Please don't be taken in by this masterfully crafted story without thinking it through carefully. The OP on reddit plays on many of our collective sympathies, but he unfortunately omits any semblance of objectivity from his story.
== Things that make us sympathetic to the OP ==
- He's a redditor, just like many of us
- He just wanted the money she promised him, nothing more
- He couldn't attend the game - this presumes he wanted to
- He used Google Voice - cool
- She was mean to him (and most of us are men, aren't we?)
- He has just added a cancer-stricken relative to the story along with a donation button
- She writes poorly, he does not
== Context this story sorely needs but is unlikely to ever get ==
- Face value of the tickets
- What his sunk cost is for the tickets ($0? $50? $600?)
- How he found himself with only 24 hours to unload the
tickets
- Any sort of verification of the cancer-donation story
I'd say all of those are irrelevant to the central moral/legal premise which is: did she enter into a contract to purchase the tickets? If she entered a bid on ebay she is obligated to go through with the transaction.
That said the cancer thing is sketchy as hell in context, thanks for mentioning it.
I agree that the details are irrelevant to the legality of backing out on an auction. This story is compelling (and thus upvoted) precisely because of the emotional levers it pulls. The thread can't be solely about eBay policy.
It appears that the cancer relative donation isn't actually to the relative, but to a charity. I don't know if that makes much difference to your point, but I think it is the right move if you're going to put up a donate button.
I don't really understand why the story sorely needs those details. It seems like I would come to the same conclusion given any likely combination of answers to those questions. Even if his sunk cost was zero, it would not change my feelings about it at all. Also, if he's misrepresenting the truth in order to get people to donate to the American Cancer Society, that kind of sucks, but it's not that big of a deal to me.
When you hear what anyone says do you always look at every single point that makes that makes that person look good and assume they made it up?
I mean, how paranoid do you have to be to think that fact that he is a reddit user is him "masterfully crafting a story" that "omits any semblance of objectivity". Even if the rest of your list had made sense (sorry, it doesn't), that first point would have made me ignore the rest.
It's quite possible that one or more aspects are exaggerated or made up, as with anything you ever get told, but none of your points are "well that seems unlikely to the point that we must assume it's not actually true", so I don't see why you'd question any of it.
My view on this is probably a bit scewed. I grew up in an around auctions, currently work in an auction, my entire family works in auto auctions.
What happened here isn't even slightly uncommon in our industry, it just comes with the territory. What we sell is cars, thousands of them per week.
If somebody bids on a car, but then doesn't pay up...they don't get the car. They might get thrown into something called a "KO book", which means that they'll be banned from our auction, and everybody else's.
That's it. That's the end of it.
If one of our sellers pulled what this seller did, they would almost certainly be banned from ever doing business with us again.
While I get what you're saying, I think an important point here thats been mentioned several times is the fact that the tickets lose all value as result of the buyer backing out.
As a completely unrealistic example, imagine if by some magic, cars that weren't sold exploded. If you had a buyer back out, and as a result, you could never sell that car again, that person would most definitely be put in the "KO book". I think the situation is different, if only slightly.
There should be some understanding from the buyer of the tickets that backing out is potentially costing the seller a lot of money. For this, I can understand the sellers frustration, if only because he might have had several extremely viable offers outside of hers, that are now lost.
That said, I don't agree with his reaction at all. Is it not possible to try and contact the other interested buyers who were out bid?
Wow. A lot of people seem to forget how much money almost $700 is to somebody who doesn't have the $700. The women probably didn't have the money, and really wasn't trying to scam the guy, she probably genuinely made a mistake.
Pretend for a second that this wasn't ebay.
I go to best buy and start looking at TVs. I find one that is pretty cool, will be great for playing wii fit on, can't wait to get it home, and I tell the sales-person that I'd like to buy it.
On the way to the register, I realize "Wait a second, I'm living check to check and rent is due tomorrow. I can't afford a freaking new TV!", so I look at the sales person and say "Oh, I...this is embarrassing, but I actually can't afford this television at all. I'm really sorry."
Would Best Buy be in the right here if they sent somebody up to me to tell me "Wow, that is a really cool TV you just bought! My daughter realllly wants that exact TV for her dorm room and you totally bought the last one! I'll buy it from you for $1000!"?
Absolutely not. In fact, there would probably be a lawsuit involved.
Was it a crappy thing to do to try and back out of an auction like that? Yes, absolutely, but it was an even worse thing to scam the woman out of money that she said she didn't have.
Bad moves all around, in my opinion.
Edit: wow, reading these reddit comments is really, really disheartening.
edit2: I'm not saying that what the women did was okay. She will probably be banned from ebay. This is fine, this is what should happen. Guys, we teach children that two wrongs don't make a right, don't we? Is there a reason we teach them this or do we just like the phrase because it rhymes?
