Deceitful EBay Tactics?

[Hiester]

I just witnessed something very interesting on EBay. I was watching a "rescue" orchid, which I was considering bidding on. Earlier this evening I had spent about twenty minutes looking over this EBay vendor's listings, all of which, as best I could tell, were shown with free expedited shipping (this is actually why I chose to take a look).

Well, as the final moments of the auction approached, and the current bid on the plant was sitting at $13.00, a shipping charge of $8.99 mysteriously appeared on the listing.

What I'm wondering is this––can an EBay vendor suddenly add a shipping charge just as a listing is about to end? A few years ago when I was selling a few things on EBay (to thin out my attic) I thought this was something that was limited to the first two or three days of a listing, then nothing could be changed. Am I dreaming this?

[Paul Mc]

I'm not familiar with Ebay's terms, but if a higher bidder bids and agrees on the new shipping cost, then I would think that would trump. If you had won and were charged shipping when you had clearly been told there wouldn't be such costs, that's when I would have an issue.

[HighSeas]

If that's what happened, I think you should file a complaint with Ebay so that they can watch the seller.