At 08:14 PM 10/13/05 -0700, you wrote:
On 10/13/2005 at 10:53 PM William Donzelli wrote:
There are plenty of extremely valid 2nd chance
offers. In the surplus
business, it is extremely common to buy a lot of one item, and if one of
the auctions does extremely well, only a foolish seller would not try to
take advantage of the deal. I use them all the time, and yes, they do work
enough times that I keep using them.
I'm talking about high-priced "one of a kind" items here, not lots. For
example, if this seller were to ask me about a second chance on this
instrument, I'd be very leery:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Civil-War-era-Eb-Allen-Hall-Rotary-Valve-Tuba_W0QQitemZ7
357151870QQcategoryZ16213QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
(It's an antique tuba with an opening bid of $50K).
Choke! Gasp! Gasp! I'd be very careful of ANY auction item that cost
$50,000! Just FWIW I've wondered what kind of idiot (IMHO) would buy a car
sight unseen from E-bay and pay for it within 48 hours! (OF course, BEFORE
you can arrange to get there and see it in person!) But that seems to be
the normal requirement in the auto listings on E-bay. As a buyer I'd NEVER
buy a car without the right to examine it in person BEFORE I handed over
the money. Just to back that up, let me tell you about my EX-neighbor. He's
a bit of a shyster and also has some scheme going. Ok maybe more than a bit
of a shyster. In one of his schemes he found out how much people were
willing to pay for NICE old four wheel drive vehicles. (Like $14k) He
bought a bunch of rusted out worthless 4 wheel drive Land Cruisers and then
brought his father up here from Columbia and had him patch the things up
with LOTS of Bondo and repaint them. (He was buying Bondo by FOUR five
gallon buckets at one time!) They looked great from the photos but they
were so rusted I doubt they were even safe to drive (huge holes in the
frames, etc). Anyway he sold four of them on E-bay to out of state buyers.
The buyers had a transport company pick them up and deliver them (IIRC one
to Texas, one to Maryland and I don't know about the others). AFTER the
buyers got them and found what a piece of junk they were they are all
screaming and making all kinds of threats but there was nothing they could do.
As Chuck said, treat E-bay as the jungle it is and you'll be ok. Usually!
Joe
--Chuck