Richard wrote: Well it was, for me until they made it so *money order* payments are not possible. And it is now slower than ever.!

William Donzelli wrote: I have! What bugs is that I like to order online, and then send in the $$$. Only a few places I have seen, do that that. Thank God for the fact that some Small Companies still operate in the USA.

You are not looking. Most sellers do not like Paypal, and will gladly accept MOs, even when they say "Paypal only" to appease the Ebay cops. Personal checks are a maybe, and of course, cash is the most sincere form of payment. WU is often disliked by sellers, because so many buyers screw up the paperwork. When a seller has 25 plus people a week asking all these "baby food" questions - and mind you, there is no money to be made answering them - they tend to get dropped. Many sellers are busy enough answering real questions that may result in higher bids, listing things, pack and shipping, and so forth. Many sellers also have to spend time looking and buying the stuff you people want, often for days at a time. It just does not appear on the sellers' doorsteps, with tags saying "Ebay me!". Anyway, about your above sample questions - that is what the feedback rating is for. That feature is pretty much all for the buyers to use. If buyers actually take the time to read the feedback, and maybe have a sliver of trust after seeing that most sellers are very honest, they would not have to waste everyone's time with all these pointless questions. Basically, if you see no evil in the feedback, then pretty much everything about the deal will go smoothly. The problem is that there are many buyers out there that have completely overreacted to minor incidences, or worse yet, listen to to a lot of crap spewed from others about how evil all dealers and sellers are. People like you have helped build up this mountain of distrust for all things Ebay, and now have really lost touch on how Ebay works in the real world. It pretty much works. Nearly all sellers are completely honest. Bad eggs are generally easy to spot and do not last long. Anyone with a proven track record on Ebay is going to do a good job. We do not shit where we eat. Oh yeah, like this request will get honored. -- Will

I am too busy to continue - I need to continue making customers happy with the things that I sell. 99.9 percent, 7000+. Customer service extends to honesty in descriptions and photographs, reasonable shipping costs, up front terms of sales, answering picky questions, reasonably prompt shipping, adequate packaging, etc.. And then there are the problems that need to be sorted out - dealing with lost and damaged packages, making unhappy customers happy, eating extra costs that add up, bending rules and terms for buyers, extending credit, dealing with shippers and insurance forms so buyers do not have to, often extending refunds when shipping goes bad, and so forth. These do not count for you? With this attitude - no, it will not work for you. If you do not use it, it is useless. -- Will

In article <49D0EEB5.7090303 at jwsss.com>, jim s <jws at jwsss.com> writes: Waaaaaaaaaah. Someone bid against me, waaaaaah. Its an auction. Get used to it, or only purchase "buy-it-now" items. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

Again, I;'ve never had any problems with PayPal. And nor have many other people I know. Perhaps we're just very lucky. The one time I couldn't use PayPal (the seller wouldn't accept it), I had to do an international bank trnasfer, the fee for which was as much as the amount of money I wanted to send. I think I'd rather stick to PayPal... [...] Unless you're talking about the BIN (and yes, some are, shall we say, optimistic), surely then things sell for less than what somebody is prepared to pay (To be exact, the selling price is one bidding increment above the maximum bidd of the second-highest bidder). How does that make it overpriced. O nthe other hand, I've seen plenty of thigns with what I consider to be a very reasonable BIN. The lastest was 4 add-on boards for HP9000/200 machines with a BIN of $16. Not per board, but for all 4. Now, I knew the boards concerned, I knew that all the chips on them are easy to find, so that provided the PCBS themselves were undamaged, they were easiky worth that price. And one quite a few occasions I've got things for _well_ below my maximum bid. [...] I will admit I don;t use E-bay for, say, standard electronic components, etc. If I can get them from a known-reliable company, I go there. But for a lot of things, there is nowhere else sensible to find them (where you you look for the interface module for a 1970's HP computer?). And so far, touch wood, I've not had serious problems. I'll agree with that!. I wish sellers would simply e-mail me when they've posted the item. Some do, but alas they're in the minority. [...] This might be a proglem with some tyoes of product, but so far it's not been a prolem with things that I've been interested in. I guess it's not worth faking odd bits for classic computers ;-) [...] I don;t understnad this. How come if I put in my high bid several days before the end of the auction does it make others bid higher? -tony

This rule of thumb applies to any auction, not just Ebay. Many collector magazines for all kinds of antiques have little statements (disclaimers?) basically saying this. And, if you attend a real live auction house after a while, you will see that a large portion of the bidders (and winners) are dealers, not the end users (collectors). You will also see what the dealers will pay, and how two collectors can fight. Basically, a free for all, value wise. However, one can get a good guess about what one can get for certain things at auctions. -- Will

Richard wrote: You missed what he said. He was encouraging people to snipe. He was against people bidding *before* the last 30 seconds. Peace... Sridhar

Richard wrote: Of course. The point he was trying to make is that non-snipe bidding is counterproductive for the user bidding and just about everyone else. Peace... Sridhar

Brian Wheeler wrote: I can't speak for the originator of the thread, but I was more referring to the two people who get into a bidding war three days before the auction ends. It happens a lot, and much of the time, both of the people forget about the auction anyway, and neither of them get the item. Peace... Sridhar

Richard wrote: Bleh. In any real auction, the auctioneer would extend the bidding if someone bid at the last second. Peace... Sridhar

It should be noted that many auctions outside Ebay have hard time limits. -- Will

Some do, especially noobs. Sometimes the "big guns" will also do this for smaller, fairly insignificant items. -- Will

