Quick eBay Ethics Question
 

I bring this question here because I think a lot of members have quite a lot of experience of buying & selling bike parts on eBay.

An item I bid on reached £139, while my maximum bid was £137.

A few days later, the seller contacted me to tell me that the highest bidder wasn't paying so he might offer it to me. I wrote back, asking how it would work and pointing out that if the non-paying highest bidder hadn't bid, I would have got the item for £103, £2 more than the next highest bidder.

I've just received a 2nd Chance Offer to buy the item for £137. Is that allowed? It certainly doesn't seem ethical to me.

FWIW, I've written back declining the offer and restating my thinking on it. This has happened to me once before in my 7 or 8 years of buying on eBay, about 5 years ago with a Campag Rally RD, and that time, when I pointed out the same points as on this occasion, the seller got quite shirty and complained he was only trying to do me a favour (!?).

There seems to be nothing on this situation on eBay and I was wondering if there was something I was ignoring or missing...

You're free to accept or decline the offer. I don't think there's an ethical issue here. The seller is also free to relist if he/she doesn't like your counter offer.

I agree with your position, but then again, he's not asking you to pay more than you bid.

I have heard that there are scams associated with second-chance offers; not sure how that works, but I would be careful.

If you counter offer (say 115), does that go through eBay officially, as a second-chance counter offer, or is it on the side? If the former, I'd say go for it. If not, it sounds dodgy.

It can be a scam. The buyer can have a shill drive up the bidding in order to have your bid end at your maximum rather than what would have been the competitive price. Let the buyer re-list it and bid again if you want it.

When you send a Second Chance Offer, the bidders you've sent the offer receive a message asking if they'd like to buy the item at a Buy It Now price equal to their last bid amount. It's up to the buyer to decide whether to accept the offer.

Seller doesn't seem to have a choice on the amount. Whether they shilled it is another matter.

I think the second chance offer would come in at £137. You've been outbid by £2, so on the sellers bid list the final bid that he see's from you will be for £137.

There is a big problem with people using other Ebay ID's or friends to run up items so they become the winning bid and then offer the item as a second chance. So, in effect you are paying the maximum it was worth to all other Ebay bidders.

If its a week or so after the sale end date its probably a genuine offer. A few days seems quite quick to not have resolved something with the original winning bidder.

I'd wait and see if they relist and maybe bid again.

Yep, second chance offer is automated, it goes at your highest bid, which is what you were offered. Take it or leave it, its up to you.

There are a lot of deadbeat buyers out there, so this offer could be very legitimate, or it could be fishy.


I've had 14 deadbeats in the last 18 months. Just got #15 this week. In my case, I have it automated that the non-pay notice goes to the buyer after four days (ebay does it for me), I wait another week for possible payment, then ebay refunds my fees and the second chance offer goes out. Most of the time (90% or more), people turn down second chance offers. There seems to be this assumption that it was a fishy auction (shill bidding or whatever) versus a deadbeat winner. A lot of buyers on ebay never sell, and a lot of sellers never buy. So the two groups don't understand each other very well.

Give us a count on the days between the end of the auction and your second chance offer, that will tell us whether it is legit or not.

I have gotten second chance offers on various supply items, got one last week on shipping labels I bid on within 4 hours of the close of the auction. Seller sells thousands of labels a week, so anyone bidding on his labels likely gets a second chance offer (he starts the auctions high enough that he is satisfied with any bids).

You were willing to pay 137 pounds for it before, so what is wrong with paying 137 pounds now? If you wait for it to be resold, the next auction could go higher, you never know. So passing on an item at a price you were willing to pay is kind of odd. My max bid is always low enough that I would gladly accept a second chance offer.

As far as whether you would have won the auction at 103, that's really hard to predict. As the price went up, other potentially interested bidders lost interest. So had the price not gone up, there may have been new bidders enter into the auction.

I take Second Chance offers when the winning bid is completely removed from the final price. Since this bid was in effect a fraud, I won't pay the increased bid increment even if it was my "max" bid. Just because I win an auction at my "max" bid doesn't mean I'm all that happy about it.

Last time this happened I got a set of rims $30.00 under my max bid when the fraud bid was removed completely. Thus paying a fair price for the rims, not my maximum price.

Replying to several points raised... it's 3:30 AM here...

