Quote:
Originally Posted by Snapolit1
System going down, near the end of the auction, for whatever reason . . . .
Seems to be something we have now seen with most of the major AHs in the last year. Very odd.
If I was the leading bidder on a high priced item and someone then proceeded to bid in extended, extended hours, moving my bid up higher after they had days to do so . . . I'd think long and hard about whether to honor my commitment. Is there boiler plate language in the terms of auction basically saying "you still need to honor you commitment to pay regardless of what crazy things goes wrong with the closing of the auction regardless of how ridiculous it is. . . ." I'm sure there is. If I thought something potentially fraudulent was going on my response may well I'm withdrawing my bid. If that's not acceptable perhaps my second response would be let's litigate it, and I'll need to see all your documents (including emails) as to exactly what went wrong and why so I understand what reasonable precautions you took before and during the problem to protect me a customer. Maybe then I'll make a decision as to how I want to proceed.
And I'm not suggesting that any of these incidents were problematic. I have no proof of that. But as a customer of all of them this is alarming. Particularly where the AH and their employees can bid on an item.
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I was the winning bidder on a lot and had reached my limit - when I saw I was losing it, I bid on and won a different lot. The next morning I had an invoice for 2 lots (the first one at my last bid that had been outbid!). I called the auction house and refused to pay for the first lot - they let it go and the lot showed up in their next auction - the auction company - Mastro!