Man Sues eBay After Misunderstanding The Bidding Process

Legal Issues

from the how-hard-is-it-to-put-in-your-highest-bid? dept

It doesn’t take much effort to figure out that the way to get suckered on eBay is to get into a bidding war. People get caught up in “winning” over getting a good deal and will go beyond what’s reasonable. If you don’t want to get into that situation, the best thing to do is to go, bid the maximum you’re really willing to pay, and leave it alone. If someone goes over that maximum, then forget it. It’s too expensive. If it never gets to that maximum, you’ll get the bid at the highest price bid by someone else, plus a small increment. It’s pretty straightforward. However, it appears that someone who didn’t quite understand the process is claiming that eBay cheated him out of $1.50. The details aren’t entirely clear of what really happened here, but it certainly looks like someone didn’t understand how the bidding process works. He received some sort of email telling him he would be outbid if he didn’t raise his bid — so he did. His claim is that he would have won at the lower bid, which is false. eBay wouldn’t have emailed him otherwise, and even if he did raise his bid and no one else outbid his earlier bid, he would have won it at the lower price. So, on the face of it, this lawsuit (which he’s seeking to turn into a class action) appears to have little merit. It’s likely that it won’t go very far. Update: InternetNews has more details about what’s happening. Basically, there are some situations where eBay may force your bid to be slightly higher than your previous bid, by forcing you to go to the next increment allowed. It’s a pretty minor point, though.