The women probably didn't have the money, and really wasn't trying to scam the guy, she probably genuinely made a mistake.
Yes, she made a mistake. But it was her mistake. And that mistake would have cost the seller ~$700, because the item she agreed to buy had a shelf-life. And her mistake prevents any other bidders, who presumably would have paid had they won the auction, from attending the event.
Weeeelll ... we don't know what the seller paid for the tickets. And yeah, the claim that none of the losing bidders was at all interested makes this whole thing, while an entertaining story, a little dubious in terms of believability.
Having a friend bid up your items is a well-known (eBay) scam. There's also just 24 hours before the game, so some people will already have found something, and this kind of "side deal" means that the buyer loses all protection.
In short, I can imagine the redditor having trouble selling these tickets.
But the seller made a mistake whereas her actions were fraudulent. The world is not black and white, for example, as your comment is downvoted you will be able to witness a variety of shades of grey.
Telling a salesman you'd like to buy a product doesn't contractually oblige you to buy, submitting an order for a product does.
Try calling an airline after you've ordered a ticket online to explain you can't afford it and want a refund. Just because it's ebay doesn't mean it's any different.
> Telling a salesman you'd like to buy a product doesn't contractually oblige you to buy, submitting an order for a product does.
When the order is binding, has much to do with how the ToS of the site/store is written. Some sites take the attitude that an order is not binding (on the buyer or seller) until payment is made. Some sites take the opposite view.
In some cases it gets rather squirrelly when you have a seller with a limited quantity of the item (like 1 or 2) and a buyer who wants to use a very slow payment method (check, MO, etc). What do you do if the buyer wants the last one, in a hot market, but also wants you to wait week +/- for payment ?
Actually, as far as airlines go, as long as you let them know within 24 hours you'll usually get a full refund no strings attached. Different airlines have slightly different policies. For some, you need to request the refund strictly within 24 hrs. For others, you can get the refund anytime before the next day ends. This is the case for all of the airlines I've had to get a refund with in both Canada and the USA.
Beyond that grace period they'll usually charge a fee of some sort, and the refund might be in the form of a voucher or credit.
She never actually got to the point of paying for it. Call a hotel, make a reservation, then don't show up. Does the hotel come after you for the money?
If they do, they would use the court system, they wouldn't use a well known con to recoup their loss.
A lot of hotels i've used in the last few years in the US and Europe won't let you book a room unless you give them credit/debit card details (certainly online anyway). Generally if you don't cancel 24hrs before, you either pay the full amount or a no show amount (varies hotel to hotel).
Certainly that's been true for every hotel I've booked. It's also true of some busy restaurants (they normally charge a fixed fee per head for no-shows).
Actually, most hotels have a policy that if you don't cancel your reservation at least 24 hours in advance, you will be charged for at least one night.
The major difference is that a ticket is a perishable item. She entered a binding agreement that, in exchange for her money, she can have the tickets. Had she not bid, and won the tickets, he could have sold them to one of the other apparent bidders and he, himself, would not be out any money. She was wrong. This was a mistake on her part, not his.
However, with that being said, had this guy not been a douche he would have sold the tickets to her at face value (maybe + gas) but nothing more. In the end, they are both in the wrong.
I totally agree with the whole "two wrongs don't make a right".
But I think that the very essence of the scam the OP pulled on the woman prooves that she did have the $700 dollars. If she didn't have $700 to spare on those tickets then she would have told the Payback user that she actually didn't buy the tickets and that he should contact the OP.
Instead she decided that it was ok to pay $700 to get a $400 cut...
Remember the saying: "You can't cheat an honest man"
If Best Buy had to remove that TV from inventory such that they would never be able to sell it to anyone else, they would probably pursue finishing the deal more vigorously.
I think you've just hit on two schools of thought.
One school of thought is due unto others as you would have them due unto you. I believe PG once told a startup that they should pay back all other investors first. This is an example of this. PG didn't come out ahead, but maybe the startup founders got to save face. Reputation is more valuable than currency anyway.
The other school of though is that we are to make the world a better place (more fair and just). This view of the world justifies almost any end. This seems to be the approach that the Redditor took.
sorry, but I strongly disagree with your logic here. an auction is way different from a verbal agreement to buy something with no signed contract like in your best buy example.
what if your scenario was an auction for a high value item like a painting instead? would it be ok for her to back out then?
Guys, we teach children that two wrongs don't make a right, don't we? Is there a reason we teach them this or do we just like the phrase because it rhymes?
