Ebay Pin Sale

I think eBay should automatically extend all auctions for the duration of downtime that the site has. It's the only truly "fair" way of handling these situations. The way I see it, the seller placed the item up for a certain amount of time, and it's not fair to them or the bidders, if for any portion of that time, the auction cannot be seen or bid on. I think this is a different matter entirely than simply saying that they should have had a reserve price on the item.

Think of it this way - if at the Gala event they suddenly stopped accepting bids due to technical difficulties (don't ask me how), would it be fair that the last highest bidder got the lot, when several people were waiting in line to make bids, but simply couldn't due to the difficulties? You might be pretty upset if you were not the highest bidder, but wanted to bid more and couldn't!

I understand your frustration, but I honestly feel that the decision that was made was the best one, assuming that the site was indeed down/offline for several hours and during the auction ending.

If it was NOT down before ending, then yes, I would agree with you entirely.

Either way, it's eBay's fault for not preventing these things to begin with.

I am so sorry this happened to you! That's certainly not a professional, nice, or even legal way to do things. As far as I know, unless the listing was cancelled before the listing ended, they have to sell it to you. It's a legal contract. Very annoying, but since its online, I guess the best you could hope for is a refund. Although I suppose that if ebay was down, they have a bit of an excuse. Still, I kind of think that the seller should take it up with ebay, not just cancel the transaction with you. I'd be pretty mad if that happened to me, especially for a beautiful pin like that. . Hope it all works out for you! :hug:

I wish US eBay over here was as serious as Japan yahoo auctions. They take reputation there very seriously and even one negative is seen as a terms for not buying/selling from them... Take your losses and leave "horibble" feedback citing unprofessionalism and and the breach of seller's agreement as well a quote of said cancellation. and if they post it again under that same seller id(doubt it that they will) contact eBay providing a link to closed auction and review...

Buyers are just as bad. Half of the buyers take forever to pay for items they win it goes both ways.What can be done not a thing. Ebay does not care its all about $$$$$$$...

I do agree with Ninpin . I wouldn't have had an objection to the sale being extended . However the shutdown only affected the final hour , my bid wasn't a small amount (about $20 below the most recent selling price) . This all could have been avoided had they bothered to set a reserve . They chose not to , to save on eBay fees I guess , so that's their problem .

My bid was £7 under what it had recently gone for and they were charging hefty postage fees on top. Hope all this aggravation was worth it...

At least my Story has a happy ending now
I was contacted by a fellow DPF member who I've traded with before contacted me and she's agreed to sell me the pin , plus another I'd been searching for , for less than my eBay pin !!!!!
Many Thanks to theAlyssadon .
In the future I've decided to forsake eBay pins and try here first :lol:
P.S My refund has gone through but still no response from eBay

good for you in the end

Yay! So glad you were able to get your pin here!

Congrats! Glad you were able to get one. Kudos to the kindness of forum members.

I'm postponing my hunt for now. The greed surrounding the designer couples has sadly put me off for the time being.

I've had a poorly-worded email from eBay customer services asking me to cancel the auction (grammar and spelling errors galore, very professional...) but the link to cancel still isn't working for me so...

Congrats and yay!! . Glad you got your pin in the end. And kudos to the great community here!

First off I feel so bad for you, I hate being pin burned While I fully understand the disappointment of the deal being cancelled and as a buyer I have a well known disdain for resellers and little sympathy for them in general, I myself would not be ok with technical problems during the last hours of my auction if I was the seller. If you were running an auction here on DPF and the site was down for hours, days etc. you would refuse to give up your pin to the highest bidder as well. I use a sniper program so I know for a 100% fact that my bids don't go in until the last seconds of an auction and I was probably set up to bid against you for the Cindy and my bids could not be placed, I was PISSED and was wondering what happened myself.

Regardless of circumstances, the seller should have made the starting bid the lowest he would take for it but most people never think that ebay might be down lol, it's not ever really an issue and people like the auction process as they think they might get lucky...as you did or thought you did

I personally HATE reserve auctions and refuse to bid on them at all. There is a seller that proclaims to be selling "1/2 a million pin in 180 days" (the number of days have been inflated several times lol) and all of their auctions have reserves as well as incessant shilling. They have some great pins but I have watched them sell and go back for sale over and over and over because of not meeting the sellers perceived value or because of the shilling/fake sale/relisting. I'm sorry but if you can't sell an item at what you think it's worth 3,4,5 times, it's time to accept that your hope or dream of a value is incorrect. We all dream of all auctions starting at .99 cents with no reserve and letting the actual market dictate the actual values of pins but we rarely see that happening. Because of that unless buyers STOP PAYING the sellers pin ransom the prices will always be dictated by greed and not actual collector values. That's why pins that sold for obscene amounts a year ago are falling and fast. Two years ago Rapunzel compacts were SELLING for $1500 if you could find them, now one sits on ebay with a buy it now of around $700 being listed repeatedly and the last one to sell sold for $450. Resellers greed causes huge bounces in values and it's a dangerous game to play when this kind of money is at stake.

As as for the legalities of the matter, ebay cannot FORCE a seller to deliver an item, yes they say binding blah blah blah BUT if a seller refuses to sell there official position is that "we cannot force them to sell it to you" they should punish them for reneging on the deal though because if they do it once hey will surely keep doing it. They do have the ability to suspend or ban sellers but I have never seen it happen for something like this.

I am soooooo happy that things ultimately worked out for you, we all want a happy ending, that's why we love Disney!

I'm really happy that you were able to get your pin(s) in the end! This is such a great community! Grats!