posted on January 7, 2001 08:08:00 AM new
I would agree with a Final Value fee, that's fair (if the bidder pays). But listing fees? Yahoo traffic doesn't warrant them. Sorry Yahoo, I'm gone.....
posted on January 7, 2001 08:29:24 AM new
OH GARSH! Just can't stand it any longer! Have to add my 4 cents worth!
The move Yahoo made was precalculated. They knew exactly what they were doing. While some have posted that we have to help them to understand that what they're doing would surely kill the site (after all, no business in their right mind would make such an idiotic move...), they've known all along what their startegy was.
The "appearance" the chat sessions provided them with was precalculated as well. Nothing different was going to happen and no amount of insight or pleading was going to change that but it looked good (to whom, I don't know). Actually, it provided a further means of false hope to Yahoo's sellers - shame on them - dirty joke.
I agree, this move on Yahoo's part was meant to close the doors on the Yahoo as we know them (or knew them...) today. Not being a financial person, is the next step that stock values fall to a point where a take over (buy out?) becomes economically feasible for somebody (like eBad?) or do they close their doors and make it a write off? Told you I was NOT a financial person!
posted on January 7, 2001 10:44:44 AM new
grayowl,
I'm sorry but I deleted your post because it was promotional in nature. Posts promoting your auctions are prohibited per AuctionWatch.com's Community Guidelines.
Please familiarize yourself with the CG's before you post again.
posted on January 7, 2001 12:29:48 PM new
Going. Wouldn't mind a final value fee but with the few bids and high deadbeats on Yahoo I can't afford to list.
posted on January 7, 2001 01:58:22 PM new
I'm doing both. Since I sell at both the upscale (I import) and low end (I do consignments for poor people, utilizing financially strapped listers in some cases) I'll continue to list at the high end with Yahoo. But at about 10% my current rate.
Since my experience,vis a vis eBay, is that eBay gets 10 times the hits and a lot of competition with the same product, and Yahoo sales are mostly one shots, I can no reason for any risk. My sales on ebay are about 50% while they are 90% on yahoo, but only after about 90-120 days.<p>
But I've read with interest the various notes from people who feel let down. I'm a retired exec and can tell you that Yahoo's plans were calculated not only to run you off, but also your buyers, so don't be betrayed. <p>
Their reasoning (which is terribly flawed but human, considering the age and immaturity of the company's decision makers)
is that their advertisors are losing out because 95% of Yahoo buyers would never use their products or service. Kids who buy baseball cards are unlikely to buy financial services from Merrill Lynch. Why this is wrong is that the Japanese proved in the 1960's that by giving those "kids" a good product they could be loyal to, those kids would give them cause to
turn 2-stoke sewing machine Toyota Corolla's into Lexus'es 30 years later. I doubt Yahoo has anyone over 30 who could think in those terms. Most of you sellers are far more experienced. <p>
Moreover, Yahoo is driven, as are some of the Sellers, with a severe case of penis envy for upscale houses such as eBay. eBay is making enough mistakes on its own that had they stayed the course, Yahoo could have turned their natural advanatge into real dollars in the future. But the worst sort of management is the type that, while selling KMart items, wants to be looked upon
like a Sachs Fifth Avenue. In short, most Yahoo management is embarrassed of their clientele (buyer and sellers).<p>
So, for those of you leaving, you should be glad of the sepration, for Yahoo, while still a useful venue for some kinds of products, no longer deserves any loyalty. For those of you staying, sharing the same
sort of penis envy (I've noted in some of the comments), in hope of seeing their products somehow enhanced now that the penny postcard, comix and flea market dealers are gone, your products sadly will attract little in the way of new buyers. What one gentleman said earlier is true, that the penny listings bring the largest harvests for all. Market analysts, who praised yahoo's moves, are dimwitted and narcissistic as the critters their analyzing.
Mssrs Blodgett (Merrill Lynch) and Jaffrey will miss the mark by at least half of what Yahoo's fee earnings will be this year.
