Hello,
I have had a bad experience with a small auction house and I would like to have some input from the community on how best to proceed. I was eyeing at a pocket watch and was using Liveauctioneers live for bidding. I was bidding against "someone". The bidding went up rapidly and I decided to stop the bidding at some point. The other bidder placed another bid and won the auction. As the auction was about to close (fair warning), the other bid disappeared and I became the highest bidder. This strikes me as a potential shady practice to reveal the highest bid that one is willing to place. I think that it is a practice in some auction houses to bid against normal bidders, which amounts to a hidden reserve price. I guess that I am fine with that. The issue here is that they cancelled the highest bid (at this stage, I am not sure whether that bid came from them or a genuine live bidder). I have browsed online and two people report the exact same experience with that same auction house so I have strong suspicions that the auction house is manipulating the auction process. I have a few questions:
What is the legality of that practice?
What are my options with regard to payment (I am leaning heavily towards not paying, which would be the first time in many years of dealing with auction houses)?
Should I file a complain with the Federal Trade Commission against the auction house?
What is the legality of outing them here or on consumer platforms such as ripoffreport.com?
Thanks and best regards,
Dodo44
Click to expand...