The 2nd Chance Offer came in 4 days after the close of bidding.
My bid came in 5 seconds before the close of auction. The bid stood at £103 up until my bid, which triggered the winning bidder's previously entered maximum bid. Therefore, other bidders losing interest is not a factor. There were only 3 bidders: me, the non-payer and the person who bid up to £101.

I fully appreciate that I am free to accept or decline the 2nd Chance offer but I think the whole point of an auction is to find what the market value of an item is, based on what paying bidders take the price up to. I also see the point that I valued the item up to £137 and so what do I have to complain about? Only that the maximum you are willing to bid is not supposed to be revealed to other parties, even if you win the auction. In this situation, it has been revealed owing to someone bidding in bad faith. I know that had I been the seller I would have felt obliged to offer the item as if the non-paying bidder hadn't entered the bidding at all. Otherwise, everyone's maximum bid would automatically register rather than taking the bidding up by increments as others bettered it.

I take the point that eBay automatically sets 2nd Chance offers at the next highest bid but I am surprised at this. If the item is re-listed, I shall probably bid again as I do need the part. Whether I'll go as high, I'm not sure.

I have taken 2nd Chance offers before, when sellers have more than one of the same item and on a couple of occasions when there were several other bidders and the winning bidder had cancelled his bid (I don't know how that happens...) but without the winning bidder there wasn't this issue of a large gap between my losing bid and the next losing bid, if you see what I mean. Gotta sleep but I will be following this tomorrow afternoon.

Thanks everyone who has taken the time to post!

wrk101 has it right.
Lots of deadbeats, how many times do I have to hear "I sold the X that this went to" or otherwise dont need it.
Cost of doing business but if more would buy and sell they'd see how it all works out.

As a buyer, I've lost two auctions to people buying the bikes I had bid on at the last minute over the past few months. The first time, the guy was a deadbeat, and the seller didn't give me a second chance offer (I would have taken it). The bike was relisted and sold for $20 more than the previous auction. That isn't that much. I think the seller would probably have preferred to have the money.

The second time I got outbid at the last minute, I contacted the seller immediately and told him that I was outbid near the end and willing to pay (either my bid, the winner's bid or 2.50 more than the winner's bid ... I can't remember). I think the seller was pleased with this because he knew the bike was sold. The original winner picked up this bike the next day, so I didn't get it.

Any way you slice it, it's up to you. There's some stuff I bid on that I wonder why I bid, and I'm grateful that someone swoops in and takes my lead in an auction.

While I'm not familiar with eBay's policies, you might offer to take the conversation off eBay so that the seller does not have to pay the eBay fees, so that you can get it at a better price. (I'm not sure if this works, however.)

EDIT: Post the link to the ended auction if you would like feedback on the bidding.

Good luck.......

You were willing to pay £137 when you entered your bid. If you're still willing to pay £137, accept the 2nd chance offer. If not, decline and it will go to the next in line.

This sums it up but I still think second chance offer's are scams.

I've never been scammed by second chance offers, but I've gotten items I've wanted for the price I was willing to pay for them. Some of you are paranoid. I've 336 Ebay transactions, must of them as a buyer and I've never encountered a dishonest seller.

It depends on a piece of information which you cannot normally find out: Was the winning bid, which fell through and resulted in the second-chance offer, just a random deadbeat bidder? Or was it a confederate of the seller (perhaps the seller himself in disguise) shilling up the auction to test what your maximum bid was?

In the former case it is fair for the seller to offer what he did, although I think you'd have some negotiating room if the spread was large (remember he has some motivation to get the item sold and his winning bidder just defaulted.) In the latter case, the seller is using his shill to try to cheat you out of the difference between your maximum bid and the last bona fide bid. The mere fact that you got the item at the maximum you were willing to pay has nothing to do with this -- it's still fraud. eBay's discussion of shill bidding makes this very clear. (Whether you love eBay or hate it is immaterial. Shill bidding is fraud commited against legitimate buyers.)

As I say, you usually can't know why the winning bid didn't win, so you have to go with your gut, depending on how badly you wanted the item. If you think you may have been shilled, you have to ask yourself, "Do I want to deal further with a thief?" If the seller offers to take payment outside PayPal then you know for sure he's trying to cheat eBay, so odds are he's trying to cheat you as well.

