$60k winning bid refused by seller

by Chris Dawson


Creative Commons License photo credit: buildscharacter

When an eBayer, going by the online tag of dooma350, saw a brand new 2008 M3 BMW for sale on eBay at $60k no reserve he decided that although the colour wasn’t his first choice, that he “was willing to live with it at a 60K price point”. Having placed a $61k bid he ended up winning the auction at the start price as there were no other bidders.

That’s where his problems began, according to his own account on M3post.com the BMW dealership that listed the car welched on the deal saying it was a mistake even though the auction title read “08 M3 LOWEST PRICE ON EBAY“.

This opens the perennial question - is an eBay auction a binding contract? eBay insist that “each bid you place enters you into a binding contract” and it’s generally accepted that if you win an auction you should pay and the sellers should supply.

What happens when the seller refuses though? Well when it’s a BMW M3 worth more than the $60k winning bid the dealer appears to hide behind the excuse of an honest mistake. With reports of the story spreading across the Internet, whether they’re right or wrong, the bad publicity has to be doing more damage than swallowing the loss and supplying the car at the price the auction achieved.

Tags for this post: , ,
Author: Chris Dawson
Posted at: Monday, March 24th, 2008 at 12:03 am
Filed Under Featured
 

Comments

4 Responses to “$60k winning bid refused by seller”

  1. northumbrian on March 24th, 2008 8:21 am

    no excuse at all, this is a dealer and a trader they above all others should honour the sale,
    there are not nieve housewives or students,

    if someone had bid too much they would not have refunded the overpayment,
    though I am not surprised we recently renewed our German car at a local dealership
    it was like meeting Arthur Daly in person
    I wonder if its transatlantic ?

  2. Livewire on March 24th, 2008 6:10 pm

    I remember a similar precedent a few months ago, involving an airplane, which I think was sold in Australia. The seller lost.

  3. Sue Bailey on March 24th, 2008 6:18 pm

    Livewire is correct.

  4. Chris Dawson on March 25th, 2008 3:59 pm

    Well some good news - an update from dooma350 says

    “This morning, BMW of Lincoln has agreed to sell me the car at a price of 60K, with certain conditions. I’ll be going over the conditions with the dealership tommorow, and I hope to have everything finalized by tommorow afternoon.“

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