Well, I’m not going to hold you in suspense… I am writing this on Sunday, less than 48 hours after Gemma first appeared on eBay, and… she’s gone… SOLD!!! I’ve got an extra grand in my wallet and Gemma was sold to someone who I think will appreciate her, and that makes me feel good.!

I’ve got to tell you how it happened though… It wasn’t exactly by the book… Turns out I actually got some misinformation from the eBay Live Chat folks…

So, I got up kinda late this morning, about 10 o’clock or so. Normally, the first thing I do when I get up is take a shower… but not today… I had an auction to check! I woke up my trusty Mac and went to Gemma’s listing… no new bids. I was kinda disappointed, but the day was still young, so I hopped in the shower and grabbed some breakfast. It was 11:30 or so when I checked again… once again, no new bids.

However, when I checked my email there was a message from an eBayer asking if I “would accept cash today for Gemma and, if so, how much?”

As I have said in past posts, I had done some thinking about a Buy It Now price and had pretty much concluded that I would be willing to set it at $1000. With any transaction like this, you always have to be concerned about getting paid to some extent. So, I thought to myself, “If this guy wants to give me $1000 in cash and we can wrap this whole thing up today, I’ll take it.”

I checked the rules with regard to “Offers to Buy or Sell Outside of eBay“, and found that it says “Canceling a listing to sell to a buyer who became aware of the item through eBay” is not permitted. “No problem,” I thought. If he wants the car, I’ll just set a Buy It Now price of $1000, he can buy it through eBay while he is at my house, and we’ll do the deal.” As I wrote in a previous post, the eBay Live Chat person had informed me when I was setting up my listing that I could add a Buy It Now price after the listing was live even if people had already bid on the item.

I responded to the eBayer who had written me and told him that I’d take it for a grand in cash, but that I wanted to follow the eBay rules and do it all through eBay, and to call me if he was interested. He called about an hour later and he was soon at my house looking at Gemma with a few friends, plates and cash in hand. He told me that he was buying a car for his nephew who had just graduated high school and needed a car to make the daily drive to his college classes. He had shown the eBay listing to his nephew, who had said that he liked the color. I thought it sounded like a perfect situation and the eBayer liked the car, so we went inside to do the deal.

I got online and went to change the listing to include a Buy It Now price and was shocked to find that I couldn’t do it. The field that you needed to fill in to set up the Buy It Now price was grayed out and I couldn’t type anything into it. We couldn’t figure out what was going on, so I got back on the eBay Live Chat.

I told the eBay Live Chat person, Vikki, what was going on, to which she responded, “Please note that you can only add a buy it now even the listing has bids if you set a reserve price and it is not met.” (Exact quote… I had Vikki send me the transcript of the conversation.) This was not at all what the eBay Live Chat person had said a couple days ago. I responded, “so I need to set a reserve price first and then I can set a buy it now price?” To which she replied, “Yes, if the listing has a reserve price and it is not met you can add a buy it now price. However, the reserve can only be added during listing creation.”

What!?! This was the exact opposite of what I had been told previously. Now I’m told that I can only set a Buy It Now price if the listing already has bids if I had previously set a reserve price while I was creating the listing… It was this type of situation that I was trying to avoid when I talked to the eBay Live Chat person while I was creating the listing!

The Gemma buying eBayer said that we could do the deal now, and he would just make sure that he won the bidding war. This was nice of him to offer, but I didn’t want to do that and have the thing continue to drag on… besides, what if something went wrong and he didn’t win… it just sounded like too much trouble.

So, I’ll tell you straight up eBay: I broke your rules!!! What did you want me to do? In that moment, anything other than selling Gemma to the guy with the cash sitting right in front of me free and clear was unacceptable. Get some Live Chat people who know what they are talking about!

We did the deal and off he drove with Gemma. I had mixed feelings as I watched them drive off. I was happy about the $1000 in my pocket, but it was strange thinking that I would never see Gemma again.

When the sentimentality had cleared, I got back online to try to figure out exactly what the rules were with regard to Buy It Nows and Reserves on listings that already have bids. I knew exactly where to look as I was looking at the page with the rules while I was chatting with the Live Chat person when I was creating my listing. It’s in Step 3 in the “Revise Pricing” part. Here’s what it says:

Yeah, it didn’t strike me as being so when I first looked at it, but that second paragraph is a bit ambiguous. Here’s what it means: “This option only applies if the listing is a reserve price listing and it has not met the reserve price.” It does NOT mean: “This option applies to No Reserve price listings, but it only applies to Reserve price listings that have not met the reserve price.”

Yo, eBay! You may want to clear the ambiguity up… and make sure you inform your Live Chat personnel of the change! Enough about that.

I canceled Gemma’s listing with a few clicks and that was that. As far as I know, eBay still gets the $100 or so for the listing, so I don’t think they have much to complain about.

If you want to check out Step 4: Complete the Sale in the eBay Motors “How to Sell a Vehicle” guide, you can find it here.

As I said at the beginning of this post, I’ve got an extra grand in my wallet and Gemma was sold to someone who I think will appreciate her, and that makes me feel good.

BYE GEMMA! WE”LL MISS YOU!!!