eBay Accused of Price Gouging Scheme

Symbiot writes "eBay is being sued in a Calilfornia court for a practice that the plaintiff, Glenn Block of Pennsylvania, claims artificially raises the amount of a bid. The practice combines the warning emails that eBay sends out when you are the highest bidder and your bid is at your maximum, with the bid increment mechanism. It seems that if your original maximum bid settnig prevents your current bid from falling on an increment then your current bid will be raised to the next increment as soon as you raise your maximum. If the plaintiff wins this class action suit could cost eBay tens or hundreds of millions of dollars."

Comments

Riiight...

[Telastyn]

So, eBay is price gouging an -auction- whose parameters [set increments] are defined well before the customer participates?

Perhaps I'm missing some nuance of law, but this seems like something that eBay's lawyers [and the judge] will toss into the street with a nice lengthy brief which summarizes to "RTFM!".

Slightly Offtopic - Civic Duty?

[ParadoxicalPostulate]

Something bothers me about the nature of civil suits and monetary awards in this country.

Why is it that we make it a habit of running off with as much money as we possibly can from a lawsuit?

The purpose of suing for this sort of stuff should be twofold: 1) to regulate company action by means of threat and penalty AND 2) reparations. Nowhere in those two clauses do I find any justification for "screwing the other guy over because he did it to me first."

It seems to me that few suits are about that anymore. While its true that you are entitled to sue if a company takes advantage of you, often times the rabidity with which "wronged" plaintiffs style their demands leads me to wonder if they are simply taking advantage of the momentary shift in power.

In that scenario, it's no longer about punishing the one who took advantage of you because he could. It's about turning around and taking full advantage of him, because now you can.

Re:Slightly Offtopic - Civic Duty?

[rjstanford]

There's one easy fix to that. Keep actual damages the same that they are now, awarded to the plantiff (or "damaged party"). Allow punative damages? Sure, but they go straight to pay of the national debt (or whatever).

Weird? Well, the purpose of punative damages is for the "system" to punish the defendant, so having the system (ie: government) benefit seems reasonable at first glance. Much more reasonable than benefitting the plaintiff, who has already received their damage claim. And it would cut down an awful lot on frivolous lawsuits if people knew that they wouldn't be getting a windfall, just what they (rightly) deserved.

Lawyers might be a little less likely to push some of the more questionable cases also, if they knew that their fees wouldn't include a percentage of the punative amount (usually vastly greater than any actual damages). You could still sue for actual + punative + legal fees, of course.

Re:Nobody seems to understand...

[allanc]

Except that that's not what happens. This issue only happens when someone else bids $80.

Your bid is now $80, but you still win because you were there first.

However, if you *then* bump your max bid higher, it'll bump your current bid up an increment.

Know how you solve this problem? Actually make your max bid the maximum amount you're willing to pay for the item to start with, like you're supposed to.

Shitty article summaries unnecessary

[Slashdot is dead]

The following was written by a real journalist who is paid to write and report about current events for a living. They are in no way affiliated with Slashdot. (Slashdot is a joint venture between computer programmers and morons.)

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - EBay Inc. is being sued by a Pennsylvania man who charges that it illegally forces up prices when certain high bidders raise their maximum bid to guard against last-minute offers, an attorney for the plaintiffs said on Wednesday.

Not only is this summary 1/4 as long as the article summary published by Slashdot, it displays a superior level of understanding by its author. More importantly, it encourages readers to read the entire article, rather than pissing them off with typos or stupid statements like this

It seems that if your original maximum bid settnig prevents your current bid from falling on an increment then your current bid will be raised to the next increment as soon as you raise your maximum.

and this

If the plaintiff wins this class action suit could cost eBay tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.

This is a case where, if I were a schoolteacher and "symbiot" was my student, I would encourage plagiarism.