Question of Morality re: making offers on current ebaY auctions

[jsowers]

It was a pleasure to see that charcoal gray phone go to the highest bidder and not the sneakiest vulture. I asked the seller some questions about this phone and bid on it twice. In my communication with him, I mentioned that he shouldn't accept offers on the phone and he should let it go to the highest bidder at the end. He replied that someone offered him $150 for the phone, but he thought it wasn't fair to the other bidders to end the auction early.

To me, that business of making offers on valuable auction items is totally dishonest. Someone tried to do the seller out of half the value of this phone. It's stealing. I hope it wasn't anyone from the Forum who did that.

I'll get off my soapbox now. Sorry! It's a sore subject with me, having phones yanked away from me many times over the years. I am very happy for the seller who got $325 for this phone.

[rdelius]

Here is a color chart from 1956
Robby

[Jester]

That one would be a great example to have, & not just for the color.  It is a real live non Bell example in Oxford Gray.  I don't think you'll find too many 591's in that color.

As for the original question of individual rarity of certain colors, it's been my observation that the "common" color pastel yellow is difficult to find in soft plastic.  Ditto for beige, white & light gray--I think yellow & white are the hardest to find in 500's.  In 554's, the hardest colors were, for me, all the MD colors(I'm still looking for Mahogany) and all the '57 colors that were offered on the 554.  There's a brown one out there somewhere with my name on it....or Jonathan's.

[Doug Rose]

Jonathan...truly a double edged sword with the "vultures" on eBay. I am a seller as well as a buyer and I never mind an offer. If I like it, I take it. If not I wait. No one twists my arm. I have refused offers on what I was selling did not sell and I was stuck with it. Should I have taken the offer? You bet!

The  heart of the matter is, if you see a $300 phone at a yard sale selling for $10, do you tell them its worth $300 and watch out for the "vultures" that come to yard sales. OR do you slap that $10 bill into their hand and run to your car in case someone with knowledge comes waltzing by. Is it being a vulture at a yard sale?.....Doug

[Dave F]

I'm going to chime in on Doug's side on this one.  While cheating people is not something I do, I feel that it isn't my responsibility to educate every neophyte seller.  With vast resources available in this modern age (this Forum, for one), it is not difficult to learn something about what you are selling before you stick it on eBay, or even into a garage sale for that matter.  There is no reason why any seller needs to be ignorant, except possibly for laziness.  I put plenty of time and effort into doing my homework.  If that gives me an honest edge, I'll be happy to take it.

Dave
 

[jsowers]

The  heart of the matter is, if you see a $300 phone at a yard sale selling for $10, do you tell them its worth $300 and watch out for the "vultures" that come to yard sales. OR do you slap that $10 bill into their hand and run to your car in case someone with knowledge comes waltzing by. Is it being a vulture at a yard sale?.....Doug

An auction is not a yard sale. An auction goes to the highest bidder, unless it's a Buy it Now, and that should be the seller's prerogative to make and not the suggestion of a buyer. A yard sale is first come first served and there is no competition after you have the item in hand.

If you were bidding on an item in a live auction in person and someone in the audience went up to the auctioneer and whispered in his ear and he sold it immediately to that person without asking if all the bids were in, most people would yell FOUL. I know I would. It's unfair.

There is nothing wrong with making an offer at a yard sale. Nobody else is waiting to get that item. It isn't an auction open to everyone in the world. It's just between you and the person selling. An online auction is between you and potentially everyone else in the world who has internet access.

[Doug Rose]

Question is, would you tell them its a $300 phone and be fair or be "foul" and buy it for the $10 they were asking. Fair or "foul." No check swings on eBay. ..Doug

[Dave F]

An auction is not a yard sale. An auction goes to the highest bidder, unless it's a Buy it Now, and that should be the seller's prerogative to make and not the suggestion of a buyer.

With all due respect, what makes you think that that prerogative belongs just to the seller?  Obviously, eBay prefers it that way, as they generally collect higher fees when auctions run full-term.  However, any seller can add a Buy-It-Now to a running auction without violating eBay rules.  In fact, the only reason eBay is opposed to buyer-initiated BINs is because some of those transactions will be completed off-eBay, and then they will collect nothing.  EBay's motivation is purely mercenary and fairness is not an issue.  If it was, they would not allow BINs to be added after an auction started.

The way I see it, when a seller accepts a Buy-It-Now offer (either on or off eBay) from a potential bidder,  it is actually the SELLER, not the buyer, who has changed the rules in the middle of the game.  If the seller actually cared about fairness (as some do), he would reject any BIN offers and let his auction run to completion.  Therefore, if he does accept a BIN and, as a result, receives far less than he would have if the auction had completed, then he gets just what he deserves.

Look, don't get me wrong here -- I hate it when some buyer "steals" an eBay item that I would have liked to fairly bid on.  But I tend to put the blame for my loss on the seller more than on the buyer.  It's a bit of poetic justice that the seller most likely received less than he otherwise would have.

