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elgato
Joined: 24 Feb 2005
Posts: 17240
Location: Texas
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| Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 11:21 am Post subject: Lawsuit Raises Questions about eBay's Role in Auction Proces |
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A seller has sued eBay over the way its proxy bidding feature works - the plaintiff complains that in instances when multiple bidders have set their ceiling for the item, the final selling price should be the highest of those maximum bids - in other words, the bid ceiling of the highest bidder.
You can read about the lawsuit in Wednesday's EcommerceBytes Newsflash article, which includes a link to the fulltext of the lawsuit.
The lawsuit is perplexing, since eBay has had the same system in place for years and it mimics the "left bid" system that auctioneers use at traditional auction houses. The feature actually encourages shoppers who don't want to be on hand to participate in last-minute bidding to leave a bid - otherwise, they might forget to come back to bid on the auction.
http://blog.auctionbytes.com/cgi-bin/blog/blog.pl |
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cohibastore.com
Joined: 14 Sep 2006
Posts: 4908
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| Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 3:56 pm Post subject: Re: Lawsuit Raises Questions about eBay's Role in Auction Pr |
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"the final selling price should be the highest of those maximum bids"
this plaintiff and her lawyers are idiots
if a proxy bid was automatically set to the highest dollar amount a buyer was willing to pay, its not a proxy bid, or an automatic bid, its a contract bid and not compatible with a "live" auctions.
another shark that should be resting peacefully at the bottom of the ocean |
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things4u
Joined: 21 Jan 2007
Posts: 1332
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| Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 5:18 pm Post subject: Re: Lawsuit Raises Questions about eBay's Role in Auction Pr |
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a proxy bid is suppose to work the same as a live bid to the next highest dollar amount and not the end bid
if you put in a proxy bid of 50.00 on an item that is active and is at 28.50 and no further bids come you proxy should only be the amount of the next highest bid which would be at best 5.00 dollars more making the final bid 33.50 not the 50.00 proxy bid that is how proxy bids are suppose to work with auctions.
a proxy bid states that you would bid up to 50.00, not pay 50.00 if the bids don't go up from the lesser amounts bid and last received bid is less than the proxy bid. any licensed auctioneer will tell you that.
A proxy bid is not a binding contract of sale.
think I am wrong, check the regulations governing auctions and proxy bidding. So your thought about it being a contract bid is wrong, and proxy bids are compatitable with live auctions,like I stated check the regulations concerning auctions and proxy bidding, I did |
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Stockmiser
Joined: 03 Jun 2006
Posts: 1169
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| Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2012 11:54 am Post subject: Re: Lawsuit Raises Questions about eBay's Role in Auction Pr |
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Like I said on AB, it's an odd lawsuit.
The issue seems to have something to do with the perception of control that ebay has that keeps the bid as low as possible for the buyer - but this is basically true of all proxy bids.
But really, if you think about it, ebay isn't doing anything but offering up software that the buyer uses. The buyer is making an automated proxy bid - not ebay. In fact, if ebay didn't offer this I would imagine everyone would use some kind of 3rd party bid program.
The suit sounds very frivolous to me... |
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