Terms

strawberrybid.com is operated by Josh Andrewlavage as an individual, not as a company. “We” and “the operator” below mean that person. By placing a bid you agree to everything on this page.

1. What is being sold

A single fresh strawberry. One item, one winner, one time. There is no reserve price and no second lot.

2. Bidding

The auction opens at $0.01. A bid must exceed the current price and may exceed it by no more than the greater of one dollar or ten percent. Bids outside that range are rejected.

You may not outbid yourself. A bid is placed only when the confirmation link sent to your email address is used, and the price is validated again at that moment.

A confirmed bid is binding. If you hold the top bid when the auction closes, you are agreeing to pay it.

3. Bids are final and cannot be cancelled

A confirmed bid cannot be cancelled, retracted, lowered, or withdrawn. There is no cooling-off period, no cancellation window, and no way to take a bid back once the confirmation link has been used.

Once confirmed, your bid stands until somebody outbids you or the auction closes. If you hold the top bid when it closes, you owe that amount.

Changing your mind is not grounds for release, and neither is the passage of time. This auction runs for a year. A bid placed in the second month is exactly as binding in the eleventh, and “I forgot” is not a defence against a countdown that was on screen the entire time.

The single exception is the operator voiding a bid under section 11. That is the operator’s decision, not a request a bidder can make.

If you are not certain you want to pay an amount, do not bid it. The cap on increments exists partly so that no single click can commit you to much more than the current price.

4. No card, no payment details, no charge

This site never asks for a card number, and never takes a payment. There is no checkout, no card field, and nothing stored that could be used to charge you. Bidding costs nothing at the moment you do it, and nothing is taken from you at any point during the year.

The winner is invoiced. When the auction closes, the person holding the top bid is emailed an invoice for the amount they bid, payable by the methods shown on it. They pay the invoice directly. If a payment provider is used to issue or collect it, the winner deals with that provider themselves and their payment details never pass through this site.

Nobody except the winner is ever invoiced for anything. If you were outbid, you owe nothing and you will never be asked for anything.

5. When it ends

The auction ends at the date and time shown on the front page, one year after it opened. The end time is fixed. It is not extended by late bids and there is no anti-sniping period.

6. Claiming

The winner is emailed at the address used to confirm their bid. That email carries the invoice, and the winner has thirty days from it to pay in full and supply a shipping address.

If the thirty days pass without payment, the bid is forfeited and the strawberry is offered to the next highest bidder, who then has fourteen days on the same terms. This repeats down the bid history until somebody pays or the bids are exhausted.

A forfeited bidder has no claim on the item and no further obligation.

7. What is shipped, and in what condition

Once payment has been received in full within the thirty days, and not before, one single strawberry is mailed to the address the winner provides.

Shipping is to the continental United States only. If you cannot receive delivery there, you cannot receive the item, and a winning bid from outside that area will be treated as forfeited.

Condition varies and is not guaranteed. A strawberry is perishable and it is being posted. It may arrive fresh, bruised, soft, overripe, or spoiled. No promise is made about how it will look, how it will smell, or whether it will be fit to eat on arrival, and no refund is offered on account of its condition.

You are bidding on the strawberry and on the year of waiting for it, not on its quality. If a guaranteed edible strawberry is what you want, they are available at any supermarket for considerably less.

Do not eat it. It has not been prepared, stored, or handled in a commercial food facility, it is not sold as food, and it should not be treated as food. Anyone eating it does so entirely at their own risk, and should not do so at all if they have any allergy to strawberries.

8. Messages

The top bidder may submit a message of up to 140 characters and a public name of up to 24 characters, both displayed publicly.

By submitting one, you grant the operator a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to display, store, and archive it on the site and in the ledger for as long as the site exists.

The operator may remove any message at any time, for any reason or none. Removal of a message does not affect the standing of the bid behind it.

Messages are the words of the people who wrote them. They are not statements by the operator and are not endorsed by them.

9. Reporting a message

If a message on this site targets you, contains your personal information, or is otherwise something you think should not be there, email strawberrybid0@gmail.com with a link or a description of it.

Reports are read by a person and acted on quickly. You do not need a legal basis, an account, or a reason you are willing to explain. If it is about you, that is enough.

The same address handles copyright complaints and any other content objection.

10. Free bid vouchers

Each person may claim one referral link. When somebody else opens that link, a voucher unlocks that covers a single bid at the then-current minimum, paid for by the operator.

The rules of it:

• One voucher per email address, ever.
• Opening your own link does not unlock anything, and the same visitor opening it repeatedly counts once.
• Vouchers stop working once the price passes $5.00. A voucher covers the current minimum, so its cost rises as the auction does, and the operator has capped what he is willing to spend.
• A voucher has no cash value, cannot be sold, transferred, or exchanged for anything, and expires when the auction closes.
• A voucher bid is a real bid. It carries the same message, the same public name, and the same obligations as any other, and it cannot be cancelled either. The only difference is who paid for it.
• The operator may end, change, or withdraw the voucher scheme at any time. Vouchers already unlocked will still be honoured.

There is no element of chance in any of this, nothing to buy, and no purchase improves anybody’s odds of anything. It is a referral link, not a prize draw.

11. Voiding bids

The operator may void any bid believed to be fraudulent, automated, made in bad faith, or made using an email address the bidder does not control. Voiding a bid returns the price to the previous legitimate bid.

12. No warranty

The site and the item are provided as they are. To the fullest extent permitted by law, the operator disclaims all warranties, express or implied. The operator’s total liability arising from the auction is limited to the amount actually paid by the winning bidder.

The site may be unavailable at times. No compensation is offered for a bid somebody was unable to place.

13. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Oregon, without regard to its conflict of laws rules. Any dispute arising out of them belongs in the state or federal courts sitting in Oregon, and both sides agree to that.

14. Changes

These terms may be corrected for clarity or accuracy. The rules of the auction itself — the increment cap, the end date, the claim window, and the forfeiture order — will not be changed once bidding has begun.