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Man Cons Woman Into Paying For eBay Auction She Won. Illegal? Immoral?


eggs

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A guy over on Reddit had tickets to a big sporting event but at the last minute couldn't go, so he sold them on eBay for $600. The event was in less than 24 hours and when he contacted the winning bidder after they didn't pay for a while, the woman told him that her husband had said that it was too much money and wouldn't let her go. Never mind that winning an eBay bid is a binding contract and now the guy has little chance of selling the tickets. So he concocted a fiendish scheme to trick her into paying.

What he did is email her from a different email address and say hey, I saw you won those tickets, I'd really like to go, can I buy them from you for $1,000? She agreed, and lo and behold, she contacts him as the original seller and says "oops, changed my mind, I want to pay for those after all." He brings her the tickets, collects the money, and then goes home and has his sockpuppet bidder back out of the deal with her.

Unethical? Illegal? An eBay bid is a binding contract. An email is not.

What do you think?

Here is a link to the original story

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she got what she deserved from the sound of it..

she didnt want to pay for soemthing she won on ebay which is a legal binding contract... until she saw a chance of making a buck off the tickets..

she didnt care about fucking over the seller, or the "payback" buyer

sounded like a crude woman..

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I like this in the comments.

Once I bought a car part on ebay that was advertised as new. Turned out it was old and rusted so I arranged with the guy to return it and he promised a full refund. I sent the part back but he wouldn't give me my money back. I googled his name and city and got the phone number for his mom. I told her the story and she was so mad- she promised me she would make sure I got my money back. He called me back a few hours later and called me every name in the book- "how dare you call my mom... you f'ing f'er..." I was pretty scared and glad we didn't live in the same state. But I got all my money back. Mothers are great.
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ebay pisses me off because its a legal contract that doesn't mean shit, have had a few people back out aftger winning and it taked a lot to give bad rep. brother bought a pair of tower speakers that said there were 8 available. he gets a email after he pays that they are on backorder.. never got his money back never got any speakers. had to fight to get the guy rep. sucks but really winning a auction nothing.. essentially.

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eBay is a binding contract, and she was in breach. Based on the fact that the seller had no time to resell them, I think he would have had a VERY convincing estoppel argument in small claims court - but that would have been a lot of trouble. (frustration of purpose of the contract, and bad faith would be other claims for the seller).

"conning" her into paying for something had already purchased - that part i'm less sure of. The secondary agreement wasn't a contract. There was no consideration; only a promise. Both are required for a valid contract (although I'm struggling to see where the original eBay transaction had consideration either - clearly eBay's lawyers have that covered though).

Unethical? eh... Getting what someone promised you isn't unethical in my book. Deceitful for sure, but he collected what she promised to pay. He didn't trick her into making her original winning bid, so she had every opportunity to avoid the situation; he didn't. She came to him.

Were she to try to bring a fraud claim against him, in his place, I'd just say "fine - I'll file a counter-claim for the $600 you owe me to begin with. If you want your $20 back, I think we can settle that out of court. It'll be waiting for you at the corner of 'go fuck yourself,' and 'karma's a bitch, bitch.'"

I wouldn't hesitate to use the same 'trick' to collect.

Edited by redkow97
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