And, as Doug points out very clearly, Fair or Foul largely depends on your particular point of view in any given situation.

[GG]

This is our local version of the debates that have motivated the Tea Party and Occupy protest movements:  what constitutes a fair set of rules for governing something, and what constitutes a fair market?  

On one side, the Libertarian arguement that any voluntary deal between consenting adults is legitimate.  On the other side, the Progressive arguement that whatever rules are in place need to apply universally to all participants.   Most Americans are somewhere in between: wanting fair rules applied evenly, and also wanting some room for flexibility to reward initiative.  

Flea markets, conventional auctions, and Ebay are each a different type of market, as with retail stores, real estate, and the stock market: each is governed by a different explicit and implicit rule-set.  We would object mightily at having to haggle over the prices for cereal, veggies, and meat at the grocery store, but we happily haggle at flea markets.  Haggling on Ebay, for instance offering an early by-it-now price, is controversial because it brings one rule-set into contact with another: flea markets and auctions.  

It used to be the case that "how you play the game is more important than whether you win or lose."  Nothing was so important that it justified cheating.  But when the rewards for cheating become enormous, for example high-paid jobs with lobbying firms after completing an ethically-compromised term in Congress, or 8-figure bonuses for selling fraudulent investment packages, the ethical barriers begin to become permeable and the rationalizations swarm like mosquitoes in the summer.   The last time this happened to the culture at-large was in the run-up to the Great Depression, so it's no surprise that similar behaviors produced the present economic crisis.  And it's no wonder that protestors across the spectrum from left to right, have had enough of all that.

But here we have an opportunity: to assert that playing fair and playing by the rules really does count.  If we can do it in a hobbyist subculture, we can spread that influence into our regular business dealings, and then further into the mainstream culture at-large.  

Ultimately it's the sellers on Ebay who can exercise the choice to offer an early buy-it-now to gain an early sale.  So that's where we should exercise the social pressure.  It appears to be working with shipping: I'm noticing more sellers are mentioning that they pack their phones well for shipping.  If we start promoting an ethical standard about not changing auctions to buy-it-now in mid stream, and vote for that with our dollars, it will start to spread.  

[Doug Rose]

GG...I read your short story three times and I'm still not sure what side you are on. Politics could be in your future. A marvelous filibuster with nothing much said.

I'll ask you the same question. Would you tell the yard sale owner that he has a $300 phone FAIR or would you pay the $10 and run FOUL.

"But here we have an opportunity: to assert that playing fair and playing by the rules really does count.  If we can do it in a hobbyist subculture, we can spread that influence into our regular business dealings, and then further into the mainstream culture at-large. "

I take your epiphany to mean you would play fair and tell the seller it's a $300 phone.

Correct?

Kidconfused

[Dave F]

But here we have an opportunity: to assert that playing fair and playing by the rules really does count.  If we can do it in a hobbyist subculture, we can spread that influence into our regular business dealings, and then further into the mainstream culture at-large.

Fairness and the rules:  A reasonable argument can be made that auctions, by their very nature, are unfair, as they favor the rich at the expense of the not-so-rich.  If you accept that as a starting point, then it is clear that "regular folks" have very little opportunity to succeed as long as they "play fair" against folks with deep pockets and a win-at-any-price attitude.

Consider, for example, the current state of BSP sales on eBay.  There are a couple of people (We all know who they are) who routinely seem to enjoy beating each other up and often spend in excess of $1000 for any BSP book which would probably otherwise sell for about $100.  Now, assuming that there are other collectors who might also like to have some BSPs in their collections, "following the rules" basically means that they might as well whistle Dixie, as they have no chance of winning as long as the two crazies continue to battle it out.  Now, I don't have a mega-sized bank account, but I do have my wits and intellect.  If I wanted some of those BSPs, I would have no moral conflict whatsoever in trying to convince a seller to end an auction early on my behalf.  To me, that behavior is no more selfish or arrogant than that of a "rich guy" who thinks that he is entitled to waltz through life snatching up everything of value and leaving nothing for anybody else.

As has been stated earlier, the "fairness" of a situation is quite a bit more complex than it might first appear, and almost always depends on the point of view of the arbiter.

Before anybody passes judgement on the fairness of others' actions, think carefully about what Doug is asking.  You might open up a moral can of worms that you had not anticipated.

[Doug Rose]

thanks Dave.....I appreciate it....you and I are on the same page.. ....Doug

[GG]

Doug, thanks for your endorsement of my candidacy for the House of Representatives, want to help get out the vote next year?:-)   There are points in both the Tea Party and Occupy platforms that I support, and points I criticize.  Going into those would be a digression here, but if anyone else is interested enough in that discussion, they can open up a topic in the Off-Topic or Misc category and I'll post another "short story" or two:-)

What would I do about the $10/$300 phone?  

