Dealerships and Ebay just don't mix -- $29k Challenger SRT deal or bust

03-18-2010 | 10:20 AM

#1

maskedferret

Thread Starter

Oooh, shiny!

iTrader: (1)

Joined: Oct 2006

Posts: 908

Likes: 2

From: St. Louis, MO

Dealerships and Ebay just don't mix -- $29k Challenger SRT deal or bust

http://www.challengertalk.com/forums...8/index15.html

Anyone remember the Hyundai snafu?
http://jalopnik.com/5453145/kentucky...s-buyer-psycho

Another (BMW):
http://www.autoblog.com/2008/03/23/b...t-want-to-hon/

EDIT: Looks like someone already posted it up in the lounge:
https://www.rx8club.com/lounge-4/dealer-ebay-trying-screw-over-winning-buyer-193354/

Last edited by maskedferret; 03-18-2010 at 11:10 AM.

Reply Like

03-18-2010 | 10:37 AM

#2

moonkid

Registered

iTrader: (2)

Joined: Apr 2009

Posts: 317

Likes: 1

From: winston salem NC

wow thats some crazy ****.....45k car sold for 25k n now they want to back down cuz they screw up...... i dont know what would do....

Reply Like

03-18-2010 | 10:48 AM

#3

Krazed_Rx8

Registered

iTrader: (5)

Joined: May 2008

Posts: 1,431

Likes: 1

From: Glendale, California

I hope he gets the car.

Reply Like

03-18-2010 | 11:35 AM

#4

maskedferret

Thread Starter

Oooh, shiny!

iTrader: (1)

Joined: Oct 2006

Posts: 908

Likes: 2

From: St. Louis, MO

On Jalopnik:
http://jalopnik.com/5494837/did-chal...-pricing-error

Autoblog:
http://www.autoblog.com/2010/03/16/y...-deal-for-new/

Last edited by maskedferret; 03-18-2010 at 11:48 AM.

Reply Like

03-18-2010 | 12:50 PM

#5

nycgps

Out of NYC

iTrader: (1)

Joined: Jun 2005

Posts: 19,881

Likes: 32

From: Planet Earth

wait, let me get this straight.

While its perfectly ok for dealerships to screw people up, but when dealership screw up for some reason its never dealerships's fault ?

wow ...

I highly doubt this is a ebay system error.

and I truly hope this guy get his car.

Reply Like

03-18-2010 | 01:04 PM

#6

staticlag

The Professor

Joined: Aug 2004

Posts: 3,479

Likes: 6

From: Omaha, NE

Personally I think ebay is 100% marketing gimmick and shouldn't be legally binding.

Though I do hope the dealership gets it on this one, because I'm sure they have fleeced more than their share of suckers.

Reply Like

03-18-2010 | 01:45 PM

#7

laythor

I zoom therefore I am.

Joined: Mar 2007

Posts: 4,919

Likes: 12

From: San Jose, CA

the bad press is most likely going to force the dealership's hand like it has with all the other ebay situations like this

Reply Like

03-18-2010 | 05:00 PM

#8

SheffieldSteel

Intended acceleration

Joined: Feb 2010

Posts: 128

Likes: 0

From: Durham NC

I think I've figured it out

According to the dealer, the reserve price disappeared during the auction. They allege a fault in eBay software.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jalopnik.com

Prior to that day, the car had been priced higher, but Brad went into the listing and lowered the "Buy it Now" price of $43,400 with a reserve of $42,995 on the last day of the auction hoping to lure in more bidders. Unfortunately the reserve disappeared and they didn't realize it.

Ebay have denied that there is any fault in their software.

Quote:

Originally Posted by eBay

Lowering the Buy It Now price does not trigger the reserve price to disappear. There are no other reported cases of this happening. If the Buy It Now price is lowered below the reserve price, the latter is reduced to the same amount as the new Buy It Now price. The help pages on our web site provide more details around lowering a listing price: http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/lower_price.html. Not knowing the details behind how this particular listing was changed, we are not in a position to comment on the result of the transaction.

So here's how it happened.

(1) The dealer lowered the Buy It Now price. One of the following occured...
- they deleted the current reserve price
- they typed over it with a zero
... and the software executed the algorithm described above (emphasis mine) which set the reserve price to zero.
(2) The dealer entered the correct Buy It Now price. The eBay software did not change the reserve price from its value of zero. Why should it?
(3) The dealer did not notice that the reserve price was zero.
(4) The auction continued.

Plausible?

Last edited by SheffieldSteel; 03-18-2010 at 05:03 PM.