Saga of eBay Dodge Challenger Auction Continues
An eBayer, who went by the username of Hitman, placed a bid on a like-new, 2008 Dodge Challenger SRT8, placed by Glenn E Thomas Dodge Chrysler Jeep. At the time the auction ended, Hitman was the highest bidder, thus winning the item for $29,100. This price happens to be $13,000 less than what the dealership had intended to let it go for.
Glenn E Thomas Dodge Chrysler Jeep, who placed the vehicle for auction, claims that a Reserve Price of $42,995 and a Buy It Now price of $43,425 was initially posted when the car went up for auction. However, John Davis, general manager of Glenn E Thomas, said the day before the auction was to finish its 7 day posting, the dealership, hoping to generate more bidders, lowered the Buy It Now price. Here’s where this story gets real interesting.
According to Davis, the Reserve Price was never removed from the posting. He added, they have been successfully using eBay to sell vehicles for many years and swears that when the posting was edited to make changes to their Buy It Now price, a glitch in eBay’s programming somehow deleted the Reserve Price from the listing. Upon hearing of Hitman’s winning bid, the dealership called and told him that they could not or rather, would not take a $13,000 loss on the car. Instead, in keeping with their philosophy to make their customers happy, they are willing to give him a deal he would not find elsewhere.
Ebay was contacted and here’s what they had to say about the matter:
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. As a marketplace, eBay brings millions of buyers and sellers together every day, and have guidelines in place to ensure transactions occur in good faith. We hope the buyer and seller reach a mutually beneficial agreement on this.
Now unless eBay is willing to admit that a glitch played a part on deleting the Reserve Price off this listing, the entire transaction will rest completely with the dealership. This author believes that Hitman should be given the 2008 Dodge Challenger SRT8 for the price he won it for. After all, it wasn’t his fault the Reserve Price was no where to be seen. All sales should be final, regardless of a computer glitch or not. Besides, the dealership should have carefully reviewed their listing once they made their Buy It Now change to make sure nothing else did. What are your thoughts? We’d like to hear from you.
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Category: Dodge, Uncategorized
