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Please note you are only bidding on a picture of a PS3, and not an actual system

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The auction in the original post is right on the edge. Many of you say that it is immoral, but not theft. However, if a judge deemed the ad misleading then it would be considered theft. It is just like a con man. True, he does state somewhere in there that it is for a picture, but he does try to hide it. I don't think anyone here could definitively say how a judge would rule. But just because it says somewhere that is what it is for, does not mean that its legality is a given. U.S. law defines deceptive advertising as anything that is likely to cause consumers to be deceived. That is highly subjective. The Federal Trade Commission also says that disclosures do not always protect you from prosecution. Particularly when you try to hide the disclosure (speaking fast, print to small to read, hiding the disclosure in unrelated text). I am not saying one way or the other, as I am not a judge. But for those of you saying what was happening was legal, you just might be surprised.

However, since the auction never went through, we can't say that it was a scam either. The reason some of these auctions come up is due to the rules set forth by eBay. I have an acquaintance that had several such auctions (although it was for a dongle connector and not a picture). He had several PS3s to sell, but he could not list them the way he wanted to. eBay was not allowing 1 day auctions on PS3s (min 5 or 10 day auction when he was selling them), also he had to have a seperate receipt for each one. Since he bought all of the systems at the same time (for the purpose of reselling) he had only one receipt. By eBay rules, he could not list them. If he could do a 1 day auction, then he probably could have just done it. However, since PS3s could not be put on 1 day auctions, the likelihood that his auctions would be removed was great. So he auctioned a dongle, then at the last few hours he swapped the description and pictures. Against eBay rules? Surely. Sketchy? Probably. But he did have the systems, and did ship them to those that paid.

These type of auctions always happen around console release time (could that have something to do with the date always being near xmas and the manufacturer shipping what they know to be an inadequate quantity to spur buying). Some of them are legitimate and some are scams. One might be able to guess on any given auction by the seller's feedback. But for this type of auction, you can't always tell for sure until the thing gets bought and shipped.

On another note, the use of that particular tv character to deride someone is highly offensive. And jivetrky was not i-yelling. He was stating his opinion that a honest seller would have put that text in large letters as opposed to hiding it in the specs (which many people know already and would probably skip over).
 
It goes two ways.

People need to read the description thoroughly.

People need to stop taking advantage of peoples stupidity.

As long as people don't do the former, people will always keep doing the latter.

In these cases however I feel buyers have recourse to pull out.
 
jivetrky said:
I think that seller is slime, first off. And secondly, I'm amazed at the people that bid on this thing. It wasn't just noobs with 0-2 feedback...it's people with 90+ feedback...and some with much higher. They are morons.

But still, I hope they get their money back because this listing is obviously misleading.

EDIT: another thing to look at is the seller's feedback. Evey though he has many good positives, the bad ones are pretty bad. From talk of Criminal charges and warezed copies of software. Why don't people look at feedback? :shrug:
Click to expand...
*sigh*

This is hilarious. :)
 
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