Quote:
Originally Posted by Leon
As someone who has run a small online auction company I can safely say there is no playbook when the system goes down, for whatever reason, near the end of an auction. The auctioneer has to protect his consignors as well as hopefully not upset the bidders too. It isn't easy, I can assure folks of that. It is usually a very fluid and crappy situation.
|
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.