OK so maybe what the guy did wasn’t strictly legal but it would be I think most courts would applaud him rather than convict him.
How’s it a scam if he kept the tickets and she kept her money? It seems to me that a scam would be if she found a way to get the tickets and then decided not to pay.
No, she won the auction but refused to pay, he scammed her into coughing up the money and she did get the tickets.
It’s probably not a scam, but it’s an underhanded thing to do. Bidding on an item usually means you intend to pay for it, and for a time sensitive item that loses value at a fixed point, it was severely fucked up for her to not respond with enough time to give the seller time to resell the tickets to someone else. At the very least, she should have sent an email earlier in the day saying she may have to back out.
I can see the objections to that, but also their counterarguments. If it’s not her problem that he doesn’t have time to resell, then it’s not his problem either that she overbid and didn’t find out at the last minute (assuming she was telling the truth). And after all, what he did in pretending to be a fake customer and backing out is essentially what she did, so you can say she got to feel exactly like how the seller felt in the first place. We don’t know if she was fake or not in the first place, so I would say only her actions count, not her intentions.
Plus, she was very rude, and I support giving these people a taste of their own medicine.
In actual fact, she did not really scam him - she simply reneged on a bid on ebay - happens regularly. Someone gets cold feet and refuses to pay. Not a scam, but not a very good thing to do.
However, he scammed her, plain and simple.
He pulled a variation of theFiddle game scam or the Glam-dropper scam.
In its basic form, a guy pretends to have lost something in a store or diner. He offers the owner of the store a huge reward for it’s return. (say $1000) A little while later, an accomplice “finds” the item, and shows it to the owner. The accomplice says he will return it. The owner (knowing about the “reward”) will offer to give the accomplice money for it. Of course the original “owner” never returns.
I’m pretty sure that eBay auctions are legally binding so what she did goes beyond ‘not a very good thing to do’. It happens regularly and is annoying as hell when it does but it must be even worse when it such a time-sensitive item. It’s nice to see these people get their comeuppance once in a while.
This same type of con was portrayed in the movie “Zombieland”, only the item was an engagement ring. She got what she deserved.
What makes this story so heart warming is his asking for the extra $20 for driving over at midnight.
I’m pretty sure that this is legally defensible under the doctrine of CONDIMENTUM ANSERINUS.
And extra sweet since the lady insisted on being paid $1100 instead of the offered $1000.
Greed is good.
It’s sellers like him that make the rest of us look bad. I’ve had my share of bidders who decided they weren’t going to pay. But, at least she told him. I’ve waited days for a reply from a non-payer.
The fact that he created another email account with a throw away phone#, shows who the scammer is.
Why was she paying $600 for a pair of $2 tickets to a Vandy v UVA basketball game in 1952?
Bidding in an auction creates a binding contract, so legally she could not get out of the deal. If it had not been a time-sensitive item, then her nonpayment is not such a big deal: the item can be re-listed. However, in this case, the item cannot be re-listed: by the time the new auction has ended, it’s lost its value. The seller could sue her for the $600, and he’d win, but by the time the court heard the case, the value of the ticket would have gone, so she’d be much worse off. At least in this case she has a chance to use the tickets. So I have no sympathy for her at all, and find it hard to criticise the seller.
If it was an item that could be resold, I’d agree - shrug, let it go and relist, but bidding and winning time-critical, big-price tickets, then pulling out is a terrible thing to do.
Why? Because he convinced the buyer to meet her legal obligation to buy the tickets from him? What’s bad about that?
What’s the big deal? The victim turned the table on the buyer. She was legally obligated to buy the tickets from him, and her failure to meet that obligation was going to cause him financial harm. The alternative would be a pain-in-the-ass lawsuit; the seller would have won, but it would have taken much more time and resources on his part to make that happen.
(clap clap clap) the guy is a fricken legend. I love the bit when he asks for an extra twenty because he drove over at midnight.
Scamming the scammer? Here’s another good one:
Summary: Seller lists Powerbook for sale on Ebay. Interested buyer from overseas wants to conduct the transaction through an obviously fake escrow site. Seller follows through with the transaction, ships a completely fake Powerbook to the buyer, and lists a very, very large value on the customs form so as to cause the buyer to pay about $600 in import duties. Seller of course does not receive payment because of the escrow scam, but has the pleasure of knowing that the scammer paid $600 in customs fees in order to accept a fake (worthless) P-P-P-Powerbook.
Batsinma - what would you suggest? He simply eats the tickets? At least she told him?! Yea, she told him. So what? Does she get points for telling him when its too late for him to re-list? I think not. She started the fight and he finished it under the rules she laid down. Bravo! Do unto others…
I don’t have sympathy for the buyer either. But, the seller just seems a little to proud of himself. If you feel like you have to resort to the things he did, go ahead! But don’t brag about it in a public way. Non ebayers think all sellers are greedy and cold-hearted. Someone who has considered buying on ebay, but been reluctant due to the bad reputation, is not going to care about the crap that sellers (including me), have to deal with.