>p> I'm just glad all the little dollar-big volume dealers will have someplace to go. One of the newer auction sites will provide a new home, and the millions who look your products over now will slowly gravitate there. I'll be there, too. Just be
patient and enjoy watching this insufferable elitist arrogance get it own just
desserts as Yahoo either turns itself into an uppercrust sales venue for a few hundred dilletantes,or a used car lot for old DeSotos.
posted on January 7, 2001 02:10:17 PM new
I have to say that I popped in at BidBay.com and was delighted to find a category titled "Under $1". What fun to browse!
posted on January 7, 2001 04:34:44 PM new
Was going now leaving, havn't used yahoo for some time, just found out they are going to charge listing fees, guess they need the 30 to 80 million extra dollars this year. I need all of my extra quarters, will find something else.
posted on January 7, 2001 04:34:44 PM new
Was going now leaving, havn't used yahoo for some time, just found out they are going to charge listing fees, guess they need the 30 to 80 million extra dollars this year. I need all of my extra quarters, will find something else.
posted on January 7, 2001 05:31:41 PM new
(Off-topic to Desertpete4: To make a paragraph break in your posts, just press your ENTER key twice. HTML doesn't work on this board.)
posted on January 7, 2001 06:11:16 PM new
I'm listing and relisting fast and furious until midnight 1/9, then I'm gone. I typically listed about 150-200 items/month, selling about that many while having about 400-500 listings at any given time. I hardly consider that to be junk, and yet, at a price range of $2-10, I just can't afford to pay that kind of fee. And on the Friday chat, they WOULD NOT ANSWER my question, specifically `Why charge for the re-lists?' Twenty cents for three listings would have driven off the junk while not alienating the sellers who've made it a good site. Most importantly, it was a FUN site, meeting nice people. So sad!
posted on January 7, 2001 06:15:00 PM new
Sales have not been good enough recently to justify staying.kind of sad i started with Yahoo and Watched it grow and now it is going to be a useless list site.I may do a few from time to time but i doubt it.
posted on January 7, 2001 09:57:16 PM new
I am going, as I have only sold 15 items on Yahoo in a 3 month period, versus over 250 items on Ebay. 25% of the time, I can't collect from the yahoo bidders, and Yahoo does nothing to help. I can not afford to pay for a dead horse. I would pay a final value fee for all COMPLETED actions, but not a listing fee at this time.
posted on January 7, 2001 10:21:16 PM new
I am "small time" compared to most of you,
but please tell me what Yahoo does NOT do
to handle deadbeats that others might do. I
have been selling on Yahoo (which is ending
tomorrow) and occasionally sell on ebay. I
have never been "stuck" on ebay but many times on Yahoo. I learned my lesson about
giving honest feedback! I can not afford any
fees being that it takes so many times to
re-list before selling. I think that it is
the anticipation of "re-lists" that is
chasing everyone away. I have been systematically closing out by auctions the
last few days and have not seen one yet that
had more than 6 viewers. I will admit it---I have some "junk" in there but I also have
some wonderful items with attractive titles
that should grab the viewers interest. It is
my belief that the viewers, buyers are just
not there. And by the way, the "junk", in
my estimation, has sold before the better items. In the last year and a half I really
have come to believe that the old saying
about one man's ? is another man's treasure.
Some of us have been intimidated by "Jack"
when my most happy customer acquired something that would be minor "junk" to Jack.
Sorry---I have gotten off the original question about what is the difference between
these auctions.?
posted on January 7, 2001 10:27:44 PM new
I started to sell with Yahoo: When Yahoo didn't have any good sellers and not very many auctions! I used to fight with deadbeats and still do, I have the longest list of dead bidders on yahoo ever, since i have been selling with yahoo since almost when they started, there was only 3 pages on the purses section, now there are over 70 pages over 3500 + purses. My auctions booth was made especially to help yahoo auctions http://user.auctions.yahoo.com/user/highendhandbagspurses & not to make money, it was just for fun and as a hobby, I do have 5 diff, booths and its allowed on yahoo unlike ebay, Yahoo is very cool. I also have clubs that are related to my booths. http://user.auctions.yahoo.com/user/highendhandbagspurses As a professional yahooligan i beleive and feel they don't have the capacity to be a fully succesfull auction house since almost every auction is either a fake or trash, in regards to purses and designer oriinals, music and glass is very good but paying a fee for having an auction stand still for 10 days and only have people looking at the auction till it ends with no bidder is unfare for their fees, Its not an actual AUCTION house. www.yahoo.com is a site that caters to many people, If i go to www.ebay.com That's an actual site. I'm willing to pay a fee if there is actual bidding on the auctions but when there are 1,000 auctions and only a few succesful closing auctions, i feel is not right for yahoo to charge, they should charge if the auction closes succesfully and after the bidders have posted a positive feedback, this way the deadbeats dont sabotage your auctions. Yahoo please wake up and smell the coffee, its not fare and especially when us the good sellers have been with you since day one yahoo auctions started, as a pro i say no fees for non-selling auctions, its a waste of yahoo and the auctions all together will be a disaster for yahoo.
posted on January 7, 2001 11:10:49 PM new
I'm probably in the minority, but for now I'm staying until my Monopoly money runs out (at the rate I'm using it I'll probably have 6 free months.)
