On Thu, 5 Feb 2004, Joe R. wrote: Yeah, that really gets me. Especially when I make a reasonable offer on something that has received no bids at least a couple times, and the seller balks and relists it. By the time they actually do sell it (if ever) they are already in the hole with all the listing fees! Who ARE these people!? -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

--- Vintage Computer Festival <vcf(a)siconic.com> wrote: If I remember correctly, Epay will return you all your listing fees except the first one if you finally sell your item. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Finance: Get your refund fast by filing online. http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html

Reading the eBay fee page, it says only the very first listing fee is returned. Vince

On Feb 5, 2004, at 5:53 PM, Vintage Computer Festival wrote: Last time I read the seller's FAQ, eBay doesn't charge fees on an item with no bids as long as the seller relists the item. So, it's actually cheaper for the seller to relist than to sell it offline. Of course, relisting an item 6 times at the same minimum when you're getting no bids is kind of dumb. Doc

Doc Shipley wrote: Is this a new thing? For years, it has been you can basically get twice the time for the same listing fee *IF* the item sells the second time. Otherwise you get charged again. And of course Ebay has no incentive to block non-payers since only the FVF gets refunded, not the listing charge. Letting the fox guard the henhouse is *really* dumb.

On Thursday 05 February 2004 18:53, Vintage Computer Festival wrote: You mean like this guy? http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3075103057 That's been relisted on eBay since last Spring or maybe Winter. With a $4k start bid, that can't be cheap. At this point it wouldn't suprise me if he's spent hundres of $$ just relisting the machine. If he just had some sense to either lower the opening bid or sell it in some other venue that bought that kind of thing... And from an email exchange I had with that guy when I was considering buying it, he's 1) got no idea what he has and 2) is willing to sell it for less money. I think I managed to get him down to $2500 or $2k - I'd be suprised if he wouldn't have sold it by now if he'd set the start bid to something near that. Of couse, he seems to resell Compaq PeeCee hardware, so he can't be all that bright. ;) Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCS Information Technology at Purdue Research Computing and Storage http://www.itap.purdue.edu/rcs/

Today is a happy day! Just got an ASR-33 teletype....well at least almost... Seriously, I just received almost all of the key parts for a TTY. I have the main assembly (with punch, the keyboard, and the reader. All that is missing is the Power Supply and case. Thanks to David Gesswein (pdp8.net) I also have a full set of prints. While I did a reasonable amount of work on these beasts back in the mid '70s it has been a long time, and many of those brain cells have disappeared. Since I know that a number of people on this list have working teletypes, I would greatly appreciate being able to speak with some of them to come up with a game plan for actually getting this operational. Please contact me either via this list, or e-mail dvcorbin(a)optonline.net. Thanks in advance. David ps: Where else can you get a multi-function device that does NO Graphics, NO Lower Case Characters and prints a fantastic 0.1389 PPM!!!!!!! (It also will head a small enclosed space, and provide enough noise to mask outside activity!)

At 10:23 PM 2/5/2004, Teo Zenios wrote: eBay's short-term auction model works well for all parties if the items sell quickly. They're missing an opportunity for items that don't sell quickly, but that people want to sell. Based on my proven inability to come up with an idea that someone else isn't already milking, there must be an auction site like that. It would be more like Sanford & Son - a digital junkyard - than an auction house. Give an easy Access / SQL / XML interface for uploading, and let the parts warehouses list what they have. Let the items sit there until sold, and only then would I pay the listing fee. Encourage junkyards of whatever type to list their inventory and keep it current. Heavens, let me search reliably by barcode or parts number. Maybe this isn't even a centralized service like eBay. Maybe it's a distributed service, spidering a database that my web site advertises. Maybe this is the pot of gold pitched by all the XML evangelists. You ask who'd pay stupid amounts for a manual or some other small item? Well, I have. If I'm in a pinch, and the client is footing the bill, I've paid the stupid price for all sorts of replacement items. Recent stupid purchases: 6 gig IDE drives for $100+ because I needed the exact model to attempt a brain-transplant to rescue the data. Another reason for the stupid fixed price shipping model: many of these operations have employees. They're not just one person sitting at home selling items in their spare time. Selling one item does have a fixed cost in time and trouble. Then there's my maxim regarding any mail order sales: The cost of goods should be covered by the shipping and handling charge. All else is gravy. :-) - John

Actually there is a new phenomenon happening now and anyone interested in jumping onboard should move now.... Ebay is organizing all around the country "Drop Off Centers" Where the non-technical, non-interested can just pull up with their stuff, drop it off, give their prices and the drop off company will photograph and post auctions/sales onto Ebay and charge a commission for the sale of the items. This is an opportunity everyone could take advantage of and if you're willing to setup an asset manage system, tags, have a small warehouse space, setup a photography area and spend the time putting some nice html templates together this could turn into a full time business. Curt John Foust wrote: -- Curt Vendel & Karl Morris ----------------------------------------------------------------------- The Atari Museum http://www.atarimuseum.com The Atari Explorer http://www.atari-explorer.com

I agree too, also these drop-offs centers, while some are official Ebay ones, you can set up your own independant one and you could very well do many avenues such as put some on Ebay, others on other sites. If you were to get into surplus computer equipment you could post it into Vintage Marketplace or if it were videogames you could post it onto bidiots.com There are other sites like biz.com and bidville.com (though I've gone to bidville and the ville is more like a ghost town, lots of stuff but like no buying at all, at least on VCM and bidiots! I see a lot of buyers not just sellers) I've been hearing some negative stuff about epier.com lately so I'm steering clear of them. Yahoo auctions while a big site, their selling system for posting items is really cumbersome and time consuming and their presentation leaves a LOT to be desired. I'm trying to move away from Ebay and their monopoly especially since they really soured me with yet another rate increase on Feb 1st, and they tried to hide it by saying "well gee, we're only charging people $39.99 to post on our front page instead of $99.99 look at the great price cuts we're giving everyone... meanwhile don't pay attention to the subtle price gouging we've just put into all the other features on our site" I'm patronizing VCM and Bidiots as much as possible and looking elsewhere for items like the newsgroups, I don't want to give evilbay anymore of my business or $$$ anymore, enough is enough. If anyone wants to put together a Drop-Off Center for computers/electronics/video games/technology in the NY/CT area, contact me as I would love to put together a business with someone on this, this is a ground floor concept and I always hate it when stuff takes off and you just get in when the whole market is flooded and its too late. Curt ----- Original Message ----- From: "Marvin Johnston" <marvin(a)rain.org> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Monday, February 23, 2004 11:19 AM Subject: Re: Greedy E-bay idiots!

now what the hell is a 600 volt outlet? 110 220 440 maybe but 600 volt? hmm..... ----- Original Message ----- From: "Patrick Finnegan" <pat(a)computer-refuge.org> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2004 8:39 PM Subject: Re: Greedy E-bay idiots!