After looking around all day in the stores for a gamecube and having no luck I decided to go to ebay out of fear that I might not get one in time for Christmas. I notice they aren't going for much of a profit so I decide to start playing ebay sniper jumping in on the last seconds to try to get one for around retail + shipping. Now the problem, I place my maximum bid on one during the last ten seconds as 199.99 somehow this entered ebay's system as 1999.99 as my maximum leaving me set up to be the high bidder obviously. I couldn't retract the bid because it was too late so I emailed the seller and he just doesn't understand, he is new so he doesn't get the system. Should I just pay the 250 total and forget about it or go ahead and let him give me negative feedback? I've never gotten any and have 235 positives. I just hate paying too much.

I saw a guy at Target today go bezerk because they didn't have a GameCube. They had a stack of XBoxes though, he should've just picked one of those up instead Well he looked like a real freak so that explains it.

Anyway he was hollering about how he called and they told him they had them in. It was the night of Black Friday too, after all the crazy shopping happened. Earth to Idiot: You are in a Target Greatland the night of Dark Friday and you expect to score a GameCube?

I was replying to the title btw, I see your post is a different subject. Is a negative feedback worth 50 dollars to you? Can't you just send him 10 bucks or so for his trouble and let him contact the next highest bidder?

well that's a tough call, if it were me i would just get the negative feedback becauz 50 $$ is alot of money,

I understand your dilemma. Only on one occasion have I ever ran into a similar situation. A long time ago I was auctioning a Game Boy Pocket I won in a contest. After the auction was won I checked the Gameboy to see if it worked and I noticed it had a small minute scratch on the lower right hand corner (off the playing area though). I felt bad because I advertised it as "BRAND NEW" and I have no idea how that mark got there as it wasn't there before. I felt so guilty I told the winner I would refund the money (it was through paypal in their good days) if she didn't want it or she could still get it and I'd take $5 off. In the end she was very nice about it and took the $5 off (since it was partially my fault anyway).

Anyway the point I'm trying to make is that that guy should realize everyone makes mistakes. I think you should try emailing him again explaining in detail exactly what happened and how it was a mistake that you typed in an extra digit at the last second since he is sort of new, list links on how the eBay Max Bid thingy works.. Does the amount you typed in show up in the bid history? I can't remember if it does. As far as not paying....to me $50 is a lot of money. In fact you can get a game for that much money and its probably not wise to waste it. Its a tough decision, but if it was me (this is a different situation than the one I described above and I've never gotten negative feedback either), I'd probably go ahead and take the negative feedback(if he leaves it that is). When someone gives you negative feedback you have a chance to respond to it on the feedback form and explain. If he says something like "Bidder did not pay" you could just say "Sorry, I mistyped too many numbers for my max price and he did not allow bid retractions."

Something like that. I know how bad you must feel as you have a lot of positives but don't feel bad, everyone makes mistakes sometimes, just buy or sell something nice and easy to get a Positive to cover it up . Best of luck!

Contact Ebay, because you can retract a bid if it was an obvious mistake. $1999 instead of $199 is an obvious mistake. Do not pay the extra $50. Email ebay and explain what happened. They should let you retract your bid without getting any negative feedback.

They will be able to see the amount you bid.

Chances are that the guy was hoping for much higher than $250 (look at some of the "Buy Now" prices for cubes and you'll see what I mean). He might be relieved that you're giving him another chance to sell it.

Hell, the Toys R Us here yesterday had about 25 gamecubes and 32 Xbox's. I asked how they got so many and they said "Our manager authorized us to sell all of our inventory except 4 of them"

Might want to find a nice cashier and butter them up

Don,

Yea try ebay. Most of the Game Cube are going for around $212-220. It kinda sucks for me, BUT Good for you

I mean I have my ebay listing up for about 6 days and yet nobody is bidding on it. The bidding is up to $102 for my system. Which is small change. If you want take a look at my listing.

http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI...tem=1299460432

Sorry to plug my link here. It's just that I'm afraid of not meeting cost for the system. Also with the money I get... I'll buying a X-box! haha

Later!

James

Isn't it a DVDTalk no-no to post links to auctions, especially your own, that are still active?

