American Beautys on ebay

[steve B]

Originally Posted by vintagetoppsguy

Steve, you’re wrong here and let me explain why. I used to own a company called Dealer Advertising Solutions, LLC in Houston, TX. We listed used cars (and sometimes new ones too) on eBay on behalf of dealerships. We created the listings (descriptions, digital photos, etc) and scheduled/launched the listings, but the dealership (usually the internet manager) was responsible for working their own leads – emails, phone calls, etc. Anybody looking at the car on eBay couldn’t tell that the listing was created by a third party. We got paid for our work whether the car sold or not. Anyway, when a dealership listed a car on eBay, do you think they removed the car from their lot? Certainly not. The car stayed on their lot and was also available to retail customers. Meanwhile that same car was also available on other websites such as Yahoo.com, cars.com, autotrader.com, the dealership’s own website and probably a dozen other websites. Again, the idea is to sell the car and they will advertise it on as many websites as possible...yes, including eBay. If the car sold before the eBay auction was over, the dealership would remove the listing from eBay. Very rarely did a car actually sell on eBay because most of the time a serious buyer would inquire about the car and the buyer and the dealership were able to work a deal before the auction ended.

Now, I know we're talking about cars and not cards, but the same principle applies. The bottom line is that eBay allows it and they absolutely have to. I know they discourage it and they don’t offer buyer or seller protection for off-line purchases, but it is not against eBay’s rules to end an item early (bids or not) to sell to another buyer. In fact, as has already been pointed out, one of eBay’s reasons for ending in item early is, “This listing was ended by the seller because the item was sold.”

I understand it's frustrating to bid on something thinking you have a shot to win it only to have the auction ended early by the seller. I've had it happen to me many times too. But, everybody is blaming the seller for something eBay allows to go on.

That said, I do have a problem with this case in particular because the seller's own description states, "THESE ARE TRUE AND REAL AUCTIONS BECAUSE THE E-BAY COMMUNITY DETERMINES THE SELLING PRICE."

Ebay motors specifically allows it. The main site specifically does not.
The page I linked to is clear about their policies for the main site.

Steve B