Here's to hoping that they come through at the agreed price.

Crappy BMW dealership trifecta now in play?

If the dealership has fat wallets, it seems to me they could easily set up a fake corporation and assign an eBay account to it, or let the salespeople sell as individuals.

I think the dealer is gonna come out of this with slightly lighter pockets and the guy is gonna drive home one hell of a deal. Well, that all depends on this dealership's current ebay rating and whether they are willing to forfeit that for a few thousand dollars. Isn't the m3 msrp ~$64k?

I wonder how he arrives at the "multi billion" figure.

I'm sure eBay will ultimately screw the person who was right. Its usually how it goes.

@Greeper: I think he means BMW itself, I am assuming because I don't know of any dealerships that could be multi-billion dollars, but I am not sure.

I think Ken has the advantage here. Unless the price was clearly a mistake (e.g. a new 3 series for $600), then they should honor the price. Besides they did a no reserve auction- that's their problem.

I do wonder if ebay will eventually side with the dealer due to conflicts of interest. To wrap in another popular topic, its just like arbitration. The auto dealer likely does a lot more business than Ken does with ebay and has strong incentive to keep them as a customer.

I really enjoyed the comments on the Autoblog forum, especially the following:

"If he would have bid $120,000 on the car and tried to back out of it, they would have sued the pants off him."

Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose on ebay.

I'm glad you guys posted this :) Its wrong and shows why eBay still needs to allow negative feedback for sellers.

The really odd thing is this car isn't really a huge steal since its higher than base MSRP (though I'm sure the options make it more expesnive). Just another company thinking they make all the rules. I have emailed the dealer to inform them of my opinion and the fact they are all over the web with bad press.

If they didn't want to sell the car that cheaply, they should've set a reserve. The car is clearly his, fair and square.

Whoever made that ebay listing is going to be in a lot of trouble.

@LJKelley: "Just another company thinking they make all the rules."

Car dealerships are all about control.

PS: There is another term for "mistake". It is negligence. He should not have to pay for the dealership's negligence.

they have the rules for e-bay here

[pages.ebay.com]

one of the rules is

Completing the sale

If your item sells successfully, the sale needs to be completed. This includes contacting your buyer, accepting payment and shipping the item.

I definitely think that eBay won't side with the dealership. They've been getting too much bad press lately with the hikes in their fees and what not. They're going to want some good press. If they side with the dealership, you know some national newspaper is going to pick up the story and rip them to shreds.

From what I was reading on the original forum, this dealership is horrible. They've got a so-so eBay rating, their BBB page shows a handful of complaints that the company has ignored, and even people who say they live near there say they would step foot on the property. So it really doesn't surprise me that they would pull something like this.

As much as I hope he gets the car for the agreed-upon price, I think there's a lesson in all of this: If you're going to do business with an actual company over e-bay, check up on them (i.e. BBB's site, ebay Feedback) before going through with anything. Not saying that would change this situation, but if it was me and I had seen their BBB page, I'd like to think I would have thought twice about putting in a bid.

"If the dealership loses the appeal, they will also lose their eBay seller account."

Will they? I once had a buyer flake out on me after he won an auction, and then changed his mind. He got an upaid item strike, but his account is still active. Maybe it's different for sellers (especially on that level), but even if eBay does close the account, they probably won't stop the dealership from opening a new one.

Unless BMW gets spooked by the bad publicity, I think the only way the buyer gets satisfaction is to pursue it in court. But since they're in two different states, I doubt that's going to happen.

You know, frequently I've noticed this on Consumerist. I'll read a story, and the consumer will be right. The store/csr will be totally wrong, but I'll read the transcript of what the customer said, and there will be something there that makes me go "god, this guy's a dick". This is one of those cases - from the m3 forum post:

I corrected Michael, and told him your company may have revenue in the millions, but you make 35K a year, screwed the pooch on this one so lets not get carried away.

Do people really think that insulting the person that they are trying to get something from (even if that something is rightfully theirs) is going to help things?

Ebay will side with the dealer. They get a HUGE cut from a $60,000 sale, none from the buyer. They will not give a rats ass about Joe buyer, but they will do evrything they can to keep the dealership (read cash cow) happy. "Oh yeah, they will side with the buyer". How Naieve. Ebay could care less about the buyers. It is a sellers site. Truth!

@LJKelley: You can still leave negative feedback for sellers. Sellers just can't leave them for buyers.