If you want a gamecube, www.futureshop.ca has 86 indigo and 99 blacks. They are selling slowly so they won't sell out. They had around 100 indigos and 180 blacks left from when they went on sale.

(They also received more Xbox's, went from 0 to 159 remaining.)

Thanks so much for the advice! I sure do appreciate it. It was hard to decide if I should just pay the guy or argue it with him. He seems nice but really thick headed. Seems like he's new to ebay and just doesn't understand how proxy bidding works. I emailed him the links like you said to do so hopefully he'll read up on it. I really think if he relisted the auction that he might be able to get his 250. He could file for credit from ebay and get his listing fees fully refunded. I aleady wrote to ebay and explained the problem in detail and they told me to work it out with the seller and there isn't much more they can do. I really want a gamecube but I am willing to wait on it so I don't have to overpay. My kids are older and don't really care if they get one or not, I care more than they do so it doesn't matter if I have to wait a little while after Christmas. I guess it's inevitable that I'll get negative feedback sooner or later. I'll just respond to it and hope people understand. I don't sell much on there anyway.

Don - The K-mart down from me (different town) has a bunch. If you want one, I will pick it up and ship it to you. No reason to have to deal with ebay for these things if you are getting jacked around.

Xboxes and Gamecubes are supposed to be shipping pretty steady. I would just call around every week and check. It's should be a lot easier to get a Gamecube than the PS2 last year.

I guess I'm in the minority here, but I would probably just pay the $250 and chalk it up to a lesson learned. I think you did the right thing by trying to explain to the seller what happened, and by trying to retract your bid by contacting ebay's customer service (although I'm not at all surprised they didn't help... they're pretty much useless and never get involved). When all is said and done, though, it was your fault, not the seller's. One of the most annoying things on ebay is having to relist your item because the high bidder backed out, for whatever reason. Yes, $50 is a lot, but it's not really that much more; it's not like you accidentally wound up paying two or three times as much as it was worth. At least you would have the Gamecube in plenty of time for Christmas without having to try to find it somewhere else, and you would avoid negative feedback. And most of all, it'll teach you to type more carefully next time!

I found mine at K Mart, too in Annandale, VA. They didn't advertise much and I just happened to be there when I saw someone with one in their cart., griping because all they had were purple. I figured I 'd settle but there was a black behind the others. They had 3. I hadn't even considered looking there. You might try calling the K Marts around you, maybe they could get one shipped from another store. Ames is doing this with a Playstation 2 for me.

I was feeling really bad about sticking this guy being it wasn't his fault at all but then I went in and looked at his other auctions. In the past week he's sold 6 gamecubes and 2 xboxes. He's a new user so I am going to assume he had a chance to buy these and thought he'd make a profit selling them on ebay. Okay I know that's within his rights. He's got other gamecubes up right now so I don't feel so bad now about it. He hasn't answered me back yet about my offer. I offered to pay him 227 total, 199 my bid, 25 his shipping and the extra to cover ebay charges in addition to what he has to pay already. I emailed the second highest bidder and ask her if she wanted to take over my bid for me, she declined saying she found one elsewhere. I'll just wait it out and see if he accepts my offer. Thanks again for the help and especailly thanks for the offer of getting a gamecube for me.

Hey Feneant, I just checked Futureshop and they wanted $299 for the gamecube...
Probably a mistake.

That's in Canadian currency... so with the exchange, its like 170$ US.

Also, I am not sure they ship to the US yet... but I thought that with Best Buy buying them they would start doing so.

Looks like I got lucky because I just heard from him. He has decided to take my bid of 199 along with shipping. He's even giving me a black one which goes much nicer with my tv than that bright purple color. Now I'm off to try to find some deals on some games.

good to hear everything worked out.... enjoy the goodness of the cube

Sweet deal! I'm glad too sometimes its frusterating but he seemed pretty cool about it.

I was about to suggest if you went ahead for the negative feedback to use the extra $50 to get Super Monkey Ball and a memory card, that would surely make you forget about the ordeal but it looks like you don't have to . Have fun!

I found Gamecubes at KB Toys and Family Toy Warehouse