17 Oct
1999
17 Oct
'99
6:55 p.m.
>I've seen this, too. On one particular item
that I wanted,
>in viewing the "View Sellers Other Auctions", I noticed that
>he had a number of them to sell. Spread out over a few days.
>I would bid on one and someone would outbid me. I'd bid on
>another and someone would outbid me. I finally just said forget
>it, this is getting ridiculous. :-)
It may seem odd, but that is just the mechanics of the auction. Lets say I
see something I want and I am willing to pay $100 (and I set that as my
maximum bid). Ebay then "bids" for me until it reaches my maximum, OR I am
the highest bidder. I could be the highest bidder with the bid stopped at
50 cents. You come along and think, wow a widget, I would happily pay $7
for one, but you enter your bid instead at the next bid increment, 75
cents, hoping for a steal. Surprize, ebay immediately bids for me to the
next increment, $1. This will continue until somebody tops my maximum bid.
1. Items (like HP C3010 2 Gbyte SCSI drives) that have
been
flooding the surplus market. These are available from liquidators
like www.hitechcafe.com and www.compgeeks.com for $30-$35-$40, but
I've seen them bid up into the $50-$60 range on E-bay very regularly.
Same thing often happens for surplus PC-clone mainboards.
Some of it is ignorance, people don't know about all the market sources
that some of us scroungers do. Another part though is that many people
TRUST an eBay transaction to deliver an as described product more than they
do web sites.
2. What really amazes me is when a seller makes a
reserve price auction,
very plainly states the reserve price in the item description, and
there are literally dozens of bids made *below* the stated reserve
price. What the ???. Either the bidders think this is entirely a
Ebay is revising reserve auctions because of this "loophole". Only when the
reserve price is met are the buyer and seller obligated to complete the
transaction, and only then does eBay collect on the bulk of the transaction
fee, the final sales percentage. Too many sellers set reserves that are
rarely met, so they pay no final sales fee, but they "let" the buyer have
the option of buying at the final bid amount.
A lot of sellers really are just hoping with the reserve anyway, and after
seeing an active auction that poops out below the reserve decide the final
bid wasn't that bad after all.