A guy over on Reddit had tickets to a big sporting event but at the last minute couldn’t go, so he sold them on eBay for $600. The event was in less than 24 hours and when he contacted the winning bidder after they didn’t pay for a while, the woman told him that her husband had said that it was too much money and wouldn’t let her go. Never mind that winning an eBay bid is a binding contract and now the guy has little chance of selling the tickets. So he concocted a fiendish scheme to trick her into paying.

What he did is email her from a different email address and say hey, I saw you won those tickets, I’d really like to go, can I buy them from you for $1,000? She agreed, and lo and behold, she contacts him as the original seller and says “oops, changed my mind, I want to pay for those after all.” He brings her the tickets, collects the money, and then goes home and has his sockpuppet bidder back out of the deal with her.

Once again proving there are two user classes on eBay: predator and prey.

Unethical? Yes. Illegal? Probably not. An eBay bid is a binding contract. An email is not.

What do you think? Sound off in the comments.

How I got an uncooperative eBay buyer to pay for her purchase. Was it unethical? [Reddit]

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