What an awesome update!!!
So how did you manage to clear up that error and get the Steyr?
Thanks, Markus!
I contacted the auction house through its Contact Us email portal, since at that time they had wrapped up the auction and were closed for the day, and expressed my surprise and displeasure with the results I had found. I remained as civil as possible, detailed my prebids both before and on the day of the auction, and asked them to please correct and update the results on their website and to contact me by email or phone with the invoice and amount due as I was clearly the winner.
As anyone familiar with online bidding with actual auction houses knows (as opposed to bidding on say ebay), once an error has been made, regardless of whose fault it really was, an auction house rarely if ever unwinds the winning lot. Even if unwinding a sold lot whose winner was appointed in error would be the most ethical thing to do (it probably is), actually doing so tends to cause an endless chain of other, albeit smaller but still unfair, offenses toward other bidders, in order to keep trying to make each new “screwed over” buyer as happy as possible, when the reality is, in the end, probably none of those screwed over would be happy. So from a business perspective, one person is already screwed and may never do business again with you so why try to make that one person happy when the chances of him or her being 100% happy are almost laughable, at the cost of any others you will now hurt trying to fix that original error?
As it turned out, the auction house did contact me, and they did admit to the mistake being made by them, and that another lot also had a similar mistake made by them. They did apologize and acknowledged that I was right to feel angry and upset about the error. They even told me the winning onsite bidder was a buyer for Cabela’s which is like the last large big-box firearms retailer in the US, and that he often bought many guns from them. They said they would try to reach him and ask him if he would consider working out a deal in some way.
I was obviously upset still and sort of succumbed to the fact I was not going to get this Steyr, but was somewhat grateful that they at least admitted the error was made by them and that they apologized.
Then I didn’t hear back from them for close to a week. I had left vmails with them twice during that time, which they did not respond to, so I could feel the fires of Mt. Doom beginning to be stoked inside me once again.
Then, incredibly, when I woke up the other day and was clearing out junk emails, there was an email with an attachment from the auction house. It turned out to be an invoice, addressed to me, for Lot 513, for a winning bid of $550, plus the auctioneers commission, and plus shipping. All said and done for a grand total of $695.00 USD!!!
I believe I owe someone at the auction house and someone at Cabela’s a few cases of beer.