Can asking price be changed after offer is made?

Unsound and Cuonghuutran, I appreciate your concerns, and also do not think that our real issues are either legal or practical, but neither do I believe that they are primarily moral. To me, the essential qualities of square dealing when selling online are a blend of honesty, communicativeness, thoroughness, straightforwardness, discretion, and common courtesy.

Here FWIW is my take: Since, as legal and practical issues, sellers are basically free to do as they please, and since a truly amoral seller merely amounts to a crook (in other words, someone intent from the start on giving the buyer less than they thought they paid for, a type from which I think we are relatively and thankfully exempt around here), it is what remains after those givens are accounted for that determines what constitutes good selling practice.

>Honesty: If a seller says it or prints it, they must make sure it's true, and then honor it.

>Communicativeness: When a seller solicits responses from potential customers through an ad, it is their responsibility to follow through and make every effort to communicate back in a timely and informative manner, to everyone, and for however many times are required, until a sale is satisfactorily completed and the ad ended (including fowarding the buyer information about when payment has been received and merchandise sent). This also includes updating the ad as needed to keep it timely and accurately reflective of the current status.

>Thoroughness: Taking the time to totally inspect and assess (and research if necessary) items offered for sale, and then writing an ad detailed and comprehensive enough to accurately and completely describe the item to potential buyers (providing pictures and/or links, if appropriate and able). The word thoroughness also applies to the study and consideration which must be given to the AGS scale criteria before assigning a number grade, and to the care and time taken which constitutes good packing practice.

>Straightforwardness and Discretion: This where I believe people often get into trouble, resulting in problems like the one this post is about. It is not incumbent upon the seller to reveal to potential buyers everything concerning the progress of their ad offer, but it is incumbent upon them to truly mean what they do choose to say, and to stick to facts. For instance, if a seller does not necessarily intend to sell to the first buyer to respond at their asking-price (as is their perogitive, because many other factors may come into play, but sellers must realize that 'first asking-price response' is very common practice, and words should be carefully chosen with this in mind), then they shouldn't tell anybody they were 'first', because that carries implications. If an unsolicited higher offer(s) is received, then it is appropriate for the seller to inform other potential buyers who inquire that the asking price has already been met and they are now considering their best offer(s), but not to start a 'bidding war' by quoting dollar figures above the asking price - for that, the seller needs to start an open auction. If market response informs the seller that they have unwittingly priced something much too low, or for any other reason the seller changes their mind about how they are listing an item or decides to start an auction instead, then they should admit their mistake and tell their respondents that they are going to pull the ad, and what they intend to do next. If a seller changes their mind and does not intend to re-list the item in any way, they should tell their respondents that the item is no longer for sale, but an explanation is not necessarily owed as to why. Basically, as long as a seller is truthful in what they choose to reveal, they not only reserve the right to play their cards close to chest if they so desire for strategic purposes, they also will often foster better customer relations by doing just that. This is what I mean about being straightfoward yet discreet. Telling potential buyers what they need to know and what they should know - but not necessarily everything the seller knows - as it pertains to ad response or the seller's decision criteria; not committing (or appearing to commit) to positions one doesn't necessarily intend to keep; and not leading buyers on, reversing position on them, or unecessarily letting them down by revealing privileged information they don't need to know (or posting two contradictory ads of course!) - these are the seller's equivalents of the 'better part of valor'. This is simply being smart.

>Common Courtesy: Being polite and thankful toward respondents, following up whenever needed or promised, not hastily assuming the worst concerning potential problems, but rather making true good-faith efforts to work out disputes in private before going public or to Audiogon dispute resolution, and utilizing the Audiogon feedback system conscientiously.

IMO, as long as sellers stick to general principles like these, there will be no need for questions of legality or morality to have to come into play.

Unsound, nothing that I am saying is meant to condone the behavior of the seller in Cuonghuutran's case. It is obviously an inconvenience to others for a seller post an ad that may cause certain actions to be taken by respondents, only to needlessly disappoint them. I still disagree however, that a seller accepting their best offer - even one above their asking price - carries with it any stink of impropriety. Rather, the seller in the above case violated two of the points I make above: A) The seller didn't thoroughly enough research the item they were selling in order to arrive at the proper asking price, but even more importantly for our purposes, B) The seller failed to be discreet about what they were doing to correct their first mistake. He shouldn't have so transparently tried to weasel out of his first ad by marking it "Sold" and placing a second one at a higher price as if nothing unusual had happened, and he shouldn't have offered the item to Cuonghuutran at a higher price than it was advertised for.

