I used to work for Bill and Josh and have seen and heard them confront deadbeat bidders (not pretty). They go out of their way to please consignors and most likely did everything in their power in this situation. I assume that similar to EBAY you can ban someone and block them from bidding but can not force them to pay.
Holding an item would seem to only complicates things so returning it and offering the next auction seems reasonable.
Lastly I am not sure but I don't think a single auction house would purchase items from consignors due to non-paying bidders as a rule of thumb, if this was the case it would promote shill bidding even further as consignors could drive up the price and know the auction house would bail them out.
I witnessed 1500 lot auctions where only 1-2 items were not paid for so I think this was an unfortunate albeit rare occurrence.
Last edited by ksabet; 03-23-2011 at 07:04 PM.
|