21 Feb
2011
21 Feb
'11
3:58 p.m.
On 21 Feb 2011 at 15:25, jim s wrote:
This entire thread has been discussing ebay in terms
that are simply
not applicable to the way the site runs. It is more of a site for
online sales, similar to Amazon (buy it now on epay) or "let's see
what we can get someone to pay" rather than having auctions.
I'll go a bit further and say that eBay is *very* different from any
usual auction.
Every in-person-sale-at-the-gavel auction I've ever attended allowed
for inspection of the goods to be sold ahead of time. Most
auctioneers want to avoid confrontation over misrepresentation.
eBay doesn't accept responsibility for auction accuracy. The seller
of the item puts his description up and eBay does nothing to check
its accuracy unless it's very clearly fraudulent or illegal.
eBay runs the timer, collects the bids and a listing fee and a
commission.
eBay is what it is. And sniping is just one part of it.
Heck, we've all engaged in sniping of sorts. Some merchant selling
something has a deadline to get the merchandise sold or face turning
it over to a liquidator. On the last hour of the last day, you show
up and offer him half of his asking price. He's motivated and sells
it to you rather than face a bigger loss in liquidation.
When Xerox closed down their business center retail chain, a friend
and I showed up at 4:00 PM on the last day of the "going out of
business sale'. The store manager was in charge of liquidating the
merchandise and he would basically accept any offer. We filled up a
truck with all sorts of goodies, from office furniture, a copier,
daisy wheel printers and other such stuff. We probably could have
gotten a pile of typewriters for a song, but we weren't interested.
Had we made the same offer a day earlier, he wouldn't have bitten.
--Chuck