What the seller did NOT do - which keeps him free, to my mind, from accusations of immorality - was to tell Cuonghuutran that they had a deal at the advertised price and then renege on it. Cuonghuutran makes it clear that the seller never accepted his offer, instead telling him that he would "make a decision later", as Cuonghuutran puts it. It is entirely the seller's perogative to consider all the offers he receives if he so chooses, and then pick from among them based on whatever criteria he prefers to employ. Where he went wrong was in telling Cuonghuutran that Cuonghuutran could instead pay him $X.00 amount (above his asking price), and of course in the two ads business, which was just bone-headed. If he wanted to cancel his first ad and re-list the item at a higher price (instead of just accepting his highest offer on the first ad), he should have recontacted all his respondents, apologized to them, and explained that now realized that he priced his item too low, was going to withdraw his first listing (NOT mark it "Sold" like an idiot), and intended to re-list the item at a higher price. Then, any potential buyers who wanted to could make new offers on the new ad, and the seller could choose from among those offers. The point is, the seller should have done one thing or the other (either taken his highest offer quietly, or declared his mistake and re-listed), but not stupidly tried to do both. Had the seller done one of those things, instead of what he actually did do, we would probably not be having this discussion right now.

But leaving aside for a moment the two mistakes the seller made (not doing enough research, not being discreet in dealing with the fallout he created), what the seller essentially did was this: He placed an ad; he got many responses; one or more of his responses offered to pay the asking price; one or more of his responses offered to pay more than his asking price; he accepted his highest offer. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this in theory, as long as a seller is both straightfoward and discreet about it. I challenge anybody to state for me a cogent, compelling argument as to why, for instance, if a seller receives 4 equally qualified offers of $400.00 on an item he listed at $400.00, plus one equally qualified offer of $450.00 from a particularly motivated and savvy buyer, the seller should not discreetly give preference to the $450.00 offer. I would. What I WOULDN'T do is recontact the other potential buyers and announce that the going price was now $450.00, and ask if they cared to up the ante - I would just let them know the item was sold.

The example of the restaurant reservations scam is pretty funny; I hadn't heard of this behavior before, but then I'm fairly cloistered and naive. What it is not, however, is an applicable analogy to the issue at hand. In the reservations scam, the con artist knows at the outset that he is wasting the time and effort - and potentially losing business for - a number of the establishments he pretends to offer his business to, because that is part and parcel of his plan to look like a bigshot. In the case of a seller on Audiogon, there is no possible incentive to deliberately list an item at too low a price, and then tell potential customers who respond that they'll actually need to pay more to have a chance. The seller would just be inciting acrimony, and that can't be good for business. Almost any case of pricing an item too low and then deciding to backtrack can automatically be assumed to be the result of an honest mistake. This fact doesn't mean such a careless seller should be held blameless for any inconveniences they may cause, but it does mean that they are not the equivalent of an intentional liar like the reservations weasel. I challenge anybody to present a cogent and compelling argument as to why, for example, if a seller prices an item too low for the market through their own ignorance or carelessness, realizes what he has done after the responses come in - but never tells any of the respondents that they have a deal - it is reasonable to hold that the seller MUST still agree sell the item at the listed price to one of the potential buyers offering the asking-price, even if the seller has other offers for more than the asking-price. Such an argument would defy common sense - an argument harder to defend than it is to defend the occasional careless but not intentionally dishonest seller. Also, it would be prudent to keep in mind that 'the market' is never really known until an item is listed; even the most thoroughly researched and realistically priced item could attract an offer above the asking-price, through no fault whatsoever on the part of the seller. Is it then fair to ask that the seller disregard such an offer?

I stand by my outline for good selling practice above. If Cuonghuutran's seller had followed this etiquette, there would have been no problem. Even given the clearly-less-than-optimal way this particular case was actually handled by the seller, Cuonghuutran was not wronged in any tangible way. Nothing was promised him and later taken back. Any valid offer that anybody makes on any advertised item might prove to be unsuccessful for a variety of legitmate reasons. That's life. In fact, it's better than life: Life is supposed to be unfair. This was not unfair, it was just a failed attempt at happiness. For any one advertised item, there can only be one happily fulfilled customer at most. This time, it wasn't Cuonghuutran; other times, it's not you or me. Let's get over it. The important thing here IMO is that, if sellers follow common-sense guidelines similar to the ones I laid out above, then any one of us could have a seller/customer interaction with any other one of us, and whether or not it resulted in a sale, the customer would never have cause to feel wronged in any way.

I agree with Sean, but would also point out that the total scenario in this case makes me suspect that the seller either made an unintentional mistake when he posted his ad which he did not know could be easily corrected, was having difficulty dealing with the procedural aspects of using the Audiogon data-entry fields, or both. Try contacting the seller if you are still interested - if it's still available, you might find out there were some extenuating circumstances involved you could cut some slack for.

Moto_man: Not that I'm sure it really matters anyway as you say, but is your first sentence still the case as you see it legally if the "OBO" is included?

And about those actions, Cuonghuutran and I certainly can agree that this seller employed all the wrong means (however reactionary and without malice aforethought) to try and justify what otherwise could have been an understandable end. Fortunately, I don't think too many of us A'goners are so clueless or inconsiderate. Thanks for sharing the good lesson for us all.