Ebay question: seller agrees to pass item to next-highest bidder.

[Terminusvitae]

Yesterday, I entered my initial bid for this item:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=190285655941

After entering my initial bid, however, I began encountering trouble with the page refresh feature, in which it would not simply state that my bid was too low, but that it was rejected outright and another bid needed to be entered. During the course of this problem, my minimum bid went from $100 to $160, which is the bid at which the auction ended. In other words, I won.

Before the auction's time expired, I contacted the seller about the trouble and stated that this was far more than I'd intended to bid for the item, described the problem, and stated that if the seller were willing to do so, I would forego the item and the seller could pass it on to the next-highest bidder, relist, or so on. The seller responded within minutes and agreed to do so, to which I replied that I would be happy to provide whatever information necessary to help.

Now, my question is: what exactly is the procedure for this? I understand that by winning the auction I entered into a contract with the seller to purchase the item at the end price. Though the seller agreed to offer the item to the next-highest bidder (who was less than $5 behind my final bid), should I nevertheless contact Ebay themselves to see what should be done, or should I let her (the seller) resolve this? I have been on the other end of this issue before, but it has been a couple of years, so I don't remember what I did so that I could relist the item and the buyer could avoid a Non-Paying Bidder black mark.

[ryborg]

I don't understand how having page refresh issues would lead to bidding way more than what you wanted. You still have to enter in the price you are bidding. It doesn't just jump ~$60 without your consent. At some point, you had to have entered that number, or a larger one, into the bid field.

Now, my question is: what exactly is the procedure for this? I understand that by winning the auction I entered into a contract with the seller to purchase the item at the end price. Though the seller agreed to offer the item to the next-highest bidder (who was less than $5 behind my final bid), should I nevertheless contact Ebay themselves to see what should be done, or should I let her (the seller) resolve this?

There is really nothing you can do at this point. It's up to the seller. Hopefully the second highest bidder accepts the Second Chance Offer or else the seller is going to be out of luck. The seller will likely file a dispute. For your sake, you want it to be a "buyer purchased item in error" dispute instead of the non-paying bidder dispute. If it's the error dispute, you won't receive an unpaid item strike, but if it's the latter, you will. Even with one strike, you won't be suspended, as ebay gives buyers a long leash.

[Terminusvitae]

We'll have to see. If need be, I CAN buy the item at the final price, but I'd simply rather not be required to do so. I could turn a profit off this thing eventually if I were to end up with it, at least.

And I know I'm fully responsible for scaling the bid up so high. I'm just rather annoyed that I kept getting so many conflicting messages about first bidding into the lead, refreshing the page, and then being told that bid was lower than the minimum required bid and needing to enter a new one. Unless Ebay has changed their format since I last used them and I just don't understand how such a new way works, I'm not sure what was going on. I'm still clueless about the problem, but I hardly duck my culpability in a 60% increase of the price.

[Terminusvitae]

UPDATE: She sent a request to cancel the transaction with a detailed note for Ebay's benefit as to the reason. I responded in kind and accepted the request, so I'm off the hook.

[Cornelius]

UPDATE: She sent a request to cancel the transaction with a detailed note for Ebay's benefit as to the reason. I responded in kind and accepted the request, so I'm off the hook.

dang, so you're not going to sell me that NES w/ ROB for 50 bucks?

[Terminusvitae]

Oh, I'm likely still interested in selling it. I just haven't decided on a good price for it yet.

[ryborg]

a detailed note for Ebay's benefit

Haha, there is no "ebay's benefit." Unless someone actually contacts ebay and says "hey, this guy tried to screw me, check out what he wrote," it doesn't matter what you say in the dispute. You could write "EBAY IS THE DEVIL. SUSPEND ME" over and over and over in the dispute and ebay wouldn't care or know.

[Terminusvitae]

Ah, okay. Makes sense.