Any eBay legal experts here?

[CDNSushi]

Boy, am I torqued!

I bought something from an eBay store the other day, and agreed to pay $53.99. Now, it seems that the seller wants to change the price AFTER the auction is over! When I try to "pay now" with Paypal, the system pre-populates a price of $93.01 -- $40 more than the price I agreed to pay.

Now, when you commit to buy an item, does that not create a legal agreement with the seller? General contract law states that in order for a contract to exist, you must have offer, acceptance and consideration. In legal cases involving eBay, I honestly don't know what constitutes as consideration. Is negative feedback sufficient for establishing consideration? As for offer and acceptance, it should be clear that both exist.

What says the rabble?

This is what I have in my email box and My eBay page.



This is the garbage I get when I try to pay. Apologize my ***! How can this even be legal???

[sathor]

wow, never seen that happen. ***? I'd ask the seller and file a complaint.

[sathor]

As an afterthought, did it specify worldwide shipping at the listed amount, or just as domestic. could the price change be related to your location?

[WhoDeySchenk]

WOW, sounds like scam of some sort.

[Ruanaidh]

What a bummer. At least they give you the option to opt out.

[lickstone]

They can straighten it all out for you.

Boy, am I torqued!

I bought something from an eBay store the other day, and agreed to pay $53.99. Now, it seems that the seller wants to change the price AFTER the auction is over! When I try to "pay now" with Paypal, the system pre-populates a price of $93.01 -- $40 more than the price I agreed to pay.

Now, when you commit to buy an item, does that not create a legal agreement with the seller? General contract law states that in order for a contract to exist, you must have offer, acceptance and consideration. In legal cases involving eBay, I honestly don't know what constitutes as consideration. Is negative feedback sufficient for establishing consideration? As for offer and acceptance, it should be clear that both exist.

What says the rabble?

This is what I have in my email box and My eBay page.



This is the garbage I get when I try to pay. Apologize my ***! How can this even be legal???

[CDNSushi]

As an afterthought, did it specify worldwide shipping at the listed amount, or just as domestic. could the price change be related to your location?

Good question (as it's no secret that I'm in Japan)... But because the seller is REALLY sticky about buying/paying/shipping within the lower 48 continental states, I made sure to comply with all that garbage too...

I.e. I have a U.S. bank account and VISA debit card (in NC) linked to a U.S. Paypal account whose address is in VA. My shipping address is in WA.

Yeah, it really sucks, doesn't it? We'll see what comes out of this. I have a sneaky suspicion though.

eBay's probably gonna say: "Not our call. Talk to the seller." Seller's gonna say, "Yeah, we changed the price. Take it at the new price or bugger off." To which, I'm gonna say, "Not a chance, buddy. Give it to me for the price we agreed or I'll give you neg. feedback." To which he'll respond: "Do your worst. We have 1000gazzilion positive feedbacks to your ONE negative. Bugger off!" So, I'll post negative feedback because it'll make me feel better, the situation won't be resolved and everyone will be happy except me, who's still product-less.

[pdcorlis]

You may want to take a deep breath here. I suspect your mind reading act is no better than mine - so you won't really know how this will play out until it plays out... Don't get me wrong, I am genuinely sorry this deal has gone south in a big way but at least you have the option to walk away without any financial damage.

You may find you are pleasantly surprised by eBay's response to this deal buster. But then, you won't know that until you contact them.

[Cavebear58]

Looks to me like this is an ebay shop purchase and not an auction one. I suspect that they are in the right to do this. It's a bit like going into a real shop, seeing something wrongly priced, being told so by the Assistant and offered the chance to have it at the proper price or not at all. eBay has some odd functions in its software sometimes and items listed can't always be changed, so they may have not done this deliberately but are correcting a mistake.

Unless it is REALLY unique, I'd be inclined to leave it and try to find another.

Good luck, Graham.

[CDNSushi]

Looks to me like this is an ebay shop purchase and not an auction one. I suspect that they are in the right to do this. It's a bit like going into a real shop, seeing something wrongly priced, being told so by the Assistant and offered the chance to have it at the proper price or not at all. eBay has some odd functions in its software sometimes and items listed can't always be changed, so they may have not done this deliberately but are correcting a mistake.

Unless it is REALLY unique, I'd be inclined to leave it and try to find another.

Good luck, Graham.

Point well taken, and I'll likely have to do that in the end. But I don't think your analogy is quite right. This is something that I recently studied in my business law course. In a bricks & mortar store, there a contract doesn't exist between me and the store when I take an item off the shelf and bring it to the till where they realize it was priced incorrectly. Me taking the item to the till constitutes an "offer" but there is no "acceptance" or "consideration" on the part of the shopkeeper. This situation is different.

When eBay informs me that by clicking "proceed" or "agree" or "ok" or whatever the button is, I am legally binding myself to purchase something, then to me that means I have entered into a legal contract. It also means to me that the seller has agreed to accept my offer and should not bar me from consummating the terms of the agreement afterward. If, after clicking "agree" I am bound to pay for the item I bought, then by the same token the seller should be bound to sell the item at the agreed-upon price. Otherwise, it's a simple (twisted) case of bait & switch.

This should actually all be covered by Article 2 of the UCC (uniform commercial code). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Commercial_Code