How fair is this?

putting aside the question of fairness, i wonder who would be dumb enough to bid in the auction that ends first. in effect, the high bid in the auction ending first is merely the "stalking horse" bid for the auction ending second -- i.e., it merely serves to start the bidding for the "real" auction that ends later. from a buyer's standpoint, you wouldnt want to bid up the price in the non-binding first auction as it would create upward momentum in the bidding with no benefit to the high bidder.

Seandtaylor99, ever here of a contract????

An offer to sell at a certain price and an offer to buy at a certain price constitutes a contract in the most simple of terms.

Can anyone really imagine going to any auction anywhere, being the winning bidder and having the auctioneer say, oh sorry, we decided to sell it to someone else.

Don't be stupid.

Fairly obvious, this is a bad precedent. It is most likely that the seller will be in violation to previously agreed upon rules and regulations of at least one host auctioneer's web site. As such, the seller is in all likelyhood not a person of his word, and can not be trusted. I discourage everyone from enabling this practice.

Pawlowski6132, the seller did highlight his tactics. There's nothing underhanded here, as it's clearly stated that the higher bid of the two sites wins.

If you don't like it then don't bid. Jeez it's only a piece of hifi equipment !

What seems even worse about this. On ebay it ends in a couple days, ends today here. On ebay it is a buy it now price. No reserve auction here. So if you win it here for less then the buy it now price on ebay, you have to wait 2 days to see if he has a better offer there. And he doesn't state anything on ebay about being listed on audiogon also. To me, this is bad business.