Conduct on Audiogon

According to your description of the transaction, you tendered an offer, and he accepted. By any reasonable standard, you had an agreement to buy his piece. It sounds like he got a better offer than yours AFTER agreeing to your terms, and, rather than do the honorable thing and uphold his agreement with you, he created an "out" for himself by suddenly requiring you to contact him in a ridiculously short period of time to "confirm." Likewise, if you had backed out after the seller accepted your offer, it would have been just as unethical (although buyers have done that to me before). For the seller to call what he did common practice at this site is weak justification for his actions. It's bad form no matter how you slice it, and Audiogon should permit buyers to document such behavior through feedback.

Sounds like you got the short end of that one. But as stated above if that is the kind of guy he is you are better off not dealing with him anyway. Once the seller had agreed to your offer he should have let all others know that the sale was pending. Good luck, hope you find a better deal soon.

I have been visiting this site for around a year. During that time I have generally agreed with the decisions made by the Audiogon staff - with a few exceptions. However, their response to this thread concerns me. While I understand that Audiogon exists to make money and that that will at times put them at odds with posters in these forums, their current stance makes me wonder about the integrity of their rating system.

If Bink's statement of the sequence of events is accurate there was no misunderstanding or miscommunication. The seller agreed to his offer and later decided to sell to someone else. Giving ten minutes to reply via email is ridiculous. I am disappointed in Audiogon's response and their stance on this matter.

Clearly, the rating system is worse than meaningless, it is misleading. Yes, there can be misunderstandings with respect to classified ads. But Audiogon has a responsibility, as the host of such ads, to investigate possibilities of abuse *before* posting responses. Audiogon, I hope you are reading this.

Bink, I think that the problem was around the word IF in the offer. It was not a firm offer unless the seller agreed to certain criteria. In my opinion, this needed additional confirmation and acknowledgement to complete. The 10 minute time limit is what is unacceptable. In a reasonable exchange, there would have been one email agreeing and one more from you acknowledging. Another point to consider is that there are a lot of flakes that make "offers" and never follow through, leaving sellers stuck. So this person may have had a bad experience and is still trying to figure out where common ground is.
Like Sean said, consider yourself lucky that this is all that happened. Best of luck in future ventures.
AJ

Mac, i have to applaud your response. While i agree with you in principle, Audiogon has to draw the line somewhere as to what constitutes a "deal" or "transaction". Otherwise, i could post negative feedback about you for literally ANYTHING and it would be my word against yours. For example, if you did not cut me a "better deal" on an item that you were trying to sell, i could post that you are "uncooperative, hard to get along with, someone to avoid", etc... See what i mean ??? So long as everyone follows the basic guidelines and leaves feedback by the same agreed upon standards, everyone knows EXACTLY ( or as close as possible ) as to what took place.

Like any other "rules" or "guidelines", there are always loopholes and those that find ways to exploit them. Audiogon is working to "fill in the gaps" in terms of transactions and feedback, but it will not be an overnight thing. As always, Audiogon is ALWAYS open to good ideas and member feedback, so if you or anybody else has something positive to ad to the website, feel free to start a CONSTRUCTIVE thread on the subject or email them directly.

I have suggested previously, and still believe, that each item listed should receive an "item number". Transactional feedback could only be made with that item number used as a reference. Right now, there is REALLY no way to know who is leaving honest feedback and who is stacking the deck. With the "reference number method",the seller would have at least had to pay to post an ad in order to get an item number and there would be some way to cross-reference the feedback to the specific item that was listed. Make sense ??? Sean
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