On August 31 I placed a bid for $2500 on a International Bus/RV conversion in an eBay auction. Although the auction had started on August 25, nobody had bid the required above minimum starting bid prior to my bid. On September 1 another bid of $3,995 prompted me to bid $4000 on September 2. Subsequent automatic bids from the same bidder, I believe, drove my bids up to $4,500 by September 3.
At this point, I think it was, the lady who was selling the bus/RV for her mother e-mailed me to see if I was "serious" about my bidding. She said the other bidder, a college student, was serious enough that he was camping in Oregon, where the bus was located, waiting for the auction to end so he could take possession of the bus if he won it, although she had told him the weather in Montana was too cold in the winter for him to live in the bus while he attended college there. I assured her I was very serious, that my boyfriend and I intended to live and travel in the bus, as we needed an inexpensive place to live.
The last bid by the student in Montana was $4,750. He did not respond to my bid of $4,800 and I won the auction on September 3. My boyfriend and I picked the bus up in Oregon the day after Labor Day and quickly learned on our way back to California that it was a lemon. We could have been killed several times when the power steering cut out on us on steep inclines if my boyfriend hadn't previously been a truck driver and was able to muscle the bus into safer surroundings.
While trying to obtain justice for being sold a vehicle that, according to two mechanics had had a previous problem the former owners should have known about but did not tell US about, I stumbled across evidence on eBay that indicated the man who bid against me was the SON of the woman advertising the bus. I reported my suspicions to eBay and received a letter in return that said they would investigate the matter and take "appropriate" action.
The letter specified that their "action" might include issuing a warning, bestowing a temporary suspension on the people involved, indefinitely suspending the offenders, or terminating their membership on eBay. They qualified this statement by saying they use a "number of factors to determine when to take action." These "include member reports, seller's feedback profile status, complaints filed through the eBay fraud alert system, and reports received from law enforcement agencies." They also told me that their "privacy policy" precluded them telling me what action, if any, was taken.
But no action whatsoever was taken that I could see — both seller and bidder were (and are) still going strong with positive points, especially for the seller, who does a lot of selling and buying on eBay. She has never acknowledged that the other bidder WAS her son to me, but neither has she ever DENIED it.
And when I wrote another letter to eBay about the still-unresolved situation, I received a letter from their customer rep, "Wilford" who told me that I had to understand eBay customers were NOT suspended for "shill bidding" on a first-time basis. He advised me to continue with my then-intention of pursuing legal action against the seller, which if I could ever have found a lawyer interested in taking the case, I would have. I think what he said strongly indicates that these people ARE related and the other would-be buyer wasn't just a college student the sellers didn't know from Adam!
As far as I'm concerned, eBay should be made to pay me the difference between what I originally bid for the bus (the required opening bid of $2,500) and what I had to bid to win the auction ($4,800) which is $2,300. Because their policy basically allows and condones "shill biddiing" since they apparently do nothing about it when it occurs, at least if you're a "first time" offender. As if the number of the offense by the people perpetrating it matters when you've lost money as a result!
Sharon
Oceanside, California
U.S.A.
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