Well, she may have made an "honest mistake." Or she may not. We can debate whether she should lose $600 or the author should lose the tickets, but that debate can only happen if the author made a decent attempt to prevent the loss, for example by offering the tickets second chance to other bidders or by driving down to the game and trying to sell the tickets for cash. He then could have pursued her for the difference between the $600 she promised to pay and whatever he managed to obtain for them using reasonable means to sell the tickets.
However, the author took it upon himself to defraud her out of the $600. He changed the situation from getting her to pay for the tickets she bought for herself into getting her to attempt to make money from arbitrage based on a false and fraudulent promise of his.
This is absolutely wrong, and it makes no difference whether she had originally backed out of the transaction or not. The story sets her up as a "bad woman" to play upon some of the most vile behaviours social animals have, namely believing that there are two classes of people, "good" and "bad," and the bad people don't deserve any decency or protection under the law.
I see defrauding her into paying for the tickets exactly the same way that I see bullying visible minorities or depriving persons we think are guilty of a crime of their legal rights. It stems from the same "They're a bad person, they don't deserve consideration" beliefs.
It may seem like a horrible Godwin-esque comparison, but how is this different from torturing a petty thief into making a confession? I don't mean to suggest that this is bad because "They might be innocent," I mean even if they're actually guilty, don't we as a society still want to treat them with decency?
This woman may have acted badly. But we should still treat her with decency, lest we as a society become vile ourselves.
In my judgment, both parties should be investigated by eBay. I don't know her side of the story, so I can't say what eBay ought to do about the choice she made initially. But if the author acted as described here, I would expect eBay to condemn his choice.
I don't disagree with you, but that's an issue for the seller, the woman, and eBay to sort out through their dispute resolution process and/or small claims court.
Nothing about her obligations makes lying to her right, just as nothing about breaking the law gives a police officer the right to beat a confession out of a suspect.
Contracts are frequently renegotiated because it's better for both parties than bringing in the big guns. He would rather sell the tickets now than deal with recouping the loss later, and she would rather get the tickets for her money than be forced to pay up for nothing.
Basically, he says, "You can pay now and get the tickets or you can pay up in small claims court after the tickets are expired." Knocking a hundred or two off the price saves him the paperwork involved.
It's still a bad idea to agree to contracts with the intention of renegotiating under the threat that it'll be easier than suing, but that doesn't change the fact that a new contract is easier to make than enforcing the old one.
> Another solution would be for them both to negotiate a lower price.
I disagree. If you want to get something for less than the offered price (i.e. OBO) you should talk to the seller before you place a binding order. Taking a valuable commodity out of play, to force a negotiation, is plain wrong.
This is sickening. 20+ upvotes on posts applauding this guy for scamming someone?
She did agree to buy the tickets in as binding a situation that can arise in an online auction, but to scam her to get the money is wrong.
I'm not rich and $600 is a lot of money to me. But I would rather eat a loss of $600 than scam someone to gain that money because $600, $6000, or any other number, isn't worth it.
Anybody who uses paypal should be aware that there is not an adequate system in place to insure an honest and amicable transaction occurs between the buyer and sell. That's just a risk you take for using the worlds biggest online auction site.
The way the poster went about getting his money back was absolutely stupid. Whether it was amoral or not, he could be criminally prosecuted for his actions.
What crime did he commit? He made a verbal offer to buy goods at a certain price, and then backed out. Did his word constitute a verbal contract? Those are notoriously difficult (read: impossible) to prove in court.
Whether or not what he did was moral, I know of no enforceable law he violated. She, on the other hand, entered a binding contract on eBay and then violated it. She could be prosecuted; he, as far as I can tell, could not.
He committed fraud, which is a crime and a violation of civil law.
Your characterization of his actions as "he made a verbal offer to buy goods at a certain price, and then backed out" leaves out the fact that he intended to back out all along, and that the lie was for personal gain. If he had intended to buy the tickets for $1,100 from her, he would not have first sold them to her for $620.
Fraud is deception with the intent of gain. By contract he already had the right to her $600, so he didn't deceive her for gain, but for equity. The woman would have difficulty establishing that she suffered consequent damages (an essential legal component of fraud) when she had already entered into a contract to perform the very same transaction.
== Things that make us sympathetic to the OP ==
- He's a redditor, just like many of us
- He just wanted the money she promised him, nothing more
- He couldn't attend the game - this presumes he wanted to
- He used Google Voice - cool
- She was mean to him (and most of us are men, aren't we?)
- He has just added a cancer-stricken relative to the story along with a donation button
- She writes poorly, he does not
== Context this story sorely needs but is unlikely to ever get ==
- Face value of the tickets
- What his sunk cost is for the tickets ($0? $50? $600?)
- How he found himself with only 24 hours to unload the tickets
- Any sort of verification of the cancer-donation story