Base MSRP of a 08 M3 is $53k. As configured in the auction its about 66,745 according to BMW's website, this thing has ALL of the options.

He made a nice little deal, saved about 6-7 grand plus all of those damn dealer fees. no wonder the dealer doesn't want to give it to him.

Oh this guy needs to bring some local news camera crews with when he goes to pick up his car. That would prevent any last minute games they might try to play.

If the auction ran its course, rather than they started said auction, realized the no reserve mistake and fixed the auction or shut it down that would be different.

$4 grand under MSRP doesn't sound like a big deal on a car going for that much money. When you can get $3 grand off deals on cheapo domestic cars all the time.

@madanthony: Just keep in mind people tend to get a little rash in a situation like this. If somebody told me they were going to cheat me in some way I think is illegal, then laugh at me when I say I will pursue the matter, I probably would have been a bit testy too.

Ultimately it doesnt matter what Ebay thinks. It's a contract and if the person wants to, they can sue and get the difference between contract price and what they ultimatley pay for a similar car. But it doesn't seem like THAT great a deal, which begs the question of how/why the dealer cares that much.

@less_is_best: Ebay might make more money, but is it worth the cost in bad press? I'm almost sure that this will hit the local media.

@ghnvt:

The dealer is part of the Van Tuyl automotive group, the largest (at least at one time) privately held dealership group in America. Billions may be right on the button.

I'm wondering if this isn't a mistake so much as a crappy MO for doing business.

BMW Lincoln is part of the Van Tuyl Group. Van Tuyl also owns the Vandergriff dealerships in Arlington, Texas. These are the folks who initially tried to sneak in a 7% sales price increase on a new Chevrolet I purchased in January. I made arrangements over the internet. The salesman (a decent fellow) gave me a good quote on a bottom-feeder Aveo and quoted me an out-the-door price that I accepted. When I drove 100 miles to pick up the auto, he took the sales form back to his manager, they jacked up the price by 600. In this case, I showed them the original out the door quote (I'd printed out the email), and after some hesitation (and some serious frowning), they finally honored it. I appreciate that they honored the price in the end, but I feel pretty sure that I'd have been stiffed if I didn't have the original quote in writing.

Also, it seems that I'm not the only one who's had this problem with Van Tuyl salesmen: [www.ripoffreport.com]

Makes me think that this may not have been a mistake at all with the M3. I think I'm seeing a pattern here.

Anyone had similar problems with VT Dealerships? Here's a list of VT dealers from 2000:
Westway Ford, Irving, TX
Reliable Chevrolet, Richardson, TX
Camelback Toyota, Phoenix
Showcase Honda, Phoenix
Reliable Chevrolet/Mercedes-Benz, Springfield, MO
ABC Nissan, Phoenix
Trophy Nissan, Mesquite, TX
Vandergriff Chevrolet, Arlington, TX
Toyota of Richardson, TX
Van Chevrolet, Scottsdale, AZ
Pinnacle Nissan/Infiniti, Scottsdale, AZ
Showcase Pontiac-GMC, Phoenix
Crest Autogroup (Cadillac-Isuzu-Kia), Plano, TX
Cerritos Nissan, Cerritos, CA
Van Chevrolet, Carrollton, TX
Grand Prairie Ford, Grand Prairie, TX
Reliable Chevrolet, Tulsa, OK
Showcase Chevrolet, Dallas
Reliable Toyota/Lexus/BMW, Springfield, MO
Gwinnett Place Ford, Duluth, GA
Miles Chevrolet/Nissan, Decatur, IL
Huber Chevrolet, Omaha
Reliable Chevrolet, Albuquerque, NM

@consumersaur: That's really a shame, by the way, but that's another post.

@madanthony: The buyer should have kept the high ground, but he only said that after the manager laughed at his complaint.

@bohemian: While I agree that you can usually deal your way down $3000 on a new car, this model car usually sells at or above MSRP due to demand. However, I think it all depends on the specific dealership you go to as to how good of a deal you can get out of them. The soon-to-be Mrs. CRNewsoms mom went to a KIA dealership and they wouldn't take anything off sticker price. Some people are just ridiculous.

The Husker Auto Group in Lincoln, NE is a pretty shady place. I made the mistake of taking my car there for repairs and they tried to sneak in all sorts of extra charges. I hope the buyer takes legal action and really stiffs this dealership because they deserve it.

I agree with the earlier post, that if the buyer was trying to back out, he would most certainly be held to the deal, under threat of litigation.

