Wooff Narrow Bore D Half Set on eBAY

[Jim McGuire]

How is the set playing?

[Davey]

I've really got to handle to Wooff, when I first reeded the drones and played them, they struck me as the sweetest sounding drones I'd ever heard. Balanced perfectly against the chanter.

[Dionys]

Davey,

I recognised your name after someone attached it to your business name(and have heard only good things about your work), but not your business's name. So sorry

Dionys

[Joseph E. Smith]

So Dave, how did this particular set of pipes find their way into your hands? Have you given some thought toward keeping/buying them for yourself?

[Jim McGuire]

The auction mentions that the Seller may cancel and withdraw the auction at any time. From the listing "I reserve the right to cancel this auction at any time as these pipes were shown privately prior to my eBay listing." Someone apparently had/has the Wooff half set under examination.

That policy is not really kosher under eBAY guidelines, especially if the reserve is met for this auction.

From eBAY: "Sellers are not permitted to cancel bids and end listings early in order to avoid selling an item that did not meet the desired sale price. This is considered to be reserve fee circumvention. Although there are legitimate reasons for ending a listing early, abuse of this option will be investigated."

[elbogo]

Yep, seems the seller hopes to make as much money as he can... And, if the ebay thing doesn't seem to be getting to were he wants it, he'll pull out and sell to the private viewer (who, most likely, already gave him a good price.)

[Jim McGuire]

The Prospective Buyer might just have the option to say that he wants it at $ Price, effectively a Buy-It-Now price, avoiding eBAY fees.

[Royce]

Mr. Laban, with all due respect, I do indeed "have a clue". There are 2 ways to install the bass bends on a set like this, and I am familiar with both. HOWEVER, the set was not sent to me in the correct wooff/harrington configuration....
snip
When I received the set the bass drone was setup incorrectly as wooff/harrington intended and the bass bends were EPOXIED in place. The bass drone was installed in the outermost hole and the baritone drone was installed in the center hole with a great deal of additional hemp.

Any other questions I can attempt to answer?

Now you've got me curious. Are you saying above that the set came to you set up the wrong way and Harrington intended it to be that way so you kept true to Harrington's bad design? Or are you trying to say (maybe a typo) that they came to you set up *not* at Harrington intended, and knowing full well this was wrong, or at least not how originally intended, you preserved this "alternate" orientation simply because that's the way they came, or perhaps because you preferred it that way over Harrington's?

Guess I'm just lost in the debate, but it sounds like there's a universally known "right" way and a "wrong way," not just two ways of equal worth, because as you look at the full/half sets of these they're pretty obviously meant to be very neatly snaked together.

Also, that drone angling off is sometimes due to a warped drone (doesn't appear to be the case here) or just having the stock bored at an angle, which may be a defect or the result of shrinkage of the wide part of the stock pulling toward the middle more than the narrow end. The NSP guys deliberately do this all the time so you have a little spread in the stand of drones but I don't think this is the desired result here.

And a last, universal warning perhaps, I noticed on your Ebay item description that you reserve the right to remove the item at your discretion because you've already got several interested or at least possible previous buyers. That's fine for you and them, but as far as Ebay is considered, your posting of the item in auction is your bond, and if you fail to complete the auction you can and will be heavily penalized, up to and including being banned for life. My advice to you or anyone else in a similar position, is to allow the auction to carry on as it will, and direct any previously interested buyers to enter a bid like anyone else and complete the purchase through Ebay, however it originally came to their attention. If it doesn't sell, you can deal at will afterward.

However, if you are caught making a pact to get people to not bid on it so you can back out of the auction and sell outside Ebay you will, again, be banned for life.

Royce

[Tony]

eBay help topics explain how to end a listing early:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/end_early.html

(excerpt)
Sometimes something goes wrong and you can't complete your listing as planned. If needed, you can choose to end your listing before the scheduled date. If there are bids on your item, you can cancel them.
Reasons for ending listings early include:

* The item is no longer available for sale.
* There was an error in the starting price or reserve amount.
* There was an error in the listing.
* The item was lost or broken.

[Jim McGuire]

'Something goes wrong' does not include a sale to a private individual. The intent of starting an auction is to complete it and not have other ideas and/or intents about completing the auction.

The whole idea that one might lose the sale due to the vagaries of the seller ('hey, I found someone whom I'd rather sell to') actually discourages bidders and thus would likely depress the auction results.

[Cayden]

Although the drone placement issue has been discussed and resolved in private, a final word. The pic posted above makes a lot more sense.
Davey was slightly huffed about my ‘not an indication of having a clue’. This was not meant to give offence but given the fact Geoff makes a point of setting the drones up the way Harrington did, very compact and practical, completely reversing them does, as I explained to Davey, give an impression of somewhere having missed the point of the whole exercise. And really, there’s only the one way they go in properly: as the maker intended.

That all said, my initial remark was just that, a remark that the drones hadn’t been put in right and that it looked wrong. It was not in anyway to suggest the set isn’t functional or was structurally manhandled in any way.

[Tony]

Jim, you're trying to 'read into' something that's not there.

eBay simply states "The item is no longer available for sale" as a valid reason for ending a listing early.

[Jim McGuire]

Again, selling to someone else is hardly 'something goes wrong'. eBAY intends for all auctions to be binding.

One reason for canceling an auction, you dropped a porcelain figure and it was smashed. Or you were selling a TV set and just now discovered it did not work.

[Tony]

Again, selling to someone else is hardly 'something goes wrong'. eBAY intends for all auctions to be binding.

One reason for canceling an auction, you dropped a porcelain figure and it was smashed. Or you were selling a TV set and just now discovered it did not work.

or it was detected in the photos listed, the bass drone wasn't on correctly and the auction was ended early...

[Jim McGuire]

Photos can be swapped; descriptions can be modified. Canceling auctions early smacks of 'fee avoidance'. The Seller might be using pressure of the Auction Bidders to force a decision from their private Buyer. Or some Bidder might privately contact the Seller and say what's it take to close this auction. In these case, eBAY loses its Sales fee from the Seller and Bidders get frustrated with eBAY and tend to bid less.