Edit: I've accepted second-chance offers, too, and have been happy with the results. My father worked in retail all his life -- there are a lot of bad customers out there and I sympathize with sellers who have to deal with them. Fortunately most buyers and sellers are trustworthy.

Any reasonable seller would accept this as fair. Doesn't oblige either of you to go through with that deal, but as far as price - that's it.

I agree that is what you have to figure out and unfortunately eBay doesn't give you as many tools to do that as they used to. You can look a the auction results and see the stats of the winner (e.g. how many of the seller's auctions he has bid on); that can give you some clues. But in the end it is up to you to decide what it is worth; look at past auctions for the item and make a call; if you don'y accept the offer, it will be listed again and you will have another shot, but of course it may go for more! Either way, the seller has no option to lower the second-chance offer price, even if he wanted to.

I sell occasionally and have probably 5% of winners just not pay and not respond to emails, etc. The new system where buyers can't get negative feedback encourages this (as well as encourages shilling IMO) and it has increased since that policy was instituted. As a seller, I will often do a second chance offer when the winner bails to avoid the hassle of re-listing. I have never had anyone accept one though!

It's your risk, your tactical move. With the absence of the "winner" and given the big gap between your 103 and 137 bids, I'd consider it a good bet that you bid against yourself on the item above 103. I'd hold at 103, maybe go higher if the item is worth it, but it certainly looks like someone sniped and didn't want it, or the seller had someone bid on it to get you up there, and it backfired. Whatever the tactic, see if the price fits in your overall strategy.

While you have to ask yourself if you were willing to go to 137, the seller also has to admit if he'd have sold it for 103 if you'd have won at that price. After all, if no one had come in at 139, it'd be yours for 103, right? Good question.

I know an eBay seller that routinely snipes his own items at what he considers his "reserve" price. It costs him too much to set a reserve or higher starting point, and he sells hundreds if not thousands of low-price items. He considers it ethical, and says "if I win, I just pay myself, right?" He does not send second chance offers because his items are often less than $5 and he just re-lists them.

As far as having eBay and ethics in the same sentence...won't go there. The world is a circus.

They would have to record all bids, whether or not they exceed the current auction amount, in order to fairly re-evaluate the auction without the winning bidder. Even then, to subvert that system would only need one extra shill to bracket the victim.

Right now they give the seller, and their own bottom line, the benefit of the doubt.


The only way to stop shilling is to make it cost more than it brings in, and I'm sure eBay has no interest in putting burdens on bidders. Imagine if they required bid amounts be put in escrow and payment and fees would be immediately rendered at the end of the auction, shill or not.

Personally, I think blind auctions would be fun. No information is shared until the end of the auction, sort of what sniping crudely accomplishes.

Right you are: it has to be a Buy It Now non-negotiable price. I missed that. (The couple of second-chance offers I've accepted have been BINs, yes. Since I hate haggling and really am not a very good negotiator I just shrugged and paid "retail", never occurred to me at the time to see if the seller would take less than the BIN....but I see that he can't anyway, not through eBay at least.

Agree with RobbieTunes, this isn't really a question about ethics. It's more about the psychology of auctions, what drives people to want to buy stuff.

IMHO: Retail value is not established on one auction. Track auctions of the same item for several weeks or months, and you will be pretty close. Some auctions go for more (sometimes a lot more), some go for less (sometimes a lot less). I always bid on the low side, so any second chance offer is a deal (well below retail). In my case, its a big risk to not accept the second chance offer. Since I bid well below retail, odds are, if the item is relisted, it will go higher.

Now if it is a really rare item, that you don't see very often on ebay, you have the second problem of timing. Are you going to see another one for sale, and if so, how long will you have to wait? I'm pretty patient, so that is not as big a factor.

Thats happened to me alot and I NEVER take the second chance unless its for what I would have paid if the high bidder never bid. In this instance it would be your price fo 103GBP.

On occasion the seller will have a more than 1 item that gets offered up as a 'second chance' but that's not the case here.

Hold your ground.

Of course the seller does, its called 'contact ebay member' which is what I do on a frequent basis.

So when I, as a seller, send out a second chance BIN offer, can I set the price or is it automatic? I've only had 2 buyers blow me off so it's not a huge part of my business model, but if I have a choice, next time I have to, I'll send out a $103 BIN, not a $137 BIN.
I hate having to take ethics into my own hands but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.