Sounds like the sticker price for this car may be way off, and the market price closer to $60,000. Other prospective buyers should take note of that.

@ghnvt: There are a number of dealerships that are part of huge companies. Like [www.capitalautomotive.com] and i know [www.marubeni.com] (a huge holding company) owns a few dealerships in new york. But any one stand alone dealership - yeah they are not going to be a multibillion dollar operation

They sold the car. They deserve to get nailed to the wall.

@less_is_best:
The dealer doesn't want to consumate the sale at the auction price which is $60K. So if eBay sides with the dealer, how does that benefit eBay financially?

Serves them right for selling a car of that caliber at No-Reserve. You don't want to get low-balled, you set a reserve price, easy as that.

Course, that's a sweet looking car and I'm surprised they'd even need to put it on Ebay.

I wonder how much the dealership has to pay in listing and final value price fees! ouch! Well maybe they can make it up by charging a high shipping fee? lol!

I gotta wonder what BMW thinks about their dealers selling new vehicles on ebay? Doesn't really play into their image does it?

You really shoudl read the blog where the story originated from. It's halarious. The dealership is sending their own people to sign up and defend the dealership on basis of ethical mistakes.

Funny how they turn around to ethics once they didn't get what they awnt out of the car.

eBay will probably side with the buyer on this one, and they will still get their fees for the listing, even if the seller refuses to go through with it.

As for the seller losing their account, it depends on a lot of things, but don't count on it unless they have a history of eBay violations.

Well. Perhaps if this guy loses with ebay, we should all start bidding on this dealers cars.

Say 1 million for each, then back out and say it was just a mistake. We did not mean to bid at that price.

@ClayS: Because in theory the dealer would put it up for auction again with the appropriate reserve and make more money on it, and Ebay would get a larger amount of money in the future. They also might want to keep the dealer happy so they'll continue making money off the dealer.

However, what the dealer is doing is clearly in violation of ebay's rules. There's no obvious pricing error. The auction was completed and the dealer was obviously watching what was going on with the price and did not cancel the auction or set a reserve.

To my knowledge, there's no good way to force someone to comply. Ebay can terminate their account but that's about it. It's not exactly hard to start up another account either.

I've seen this happen a lot on eBay. A seller places an item up for bid that they think is worth a lot more than it really will sell for. Once it dawns on the seller that the bids aren't going to go sky high, they withdraw the auction, or renege on the sale.

Bad press means nothing when you're the only game in town, however eBay will side with the buyer on this one if only to collect their fees.

I would like to know what dealership this is. A couple hundred calls to them might be in store

By this point BMW itself, the Van Tuyl Group and the dealership have all lost far more business than they have gained by virtue of bad publicity. Viral marketing can pound the heck out of shady dealers like these.

well, hopefully it works out. i ran into a similar issue a few years back when i was bidding on a triumph speed triple motorcycle from a nj dealer. this is supposition on my part, but i think a few people associated with the dealership bid on their own listing to jack the price up last minute, knowing that they could offer the bike to other bidders when the winner didn't pay. what makes me think that? in the last 5 minutes of bidding, two bidders with 0 bid history from the same section of jersey bid the bike $3000 above book value.

that pretty much soured me from the whole ebay dealer auction thing for me. car dealers are sleazy enough when you're waving cash in front of their face, the anonymity of the internet makes it even worse.

If I ever have a chance to put my hands on a significant sum of money, it'll never be on a luxury car!

@Smitherd: It is and it's a lot of why I will probably never sell on ebay again. I left negative feedback for a buyer once -- because she was refusing to pay me for an "all sales final" item. Reason? She thought mine was too pricey (then don't bid that much!) and won it for less from someone else, and thought I'd let her out of it. Sorry, lady, you were warned.

The icing on the cake? She left ME negative feedback (spoiling my 100% positive record, in which everyone else was happy with me for fast ship/pay) saying "Seller was rude".

Well that's her problem if she thinks people are rude for trying to collect. I had to report her to ebay to get her to pay.

The "It was worth it" result? She lost her account for having out of date contact info and ebay kicked her for violating the rules.

@madanthony: It does not make the guy any less legally right. There is now a contract stating that he is owed one car in exchange for payment of the final auction price. If they fail to provide it as agreed, he can sue them for breach of contract and get a court to force them to provide it. If they don't he can have it seized by the court and have the court mediate (or however that works). There's bad blood between parties all the time, and sometimes you see mudslinging press releases from both sides of major trials, but that doesn't make the dispute invalid.