EBay is a weird and wonderful place. As I’ve implied previously, I love it. I bid on eBay probably every day of the week – and my greatest love is buying books. Unlike so many other secondhand (and, for that matter, new) goods, at least with books you’ll know that they’ll ‘work’ and the freight bill is unlikely to be huge.

I especially like automotive books – or, more generally, transport books – and so when I come across a cheap gem, my fingers bid as fast as I can strike the keys. But unfortunately, over the last few years, the starting price of many car books has risen dramatically.

When I am selling a book on eBay – any book – I figure the minimum price needs to be around $5; if the books are clearly worth less than that, I bundle them. So I am not expecting books to start at 50 cents. But when books are listed with a starting price of fifty bucks – and the next week another vendor has the same book at $10 – you start to wonder at the book’s true value.

This was the situation when I first saw on eBay The Last Onslaught on Detroit. The book, which appeared to be about the demise of car maker Kaiser-Frazer, appealed to me in much the same way that books about the demise of the British car industry in the period after WWII fascinate me. The subtitle – An Intimate Behind the Scenes Study of the Postwar American Car Industry – looked promising… more than a marque history; perhaps context and manufacturing pressures and commercial competition.

However, a glance revealed the book had a starting price something like $40 or $50 – and so I immediately passed it up.

But it was literally only a few weeks later that I saw it again – this time from another vendor. And with a starting price of only $1.25, I was in. Freight was listed as $12 (it pisses me off when eBay sellers claim more than the max freight, which on a book is about $10, even in an overnight bag) but I was prepared to pay the postage at that rate – especially if I got the book for under $20.

Time passed and then the email lobbed into my In box – I’d won it, and at $1.25 too!

I was pleased but thought nothing much more of it, waiting for the invoice to be emailed. But instead of the invoice, the following arrived from the vendor:

I am New to Ebay and there is noway I willsell it for thatrediculous price Don.

To say this flummoxed me is putting it mildly. Never in more than 700 eBay transactions has a vendor ever come back with this sort of gibberish. Rather than writing back immediately, I waited until my temper had settled then wrote this rather calm reply:

Don,
 
I am sorry but that’s the way that eBay works.
 
You should never list an item at a starting price that you are not happy to sell it for.
 
You have entered into a contract with me to sell me that item at that price. I expect you to honour that contract.

Julian Edgar
 
Twenty four hours passed and there was no reply. Hmm, what to do? The same bloke had a heap of items on eBay, all listed with very low starting prices. He had a 100 per cent feedback rating on seven transactions (although one was rather carefully worded, I noted) and I thought of all those people bidding on his items, happy in their ignorance that he’d actually sell the goods to them if they won. Bugger him, I thought, I’ll leave negative feedback – the first I have ever had to leave.

But eBay doesn’t like you leaving negative feedback and has quite a few hoops for you to jump through before it appears. One hoop is that you can access the vendor’s direct contact details – including their phone number. So I pressed the right keys and there was his name, location and home (or work?) phone number.

I rang it.

Very politely I identified myself and the transaction of concern. The man was belligerent. He seemed to hold a grudge against me. He sounded very old and resentful about what had occurred.

But he said that he’d send me the book.

When I suggested that he send the invoice so that I could pay for it, he said he wouldn’t want to accept my money.

After the phone call finished, an email arrived. It was the eBay invoice – except it had an attachment: Forget about payment I would not accept any money from you as I have principals and integrity. The book will be posted from Gunneah Post Office in the morning. Don

A few minutes later another email arrived:

I don’t know if you received my earlier message since your phone call. To repeat I will post to you ” The Onslaught on Detroit Book” from Gunnedah Post Office in the morning. Iam a new user of eBay and had no idea that a $1 bid  could become the Reserve Price after the basic time elapsed leaving me with no right to accept or reject offers . I don’t want any money from you for postage etc. as I have integrity and principals.

And there was more:
 
When you receive this book you should congratulate yourself for the advantage have taken of my ignorance.

I look forward to getting the book; when (or if) it arrives, I’ll see if in his eBay information Don has provided his bank details so I can pay for it.

Weird; very weird.