In article <49D14A69.9040004 at gmail.com>, Sridhar Ayengar <ploopster at gmail.com> writes: Been there, done that. However, there's nothing forcing you to bid your maximum up front on ebay either. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

I still will take USPS and some other money orders, (also cash) however eBay doesn't let me say that in the listing now. I do mention in my text that I do take other forms of payment. I have been selling on ebay for a decade now with few problems. My feedback is 100% (837) and I get kudos for my packaging! ( I lose money on that, it takes a lot more time than I estimate.) I like selling to computer collectors all over the world. Rarely do I have any problems but that is because I try to accurately describe the item. Maybe too much as I never seem to get these high prices people talk about. I also have been buying more lately because it is so easy. I do my homework, check what other similar items have sold for. Check the other person's feedback...and what they traditionally sell. Put the item on my items on my "Watching" list. (cheap buy it nows will show up there first). If I am serious i put in a token bid at the beginning and try to snipe at the end. By personal observation over many years I get things cheaper that way. I think there are a lot more reliable ebay users on both sides than unreliable ones. Close reading of the posting and their feedback will give one a good idea of reliabiliry. If they seem unreliable I walk away.I read lots of feedback reports. Packing is my biggest complaint. Few people know how to pack.So I don't buy fragile items. And if I do I ask about shipping before the item closes, to make sure it will be packed to my specifications. Unfortunitely, I compare packing to mine and few compare. I try to buy possible. I don't qualify for credit either and do not have a credit card. However Paypal recently (after being with them for 7 years) gave me a debit card which I really appreciate. I don't like their combined fees but you pay for convenience. And I find the pair convenient to sell and find classic electronics. They want you to make "Paypal Only" the default but you do not have to. And I don't. Ebay is not my favorite auction format but I think it gets the most "eyes" on your item. That is why I use it. It is part of the "internet revolution". I bought a printer in the latest local GSA sale, a TI 880 (a classic, over 10 years old), and will sell it on ebay. Paxton -- Paxton Hoag Astoria, OR USA

----- Original Message ----- From: "Sridhar Ayengar" <ploopster at gmail.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Monday, March 30, 2009 3:13 PM Subject: Re: I [don't] hate E-Bay (was Cromemco 68000 on ebay) Depends, if you just want something for the initial bid and somebody has already bid you might not want to bother bidding at all. Sniping is only good for high value items that will get a dozen bids anyway.

William Donzelli wrote: I hadn't thought of that. I usually list items on Sunday nights to take advantage of the most eyeballs, but I should probably monitor things to see if it makes a difference or not. -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/

3) For serious bidders that do not want to tip their hand. While bidders are now protected, you can still sometimes figure out who the players are by looking at the bidding behavior and patterns. -- Will

On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 1:13 PM, Sridhar Ayengar <ploopster at gmail.com>wrote: And that is exactly what I should pay. If my maximum bid is less than yours, you'll pay my maximum bid. I fail to see how it makes a difference when those bids were placed, beyond a psychological difference. Whether snipers tend to win or lose is NOT an indication of whether sniping works as a strategy. If I lose an auction to a sniper it's because the sniper was willing to pay more than I was. That doesn't mean the sniper got a bargain. My experience is that the majority of snipers are people who get upset if they lose, especially if the item went for less than the maximum they were willing to pay AND the winning bid came in the last 30 seconds of the auction. (Meaning they might have won if they had bid their maximum.) Let's face it. ebay isn't like other auctions. Other auctions get extended And ebay could fix that if they wanted to. Have the auctions continue at the deadline, but restrict them to people who have already bid, and then end if no bids come in for X minutes.

Sridhar Ayengar wrote: I wholeheartedly agree with this. "Sniping" (whatever you want to call it, I personally call it "bidding only once") is a practice I adopted nine years ago when it was still possible for other people to see what you were bidding on. I lost a few auctions to "friends" who were monitoring what I had discovered and was bidding on, so I just adopted the practice of bidding with 10 seconds left. I've been using esnipe for over half a decade and have been very pleased. -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/

bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca wrote: A couple of years ago I gave away "free for the shipping" some RK05 diskpacks. One person, I think a list member, insisted on paying with a money order. I didn't think anything of it. I thought it was better than a personal check. My small town bank treated it like toxic waste. I got a lecture from the teller about how it was probably bad and that if it was bad, I would be liable for all the penalties. The implication was that I was a counterfeiter and that they would prosecute to the fullest extent of the law. This from a woman that knew me and that lived a block away when I was growing up. It all went fine, but I am apprehensive about taking money orders. If my bank won't take it, I won't take it. -chuck

jim s wrote: I send them (money orders) any way ... tough luck. :) I have found good deals on ebay, but to me how well a item is packaged is a big concern with me. I thend to buy a few rare items rather than the 99cent ipod, so if something is broken in shipping , I can not get a replacement. This limits just who I buy from. Ben.

Cripes, I am not sure where you guys are getting your ghetto money orders, but I have never had problems with my bank and MOs, as long as the routing number is valid. Probably 95 percent of what I get are USPS anyway. -- Will

On 1 Apr 2009 at 22:30, Rick Murphy wrote: I should have said "the check can be verified with a telephone call to the issuing bank". The bank wrote the check and collected the funds; they should be able to tell you if it's legit. Assuming, of course, that the bank is a legitimate US-chartered bank. Foreign banks are another kettle of fish entirely. --Chuck

Huge pain in the ass. Having an escrow service for real world items (not super big ticket) was a pretty good way to not get many bids. -- Will

Not for a seller. It turns away too many bidders, being unfamiliar with the concept, as well as bidders that want the simple deal with no third spoon in the soup. -- Will