topic Re: Dodgy Practice in Buying

Dodgy Practice

dbbooks — Fri, 08 Jul 2016 10:14:58 GMT

I found an item I wanted yesterday at a price I was happy to pay. Cost AUD$15.45 ex UK.

I hit BIN and suddenly it's coming from the USA for AUD$34.97. So I didn't buy it.

On the Answer Centre yesterday I was told that a revision was made buy the company yesterday, but surely if you Buy the item, that she be the price you pay NOT have it doubled after you've hit the Buy button..

It's a dodgy practice at the very best - more than likely actually illegal, and ebay should get something done about it.

So don't get caught out buy these scammers.

Luckily I was quick enough to notice.

Re: Dodgy Practice

lyndal1838 — Fri, 08 Jul 2016 10:15:24 GMT

I would be interested to see the actual listing. Are you sure that you were looking at the listing on ebay AU?

I have dealt with that seller quite extensively and never had a problem.

Their shipping can be a bit slow but it has always been as per the listing.....as their ID says, it is 10 to 20 days shipping on a lot of items.

Most items have always arrived very promptly after shipping.

Re: Dodgy Practice

imastawka — Fri, 08 Jul 2016 10:16:05 GMT

I've bought from them too. Not a problem at all

I'd like to see an item number as well

Re: Dodgy Practice

digital*ghost — Fri, 08 Jul 2016 11:08:53 GMT

@dbbooks wrote:
I found an item I wanted yesterday at a price I was happy to pay. Cost AUD$15.45 ex UK.

I hit BIN and suddenly it's coming from the USA for AUD$34.97. So I didn't buy it.

On the Answer Centre yesterday I was told that a revision was made buy the company yesterday, but surely if you Buy the item, that she be the price you pay NOT have it doubled after you've hit the Buy button..

A seller can revise an item at any time, and the changes take effect immediately. It's not dodgy to make changes to prices, sometimes it's necessary and it would seem in this particular case, the timing was unfortunate (for you). It's not like the seller would be able to sit at their computer and know when to submit price changes in order to catch someone out like that. The changes are either a slow, manual process, or all done automatically via file exchange (and in any case, a seller has no idea when someone is looking at - or in the process of buying - their item).

If a buyer confirms a purchase for a certain price, then it doesn't matter what revisions the seller makes, the listing and price remains as it was at the point of sale, and point of sale occurs once the second confirmation is submitted, so it's always possible revisions could be submitted right up until that point.

Re: Dodgy Practice

dbbooks — Fri, 08 Jul 2016 14:13:35 GMT

Iwanted to see the actual listing again in order to take a screen shot. Obviously it was too late.

Re: Dodgy Practice

dbbooks — Fri, 08 Jul 2016 14:22:55 GMT

I understand your comments about timing of revisions and that it appears the one that happened the very momennt I bought was just a COINCIDENCE (oh yeah!)

BUT...

They should not be able to change the price once the item has been selec ted.. Thatt's what's DODGY and ebay should DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!

Re: Dodgy Practice

digital*ghost — Fri, 08 Jul 2016 14:44:57 GMT

@dbbooks wrote:

They should not be able to change the price once the item has been selec ted.. Thatt's what's DODGY and ebay should DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!

If I understand your first post correctly, you hadn't 'selected' it at the time the revision was made. Perhaps you were looking at the listing and seeing the $15~ price, but therein lies the rub - you were looking. When you clicked "buy it now" the price had obviously already changed, so the details updated on the next screen, enabling you to confirm for sure at the currently listed price, and you were in a position to decline that price. I understand why that would be disappointing and/or frustrating, but it's not like it's an intentional thing.

In order to be able to facilitate what you are suggesting, eBay would need to provide a way to basically deactivate any listing that is currently being edited, which could be feasible, but maybe it's not (I don't know, I'm not a programmer).

