Selling A Preorder Slot On Ebay


kuru

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Okay, there's a guy on ze German boards who says "oh noes 3 more days for painting, gonna sell my preorder spot, can't take it any longer"

So, instead of getting a refund he tries to make moar money selling his preorder slot for an unreleased item. Is that legal?
 
socket said:
Sounds to me like they were joking.
It sounds to me like bad excuses for greediness.

http://cgi.ebay.de/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=230462529963
 
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Why not? those who pay more for it (compared to the offical source) have bad luck, if someone gets it cheaper they are lucky. If he never gets a Pandora (cause all produced units are broken - team bankrupt) and therefore can't deliver he is the one who has to pay the money back and he gets rated down, possibly even worse actions will follow.

Its not a problem I think, it might be against ebay rules too, but I wouldn't say its against the OPT rules.
 
It's hard to say. The extremely multi-national nature of this project makes it difficult to say which country's laws control the purchase agreement. I'm guessing UK because that makes my life easier. In which case, yah, it's legal. You're allowed to assign contracts to others for money as long as there's nothing in the contract requiring YOU to do anything specific to you. In the case of paying money for a product, there ain't.
 
after having waited for 1.5 years i wouldn't call someone greedy. or at least no more greedy than all the house owners around the world who sold their house for more after the market value increased.
 
MDave sold me his preorder spot, although he wasn't looking to make a profit, he was just being nice. Anyway, it can definitely be done, and I don't see why OP would deny it for someone else.

craigix's store seems to tend to have some slots available at the top, so I doubt you'd make a big profit selling one of his slots. But since this is from a German person it's probably ED's store, which is known to have no free slots and a waiting list. So I could see one of those on the waiting list wanting to jump on the auction.

He's not deceiving anyone, so I don't think there's a problem. An auction will only pay out as much as people are willing to pay for it, so I think it's okay to let that be the arbiter of fairness.
 
It seems to me that e-bay could apply the same rules as paypal since it's the same company. That being that products need to be deliverable within a month or something. That's what one of the initial payment troubles for Pandora was all about. But i'm not going to read through the complete user agreements and legal details to figure it out ;)
 
He could've easily canceled with OpenPandora and then they would've filled the slot themselves.

In my eyes this is no more than a cheap trick to get something more out of it for the waiting (or because the Pandora is on the border of being released). Makes me LOL a little though, waiting for so long and then sell the slot.
 
Wootson said:
He could've easily canceled with OpenPandora and then they would've filled the slot themselves.<snipblanks>In my eyes this is no more than a cheap trick to get something more out of it for the waiting (or because the Pandora is on the border of being released). Makes me LOL a little though, waiting for so long and then sell the slot.
+1

Also, yes, I can see it as a possibilty to get on the first batch in ED's zone if you're incredibly impatient.
Alas letting money decide who the "lucky guy" is, just makes the poetic me feel sad.

Exophase mentioned that there is a waiting list for Europe, I didn't even know that.

Well, can't force (physically remote or superior) people to be a bit fairer I guess^^

Edit:
The dude doesn't want to be selfish. He's now offering to spend the potential earnings on something altruistic (mankind/pandora2/community).
 
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I don't agree with the idea ,if it's non profit and you are friends then i guess it would/should be ok but again there could be problems with dealing in this way.

i hope you get your spot and there are no problems ,all i want is everyone with their Pandora.

Paddy
 
Well, the seller can change the shipping adress, but all additional costs (i.e. higher shipping costs) need to be covered by him.
The invoice adress won't change, since he is the one who made the contract with the distributor (which is me in that case), so the eBay buyer would receive the Pandora but get an invoice with the adress of the other guy.

You can't sell any contracts. You can sell the device - and if you sell somebody a device, you usually get the invoice he got. For warranty, this is no big deal, but if the new buyer wants to use it for tax returns, etc., he simply can't.
 
Hehe, ED should refuse to change the shipping address and refund instead :p It shouldn't be hard to find out who sold the spot after the auction ends ;)

edit: Oops, ninja'd again. It's Ninja day, it seems.
 
Exophase said:
He's not deceiving anyone, so I don't think there's a problem. An auction will only pay out as much as people are willing to pay for it, so I think it's okay to let that be the arbiter of fairness.

He is clever though.
The preorder in Germany was 250EURO. He set the starting bid to 265EURO, this way he will not make a loss.
Well, its interesting idea. If you are lucky you make money and wait lets say 2 month more. If no one buys it you get the pandora OR can then AFTER the auction get a refund. Hm...

EDIT: opps. He paid more becuase he has a higher shipping price. So if someone gets it for 265 EURO, he has to pay some EUROs to ebay.
 
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kuru said:
Edit:
The dude doesn't want to be selfish. He's now offering to spend the potential earnings on something altruistic (mankind/pandora2/community).
Easily missed
 
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mali said:
Hehe, ED should refuse to change the shipping address and refund instead :p It shouldn't be hard to find out who sold the spot after the auction ends ;)

It's not hard for me since he included his order number at eBay ;)

I will change the shipping adress but will eventually demand additional shipping costs (depending on who buys it).
I will not change the invoice adress, as that would only happen if I refund and a new one gets it (and there is a waiting list, so it's kinda unfair to them doing this on eBay).
 
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Is anyone else just excited that our little device has been on Ebay twice now already? I just find that kinda neat. That is all. ;)
 
MWeston said:
Is anyone else just excited that our little device has been on Ebay twice now already? I just find that kinda neat. That is all. ;)
It has indeed generated a certain interest.
Globally. Which isn't easy.
And might become highly profitable,
if taken good care of.



/edit:
somehow economically interesting what just sprang to my mind, it's pretty unique to build a presence and, more or less, a CI before going to market. Guess that's modern times for ya :)
 
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