Accordions and ebay and morality tales
Over the weekend, I somewhat whimsically decided that I was more interested in buying an accordion than I had been previously. nebulocity1976 could help you pinpoint the exact moment this happened, as I dragged his hiney over to my computer to watch me search ebay for accordions.
Anyway, I began "watching" several ebay auctions but returned, later in the day, to bid, somewhat tentatively, on at least one auction. I was immediately outbid by the previous high bidder, and somewhere in the middle of all of this found, through pawing around online, a YouTube video detailing all the things one should look for when buying a used accordion. (What will they think of next?!) Having watched the video, I was newly grateful that I had been outbid, since I had looked at and thought of none of the things being mentioned in the video!
Fast forward to this morning, when I get a note from ebay that the other bidder had withdrawn their bid and I was now the high bidder. Yes, it turns out that this is within ebay's rules:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/buy/bidding-overview.html
although, despite having several hundred ebay transactions to my name, as buyer and seller, I had never encountered this little loophole before. I don't know on what basis the other bidder was able to withdraw their bid, as the criteria are very strict. Anyway, I dashed off a note to the seller requesting that they cancel my bid, and they are gracious enough to agree.
I'm not sure if the moral here is "read all 1700 pages of ebay documentation before bidding, even if you've used ebay before" or what. It took me over 20 minutes to find the page that explained the policy that had made me the high bidder after all. This does seem to be a pretty poorly designed policy -- you basically cannot bid on another, similar item for sale just because you've been outbid. If you were shopping under some sort of timeline -- for a birthday or Christmas or something -- you'd basically have to take a chance and risk being screwed with several won auctions when you only needed one. Or just not use ebay in the first place.
Since ebay thrives on whimsical bidding, I would think they would want to encourage this behavior.
Anyway, I think I'm going to buy an accordion from the folks who made the video about how to buy one. They post a YouTube video for each accordion they have in stock, so you can hear how they play and such.
http://www.libertybellows.com/
They're closed this week so I have to wait until next week. :( The good news is, this gives you plenty of time to tell me which one you think I should buy! I am considering a large, a medium, or a small if and only if it has 41/120 keys.
Anyway, I began "watching" several ebay auctions but returned, later in the day, to bid, somewhat tentatively, on at least one auction. I was immediately outbid by the previous high bidder, and somewhere in the middle of all of this found, through pawing around online, a YouTube video detailing all the things one should look for when buying a used accordion. (What will they think of next?!) Having watched the video, I was newly grateful that I had been outbid, since I had looked at and thought of none of the things being mentioned in the video!
Fast forward to this morning, when I get a note from ebay that the other bidder had withdrawn their bid and I was now the high bidder. Yes, it turns out that this is within ebay's rules:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/buy/bidding-overview.html
although, despite having several hundred ebay transactions to my name, as buyer and seller, I had never encountered this little loophole before. I don't know on what basis the other bidder was able to withdraw their bid, as the criteria are very strict. Anyway, I dashed off a note to the seller requesting that they cancel my bid, and they are gracious enough to agree.
I'm not sure if the moral here is "read all 1700 pages of ebay documentation before bidding, even if you've used ebay before" or what. It took me over 20 minutes to find the page that explained the policy that had made me the high bidder after all. This does seem to be a pretty poorly designed policy -- you basically cannot bid on another, similar item for sale just because you've been outbid. If you were shopping under some sort of timeline -- for a birthday or Christmas or something -- you'd basically have to take a chance and risk being screwed with several won auctions when you only needed one. Or just not use ebay in the first place.
Since ebay thrives on whimsical bidding, I would think they would want to encourage this behavior.
Anyway, I think I'm going to buy an accordion from the folks who made the video about how to buy one. They post a YouTube video for each accordion they have in stock, so you can hear how they play and such.
http://www.libertybellows.com/
They're closed this week so I have to wait until next week. :( The good news is, this gives you plenty of time to tell me which one you think I should buy! I am considering a large, a medium, or a small if and only if it has 41/120 keys.