Fair to change ad from sale to auction?

This thread is a reassuring reminder of why I do enjoy most of my transactions generated through this site. To most folks here the answer is plain and simple. Very nicely stated Listener57. My thoughts exactly Onhwy61. Ultimately you certainly can do anything you damn well please, and disregard other people for the sake of making a few more bucks if that's how you want to conduct yourself. You can argue right and wrong, quote black-letter law or the Audiogon guidelines, declare yourself a business or just a poor lonely individual.....or declare diplomatic immunity if that wets your wick. In the end it's just WHAT YOU DO that really matters, and what YOU must live with. I believe strongly that you get back from the world just what you put out into it.

Marco

Implicitly an offer to sell at a stated price and containing "obo", such as $1000 obo, means the first person to accept at $1000 has formed a contract by giving the required acceptance. The obo portion means that if an acceptance is not received on the sellers terms, then the seller will take the best offer short of the stated offer. Any proposed offer which differs from the sellers terms becomes a counter offer. For example, if a potential buyer emailed and said, "I accept your offer if you include shipping" or "I accept subject to my spouse's approval," are all offers which become counter offers and put the power of acceptance back to the seller. If a buyer did not vary the terms of the offer, then the buyer has the power of acceptance subject to a prior sale. If the buyer is the first to respond and has truly accepted with no counteroffer, then one should sell to the first to accept the offer. At the time of acceptance a contract has been formed.

I recently had a seller make an offer, then when I accepted, he refused to sell even though I was the first to accept on the same terms as the offer. Instead of providing any reason why, he simply refused to acknowledge me with any further emails. After numerous emails over 4 days and no response, I left him negative feedback. Of course, he retaliated by leaving me negative feedback. This was a real disppointment as I feel Audiogon is a great forum. I have bought several items without a hitch as well as received great advice. To conclude, I got the impression that the seller felt he did nothing wrong and that he was right to just ignore me in hopes I would go away because he had second thoughts on selling the item.

So for everyone that is offended by someone switching an ad to an auction, how do you feel about someone ending an auction early to sell to something that is willing to pay reserve? It's the same thing. I say do what you can to get the price you want.

This is just me, but I feel the opposite approach is better.

When I was selling a component which I knew would draw a lot of interest, I first listed it on auction here on Audiogon with a reserve equal to what my asking price in a classified would be. That way, if there was to be bidding, there would be bidding. It did not meet my reserve.

Once that happened, I listed it in a classified for what my reserve was.

It sold in about a half a day, and everyone was happy all around.

And, as many have said here, treat people as you would wish to be. Listing a classified, having a big response, then wanting more money is a VERY ugly thing to do. Imagine you were on the receiving end - who wouldn't feel as if they were being treated poorly?

My advice? Be happy you met your asking price, take the money, give and take positive feedback, and add it to the experience of life. Everyone wins that way.

Everybody is a lawyer these days. As a lawyer with long years in practice I find more and more that "anything I can get away with" is the current mentality. A lot of business people I deal with are the worst offenders at not humouring their obligations. OBO means, and as always meant, that the vendor was willing to accept less to sell the item within a narrow time frame. The people here have this quaint notion that it actually means some sort of "auction" procedure whereby the vendor would keep all offers to purchase open to accept what he considers the best (and to add to that the personality of the purchaser as a consideration!) is beyond the pale. I don't know about other jurisdictions, and discussions about whether an ad is simply an invitation to negotiate or an offer to sell in any given instance can go on and on, but where I live, if you have all the essential ingredients of a contract of sale in your ad and someone says that he accepts these terms, you have a valid sale. Paperwork, payment of the price and delivery of the goods are all concerns that enter the picture further down the line. Like I said, if you are going to play the game, learn the rules and live by them. In a way I am not surprised by anything on this site just thinking about folks who actually believe in hearing inter molecular activity through their speakers. I must be an alien just landed, I still am shocked by what I read here. Ma, is it OK if I poke Tommy in the eye, no one will know his parents are out and he still will have one left?