last night around 6pm I was only bidder still.

This morning the auction is gone and I can't see any sign of it on 'items I'm bidding on'. Search for the # and find it was 'ended early due to an error in initial bid/reserve', last night about 7pm, inside of 24 hrs of the original ending time, and is now relisted for starting price of $800, with a reserve which is clearly higher. I received no indication my bid was cancelled, his listing had no conditions stating he reserved right to cancel (e.g. for low feedback, international bidders, etc) and besides I've got none of that anyway.

IMO this doesn't pass the sniff test. Seller let the auction ride 9 out of 10 days and answered questions from me and others which would've forced him to log on and see his listing again, before SUDDENLY having an 'oops' moment. Methinks he simply didn't want to pay reserve auction fees and cancelled early when the bidding didn't seem to be heating up (I'm not fooling myself I'd have gotten them for the $800 initial bid - I fully expected to see others in the final 6-8 hours and had a higher max bid in the system already).

So...would you bid again for the same guy's item in the hopes you met his 'reserve' price? I sure ain't. Jackanapes doesn't warrant my trust anymore.

Report him to Ebay. You can only cancel an auction if the item is no longer for sale or there have been no bids (or no bids over the reserve).

James

I did; watching the new auction too to see if it suddenly disappears (or better yet, expires unbid-upon... :evil: ). Actually you can cancel the auction with bids, but only if you reject the bids, and not within 12 hours of the end of the auction. And it has to be for a legitimate pricing mistake or something. Which is why I think the 9 day 'oops' is full of puckey.

Still, as I said, maybe I dodged a bullet. If the seller's playing b.s. games like that to get another $100 - 200, then there's a chance there's something dicey about the items, too.

You could always bid $9,000 on them. <evil grin>

LOL... you're evil James!

And then retract my bid as a mistake? Heh....I kind of like that idea. But after turning him in it would be too obviously an on-purpose thumb in the eye.

Still, I'll have to keep that in mind.

Well bidding ended at $1220...which still didn't hit his 'reserve price'. I believe the way ebay reserve auctions work, since it didn't sell, the listing cost him at least 10% of the reserve price or at least $125 or so.

So he yanked the first listing just inside 24 hours from ending, and I'm certain (from watching the bidding on this one) that my initial $800 would have been bidded up to $1000 or $1100 before the end. Maybe I'd win, maybe not. Instead he just lost $125 looking for >$1200. Sounds like a zero-sum game to me.

Asking too much for used strobes no matter how good condition (basically seems to be after list price) and cost himself a setback in the process. I call that just desserts.

Am I a bad person? Maybe.