As it stands, a seller can either end an item and relist, in the process losing all of their sales history - which is actually important (and, if they had done that, instead of clicking "buy it now" and seeing a new price, you would have clicked "buy it now" and seen "this item is no longer available" instead, then a minute or two later a note would have appeared saying "the seller has relisted this item or one like it - view relisted item" and then seen the new price, thus leaving you in exactly the same situation), or activate the out of stock feature, edit it so that it shows as 0 available, submit that to the site, go back in and edit again for all the other changes, then submit to the site again - a convoluted process is ever there was one, just to try and avoid frustrating someone who may be going through the process of buying something.

Re: Dodgy Practice

dbbooks — Fri, 08 Jul 2016 16:57:49 GMT

There's a SIMPLE answer. If you advertise a price you cannot UP that price by revising. If you have mistakenly advertised, then DELETE your ad and start again. That way this won't happen again!

Re: Dodgy Practice

lyndal1838 — Fri, 08 Jul 2016 17:21:23 GMT

@dbbooks wrote:
There's a SIMPLE answer. If you advertise a price you cannot UP that price by revising. If you have mistakenly advertised, then DELETE your ad and start again. That way this won't happen again!

From what you have said in the OP it seems that the seller can indeed increase the price by revising the listing.

There does not have to be a mistake for a seller to revise a price, or any part of the listing. They can do it for any reason at all or no particular reason.

There is no need for a screenshot...just an item number would be great.

Re: Dodgy Practice

lyndal1838 — Fri, 08 Jul 2016 17:28:21 GMT

I have just re-read the OP and I think I can see what might have happened.

That seller has warehouses all over the world....UK, USA and New Zealand that I know of.

As the listing suddenly changed currencies and location I would hazard a guess that they were out of stock of the item in the original listing and have substituted an item from another warehouse in another country.

Re: Dodgy Practice

silversterio2 — Sat, 09 Jul 2016 04:05:56 GMT

"just an item number would be great"

http://community.ebay.com.au/t5/Buying-on-eBay/Why-the-price-change-after-BIN/qaq-p/1970672/comment-id/27568#M27568

Re: Dodgy Practice

imastawka — Sat, 09 Jul 2016 05:05:20 GMT

I can't say that I've ever seen that many revisions on one item!

The seller may make revisions during the listing period. However, the seller cannot change some of the information, such as format or duration of the listing

Re: Dodgy Practice

digital*ghost — Sat, 09 Jul 2016 06:12:57 GMT

@dbbooks wrote:
There's a SIMPLE answer. If you advertise a price you cannot UP that price by revising. If you have mistakenly advertised, then DELETE your ad and start again. That way this won't happen again!

From the outset, that seems simple, but it actually isn't. Ending an item every time the price goes up would render large portions of the site, including watch lists, and the search ranking system, virtually pointless (most sellers will tell you it is anyway 🙂 but sales history is one of the things that is known to carry weight). Saved search emails could also get quite annoying, because on a site like eBay, I daresay millions of prices are changed every day (especially when it comes to things like books - there is actually software available to sellers that detect price changes on items, and automatically match or undercut the competitor's price).

There are items that have been listed on the site for years, I have some myself that are 3 years old, and they would have been older if an eBay glitch hadn't caused every single listing in my store to end at once back in 2013. Ending them every time I need to change the price just isn't feasible, and would cause far more annoyance to more buyers. Prices change, sometimes they go up, sometimes they go down, it's par for the course in retail and the only thing that really happened here is that the timing of the price change was really unfortunate, but on the whole quite rare.

In other retail situations, sellers tend to have a close of business, so they can change prices etc when there is no possibility for a sale to be made. With shopping online there generally is no close of business (well, except for vacations and the like), which means some things simply have to occur during "business hours", when some people will be shopping - I don't sell internationally, so I can do those sort of things late at night in Aus, when it's very unlikely someone will be making a purchase. For a high volume seller who ships worldwide, they don't have that opportunity, and the only real solution for them, in the context of what I've written above, is to make the changes as and when they need to.