ebay psychology

Ive seen this happen a couple of times lately, I dont quite understand the whole situation, seems more than a bit daft to me. From memory there was a nice Bernard on the other week which didnt sell than appeared a few days later at almost half the price again.

Mike M

miley snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com

I used to work as a bike mechanic at the Bristol branch of an extensive chain of bike shops. The owner was a very wealthy & successful business man, old, canny & smart.

If a stock bike had been around a while, he would get it out the back, get it cleaned & polished - perhaps change the handlebar and driver's footrest rubbers - that sort of thing and put the price up by fifty quid.

It didn't always work, but very often it did!

Perhaps Patibee ought to drag it blinking into the light, assemble it & put it on a nice cloth to rephotograph it.

We'll see ...........

Regards,

Kim Siddorn

I've seen a similar selling tactic used once or twice on ebay. Sometimes when a reserved item fails to sell the seller will relist it as "no reserve" but set the starting price at the level of the previous reserve. Almost every time I've seen this the item fails to sell either time. I don't get it in this case coz there wasn't a reserve the first time round. Maybe a touch of excess optimism I think... Cheers, Scruffy.

I suppose at the end of the day the seller has nothing to lose as Ebay offers a free relisting anyway. But it would make more sense for them to drop the price a little, to attract more intrest, not raise the price.

Perhaps if more people tried selling things on Ebay at a decent start price then their items may actually get a bid on in the first place. After all there is a lot to be said for the auction which starts at a low price and soon rockets up as opposed to the one which starts at a silly price and doesn't get a single bid.

Mike M

miley snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com

The problem with eBay is that the real auction lasts a few tenths of a second if there are two or more that are seriously interested in the item. There is no getting around the fact that everyone can look at it for 5,7 or ten days, but there is absolutely no point in bidding unless one simply cannot be at a Broadband terminal when the sale ends.

Then it is simply a case of banging in the highest, snipiest bid you can justify to yourself & hope its higher than the other interested party's.

I'm not sure it can work any other way, mind, but it's far from ideal, is it?

Off to Cheddar now for the NVTEC sale.

Regards,

Kim Siddorn

Not for an on-line auction, no.

At the end of the day or the auction, you have to be the highest bidder, come what may, if you want to buy the item. The only methods are:

1) Put a high bid on and see it nibbled away by people who might not be actually going to win, but that hurts you as you are ultimately paying more on each new bid. 2) Wait until the last few seconds and bang in the killer bid. Works most of the time, but unless you are absolutely desperate for something it can be expensive. The main benefit of this method is that you don't leave your bid open to others to have a go at, and people can't look at your bids and know what you are bidding on beforehand.

Peter

-- Peter & Rita Forbes Email: snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk Web:

I don't see this as a problem. In fact I consider it a benefit. OK, it becomes more a tender rather than auction, but it does avoid "auction fever" pushing prices up to unrealistic levels.

There are plenty of services that will put a niping bid on, not to mention really good (and cheap) software that will do the job. Takes all the stress out the situation too.

What annoys me more is that ebay is just becoming a shopping portal with proportionately fewer private auctions. Couple that with the "description cheats" and it becomes quite hard to actually find anything you are looking for.

Still, like everything else in this world we can only expect things to deteriorate I suppose.

I always use bidnapper to bid at 5 seconds to go on my behalf, a lot less trouble for a small fee. I agree completely that it's 7 days of advertising follows by a few seconds of auction, but I'm sure it could be made more like a real auction if the system ended at a random time if no bids had been received for a while. Greg

That's an increasing problem, I just had a model railway item described as A1 that turned out to be broken and splashed with paint!, not revealed by the careful photography and claimed to be postal damage by the seller even though the packaging was good and intact. I got a begrudging refund but lost the postage in both directions. Yet this seller had no indication of his attitude in his feedback, he has now... I think the biggest problem is that people are frightened to give genuine feedback for fear of getting unjustified negative as a punishment. Greg

The other problem is that a lot of people are selling things for 99p but postage at £15, as ebay doesn't charge commission on the carriage and packaging.

Rita just got caught out on a picture she bought, and the vendor was a bit quick with his feedback for her, so after it didn't show up we asked for a refund, with the implied negative feedback if he didn't. Let's face it, recorded delivery is only a quid or two, and although he said he had proof of postage he never produced it....

We usually try and be fair with post and packing, and where we have to give an estimate which turns out to be too high, we always refund the balance back to the buyer.

100% feedback is increasingly difficult to find, and it makes me laugh to see folks with 160 positives and a few negatives boasting about their feedback ratings.

Best I ever saw was an American with over 10,000 positives and no negatives, there are probably others as well, but very unusual these days.

Peter

-- Peter & Rita Forbes Email: snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk Web:

I always look very carefully at the wording, it's not unreasonable if they make it absolutely clear at the beginning in large letters that this is what they are doing, but it's the sneaky ones with the tiny print that you have to watch out for. Of course Ebay could stop these scams easily by charging on the total price including P&P, but they could improve a lot of things if they had the will.

I too try to be fair when selling, though have had people go to the other extreme and complain that I've charged them a pound more than the stamps even when the parcel was 4 feet long and clearly had cost me in packaging materials!, they forget it is postage AND packaging.

I've managed to get to 107 with 100% but only by compromising my principles, on a couple of occasions I've dealt with someone who definitely deserves a negative to warn others but I haven't dared because his record shows he gives negatives back as punishment. This is where the feedback system is seriously flawed and I think they need to look at changing it to block a negative in response to a negative, you would still have the right of reply but not of punishment. In the latest case he made the mistake of giving me positive as soon as I had paid so he got a neutral with an accurate explanation which I thought was fair in the circumstances.

I've seen some who just sell large quantities of very cheap tat at a dollar a time to build a good score, then occasionally sell a VERY much more expensive item which makes me extremely suspicious. Greg

The other option is to extend the time the auction runs (after its nominal finish) so that there is a clear time of ten minutes after the last bid has been placed. Great if your selling, as a buyer bargains would be harder to find.

Andy M

The way I see it is that at the end of the day people have ample time to bid on any particular item. I dont like the idea of having 10 minutes after the last bid before the auction actually ends, as in reality people could continue bidding for hours after the designated end time. If people want the item they should put there top price on first time and be done with it, instead of just continuosly bidding an extra £10 here and there to push the bid up. Perhaps a system where you can only bid on each item the once could be introduced.

Mike M

miley snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com

Hello Alspam1.

It occurs to me you don't sign your postings like the rest of us. Any special reason for that?

Regards,

Kim Siddorn

I have, over the lat ten years contributed to various newsgroups, and experienced tons of spam as a result. you wil note that my email is "alspam1". This is a valid email address, but it is one on my own domain that I can change should I get too much junk mail. I did sign a couple of posts on here earlier, and got a lot of spam as a result. It doesn't take a genius to use the name I sign with and put it in front of my domain name to get my principle address and flood my mailbox.

I was getting around 500-1000 junk mail a day, and really don't want to get back to that stage. Anyone who writes to me personally will get a response signed and from my primary email address.

I'm not hiding, and not anonymous...just cautious