E-bay complaints: was Re: "Response" from seller with the "Apple-1"

[steve]

--- "Jim Isbell, W5JAI" <jim.isbell at gmail.com> wrote:

> Amen and Amen.  
> 
> I sell a lot on E Bay (and buy also) but I have a
> policy that if there
> is no bid on my item 6 hours before closing, I pull
> the item.  I will
> NOT sell it to a sniper who wants to get it for 1
> cent over the
> minimum bid.  If there is a bid on it then its a
> fair auction, but if
> you watch a real life auction the auctioneer does
> not say "going,
> going,  oopes theres a bid, gone."  After a lat
> minute bit he will
> open it up again for more bids.  E Bay used to do
> that back in the
> beginning.  If there was a late bit it automatically
> extended the time
> for 5 or 10 minutes.  But they dont do that now, so
> I pull the item if
> its not getting bids.  Another tactic I use is to
> raise the starting
> bid at 6 hours till end if there are no bide.  This
> will get some of
> them off the pot.
> 

Wow, that's quite a bizarre policy, you seem to be
jumping through hoops with no obvious gain,  but to
each his own I guess. 

The ebay auction system, for all practical purposes,
is like a sealed bid auction. In this type of auction
bidders view the auction item for, say a week, and
then submit a written sealed bid which is opened at
the end of the auction.  

For an ebay auction, a sealed bid auction is
effectively created when everyone snipes at the last
second (with no time left to rebid). More specifically
an ebay auction is like a Vickrey auction, where the
winning bidder pays the seconds highest bid(that is a
second-price sealed-bid auction).

So it seems you are trying to alter ebay auction
system into a traditional open auction, fine, but
studies have shown that the final auction price is
about the same in either type of auction, that is, you
are doing alot of work for nothing, other then
satisfying some perceived emotional gain, which I
guess maybe is something. 

I think if look at an ebay auction as a vickrey
auction, and just accept it as it is, you won't feel
cheated that no one is bidding on your auctions till
the last minute. Then you can save yourself a
tremendous amount of grief and time by not altering
the ending of your auctions.




		
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