Here's what I actually did:

A guy from a local nonprofit came to me and told me he was cleaning out a city department's warehouse and came up with all these old phones.  He showed me an NOS WE302.  There were a bunch where that one came from.  

I could easily have offered him $15 each and scored like crazy.  Believe you me I was tempted.  But I knew that at the time these were going for $75 in that condition, so I told him he could probably sell them for that price.  Presumably he did.  

OTOH, recently a friend gave me a 302 rescued from in the wild, in decent condition for as-found but with frequency ringer and halfway-jammed 5H dial.  I paid $20 for a B1AL ringer to replace the frequency ringer (before someone here discovered the "nibble the reed" trick), and I'll use an NOS 5H dial from my dial stash to replace the existing dial.  I'll rebuild the ratty 5H, and that plus the frequency ringer will go back into my parts stock, meanwhile I end up with another nice 302 though not a museum-piece.  (Date-matching, what's that?, we're all mongrels in this pack!:-)

-----

Dave, you raise a good point about less-well-off buyers offering early buy-it-now because they can't even begin to compete with the end-of-auction bidding wars among wealthier buyers.  This is part of the Progressive arguement for "social equity," various means by which playing fields can be made level enough that everyone can at least afford to play.  The idea is that wealth shouldn't always translate to power (in this case buying-power) to the point where all outcomes are foregone conclusions that the guy with deep pockets always wins.  

That's a tough one when it comes to auctions, and my solution back in the day was to prowl the flea markets looking for goodies at prices I could afford (302 quasi-NOS in the box, $35, score!).  Interestingly, Progressive and Libertarian meet in the middle on this one: Progressive that less-wealthy folks should be able to compete at prices they can afford, and Libertarian that buyers & sellers should be free to agree on prices & deals.   To my mind, when both the left and the right agree on something, it's usually a good bet that it's a reasonable outcome.  

So, interestingly, that's nudging my position a bit on this.  At risk of ticking-off JSowers, this is where I come to about this at the moment:

Ebay rules don't forbid accepting offers and switching to buy-it-now in the middle of the night.  If someone wants to do that, it's not against the rules.  However, sellers are also free to advertise that they don't do early buy-it-now, and buyers are free to vote with their dollars by preferentially doing business with those sellers.  

Missing a deal on an item one wants, isn't by itself a compelling arguement: one could as easily have missed the deal had a deep-pockets bidder materialized at the last moment.  That is, we don't have an inherent human right to unlimited good deals on our hobbies, or good profits on our investments.  Though I would certainly argue for an inherent human right to absolute necessities such as food, housing, education, and medical care.  

What I'm looking for here isn't personal advantage one way or another, only consistent principles applied consistently.   That plus a book contract for my collected short stories:-)

[Doug Rose]

GG....In true Candiate running for office candidatespeak, the question was not answered in your lengthy reply.

I'll ask it again:

Would you tell the yard sale owner that he has a $300 phone FAIR or would you pay the $10 and run FOUL.

Not your buddy, not your pals. We are taking Fair/Foul scenario that has been discussed by Jonathan and I think, not quite sure; backed by you.

So far, I cannot get a simple answer to a simple question.

Would you tell the yard sale owner that he has a $300 phone FAIR or would you pay the $10 and run FOUL???



Kidsurvey-says

[Dave F]

...What I'm looking for here isn't personal advantage one way or another, only consistent principles applied consistently....

Unfortunately, "consistent principles applied consistently" is merely a pipedream, and putting much effort into forcing others to comply is a tremendous waste of time and energy.  The human mind is a marvelously complex place.  Each of us has his own morality and his own ideas of what is or is not fair.  The "rules" (or the laws) often conflict with our individual sense of what is the truly appropriate thing to do in any given situation.  Who would argue that what is legal is always right and just?  I could easily envision a multitude of scenarios where you would most assuredly conclude that the "right" course of action is contrary to the laws/rules.  I can say without much fear of being wrong that every one of us routinely violates some rule or law and, in each case, has what he believes to be a valid reasonable excuse for doing so.  Whole sections of libraries are devoted to such issues.  To my way of thinking, laws and rules are a good and essential basis for most everyday doings but, at best, are only guidelines, subject to  "internal review" when "rightness" demands it.  Yes, I might wind up get my hands slapped by eBay for fomenting an early BIN, but the possible penalty is one of the factors I have already considered before ever doing so.

My basic point is that it is overly simplistic to categorically state that certain actions (such as enticing a seller into an early BIN) are always unfair and wrong.  I may not like it when I lose out to a buyer who succeeds, but I'm hardly an unbiased outsider in that transaction, and my own motives become part of the equation.  Bottom line: It's not black and white, and the complexities require careful thought and consideration before arriving at a one-size-fits-all conclusion.