Ebay scam?

My husband listed on eBay two of my daughter's American Girl Dolls. I never heard of the following. I guess it could be true but just seems fishy. I told husband to go to next highest bidder and not to take pay pal fee.

Dear eBay vendor:
Llast week we were showing our special needs daughter(who is a minor) how we could shop for a used American Girl doll for her, and on Saturday, without our knowledge, she used our iPad to place bids on about 40 American Girl dolls and some clothing/doll shoes. She placed sufficiently high bids to win about 2/3 of these items, totaling $2,265.
We request that you would consider cancelling the auction we won, and if you might consider accepting a modest re-stocking fee of $10 or $15, which we could pay you using Paypal.
Thank you for considering our appeal,

Where is the scam part? Have you given up any personal information or custody of any dolls? Usually scams involve getting somebody to give up something in expectation of greater payment.

On the other hand, I don't specialize in scams. I would bet that Ebay could tell you if this is a scam.

It seems very plausible to me. The wisdom of showing a child ebay for that sort of thing is a bit quesionable, because of the bidding rules, but I could easily see a child getting excited about all the things and bidding away, not realizing that it was a contract. The parents seem to be understanding that and offering a fee for your trouble.

No scam unless they are asking you for additional info to pay you the $10-15. Personally, I'd wish them luck and tell them they don't have to pay me anything

This doesn't seem like a scam to me. Like tjohn said it doesn't seem like they can get anything from you by paying you $10 on PayPalal.

The only scam I could make of this is they send out a fabricated story in the hopes that a generous person decides to send the doll for the supposed special needs child for free. Or $10-15. Do this enough times and you have a bunch of dolls to sell.

You'd have to be a soulless bastich to try and pull that off. Or think of it.

eBay will easily nullify the auction at your request and most importantly, refund your seller's final value fee. You can then send a second chance offer to the 2nd highest bidder or simply relist.

Also, unfortunately, according to the unpaid item policy on eBay, they will refund your auction fee to relist, but you have no recourse to make the winner pay for the item - multiple unpaid auctions may result in a frozen account by eBay. So, in offering to pay you a fee, they are going above and beyond, but I'd just follow eBay protocol, list it as unpaid, and and relist.

http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/unpaid-item.html

I haven't used ebay in a long time but don't you get email notifications when you place a bid? I guess it's possible they didn't check their email or the girl (they don't say how old) has own eBay account and email address. The bid was placed on Saturday. Auction ended on Monday. Only motive i can see is to place bids (to make sure you win some) but doesn't seem worth the effort to me.

I am fine being done with this and not go after payment just curious because I never heard of this.

georgie said:
I haven't used ebay in a long time but don't you get email notifications when you place a bid? I guess it's possible they didn't check their email or the girl (they don't say how old) has own eBay account and email address. The bid was placed on Saturday. Auction ended on Monday. Only motive i can see is to place bids (to make sure you win some) but doesn't seem worth the effort to me.

You don't unless your settings are set that way. I don't receive email notifications for bids, only for winning items.

Turns out the same person won both of the American Girl dolls. We are just moving forward by checking with the next highest bidder and then if that doesn't work relisting. We are just chalking it up to bad luck.

Don't forget to indicate / click that both sales resulted in an "Unpaid Item" - that indicates to eBay that you should not be charged the Final Value Fees.

georgie said:
Turns out the same person won both of the American Girl dolls. We are just moving forward by checking with the next highest bidder and then if that doesn't work relisting. We are just chalking it up to bad luck.

So, just out of curiosity, how much are American Girl Dolls going for on EBay

On average about $70 (used).