While I can sympathize with the many who have been ripped off by liquidation.com I'm not sure much can be done about most of the complaints which involve useless and or worthless merchandise. The auctions listed as salvage or returns in "as is" condition should be avoided. You are bidding on junk and thats exactly what you will get. What are you going to do about it? You got what you bid on and paid for. Was the description misleading? Possibly, I've seen plenty of that, but again what are you going to do about it? These complaints alone are not substantial enough in my opinion to get anything done in a courtroom. But if you can add something with some teeth to the equation there might be a chance for a class action lawsuit where everyone could benefit.
Okay, so the descriptions are misleading, they lie by ommission, and the shipping is excessive. How about if we add in price fixing? I'm not talking about shill bidding here. That may in fact be taking place, but good luck trying to prove that one.instead I'm talking about auctions being cancelled because you didn't bid enough! They state that the marketplace will decide the value of the products, but they forgot to mention that if the company selling the products doesn't like your bid price, they can simply cancel the auction. Wouldn't that be considered price fixing?
In the last few months I have had three auctions cancelled and the usual "unforeseen circumstances" excuse was given. The one thing all three auctions had in common was the fact that my bid price was much lower than that of other auctions for the same merchandise. Whether its at liquidation.com or ebay, once in a while an auction sort of slips through the cracks and not many people bid on an item. It doesn't happen often, but once in a while you can actually get a really good deal on something. Thats what happened on my three auctions. My bid price was substantially lower that the bids on the exact same merchandise sold at other times and other days. The response from the sellers at liquidation.com was to cancel the auctions.
In the case where a company made a mistake and listed an auction for merchandise that did not exist, or in their thousands of auctions they listed one too many auctions for merchandise they had a large quantity of, I suppose an excuse of "unforeseen circumstances" could come into play. But thats not what is happening here.in all three of my auctions, the exact same merchandise continued to be sold over and over again, not only the same day, but for weeks and even months. Am I supposed to believe that only my merchandise fell into the "unforeseen circumstances" category while others that bid higher amounts continued to receive their merchandise? Probably not. They didn't like my bid amount so they cancelled the auction plain and simple.
But wait it gets even better. Since this is a continuing problem that I have seen others also complain about, its obvious that any penalty the offending sellers pay to liquidation.com for cancelling an auction is either none or minimal. Otherwise it wouldn't keep happening right? The kicker is, the auction is not cancelled immediately.instead I have to pay for the merchandise and wait 30 to 60 days to find out the auction has been cancelled. The result here is that liquidation.com gets a free cash flow loan while I pay the finance changes! Now thats what I call a scam.
Hey, I'm no lawyer, but this sounds like a better angle to take against these guys to me. Added to all of the other complaints about misleading descriptions and people receiving worthless junk, we may be able to put a class action suit together. There certainly would be no trouble getting plenty of people willing to participate. I can be contacted at
Rusty
Blue Springs, Missouri
U.S.A.
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