The listing fees aren't going to hurt me much because I sell through at almost 80% mostly at a good profit.
I'll stay until either my auctions die from lack of interest or the site implodes.
(My ever increasing group of bidders will have to up and leave too, which as buyers- I don't think they care about the fees.)
I'll stick around for awhile. I'm not happy about the listing fees but considering I rarely have to relist that won't hurt me much.
And NO I'm not a plant,cheerleader, or blowing smoke.
posted on January 7, 2001 11:23:50 PM newwhynot, you said, "The site has been nothing but a tax deduction. Thats why there is no support as they dont want more liability than its worth.
With that said I did speak to a pal, an insider. While I wont go into specifics suffice to say that the listing fee's are a non-issue, sorta. This site will be closing its doors, mark my words.
You know an employee at Yahoo???
Can you explain exactly what you mean by the listing fees being a "non-issue, sorta" and whether the "site...closing its doors" is Yahoo's INTENTION, or do they actually think the Auction can and will survive with fees (and thrive)????????
posted on January 8, 2001 12:21:28 AM new
I am going as sad as that makes me! I've listed soley on Yahoo for over 2 years and enjoyed it but for all the reasons that everyone else here has..I too will be going elsewhere..probably Ebay or Lycos. If I have to pay..it will be to Ebay where at least the stuff will sale!
I agree with and commend desertpete4 for what he said. We should maybe all listen to him because I do believe he is right.
I highly resent Yahoo! for assuming that the items I sale are junk..to many..it is their treasure..and I have gotten many thank yous and praise from my buyers to prove that. Good luck to all of you and maybe I'll see you on "that other auction site".
posted on January 8, 2001 01:29:14 AM new
I going! There is not enough sales potential to stay. If they wanted to charge on sales made, that would be different. But when 9 out of 10 items don't sell, it doesn't make sense to pay a listing fee! I do this to make a little money not loose a lot of it!!!!
posted on January 8, 2001 05:14:23 AM new
I may stay HOWEVER, any auctions i list will have PROMINENTLY displayed on my listing that there will be a "BUYER'S SURCHARGE" of whatever the listing fee is for that particular auction ! If everyone does this Yahoo's gonna have to rethink this through. COMMON PEOPLE STAY ! and do the SAME THING, let's see how Yahoo responds to that!!!
posted on January 8, 2001 07:44:35 AM new
I'm leaving as soon as my auctions expire which will be January 12-15. I've been selling for almost 2 years. I've had some success, but like most of the posters here have said, it takes a couple of times of relisting items for them to sell. As far as eBay (or EGREED as someone said), I can't afford them either - plus their billing practices are stupid. I would probably agree to a FVF, but other than that - no.
I e-mailed Yahoo & complained, but the impression I got when they returned my e-mail was "Thanks for your opinion, but we don't care. We're still going to be greedy little twits & charge people up the wazoo!"
Not sure what I'll do now. There is a site called AuxPal. I think I might give them a try. If that doesn't work, I'll make a webpage.
It will be interesting to see just how far the total auctions fall on Yahoo starting on Wednesday.
posted on January 8, 2001 09:16:59 AM new
I've been looking at other sites this past weekend. Pretty grim. They all are basically no traffic free sites with no payment service and while they offer some support won't be likely to maintain if there's a big rush of traffic.
Lycos is being talked about but it's dead. I looked in the video category. Under 500 listings and horrible bids if any in most sub categories.
posted on January 8, 2001 10:57:11 AM new
I have been with Yahoo a long time..when the viewer ratings were low..I had built up a strong customer following..in the last six months they have forbidden my customers to bid without a credit card..now they want to charge fees? well I hate to leave but they have driven me and my business away..no wonder the stocks are low
posted on January 8, 2001 12:00:55 PM new
I have been on the internet for about five years. I regularly attend auctions in my local area but I never really looked at any on line auctions until december 8th. The day I got layed off from my job. I soon discovered Yahoo! auctions and set out to sell some of my junk in order to salvage some kind of holidays for my family. Upon taking stock of the household clutter I realized that the stuff you can bear to part with and the stuff that is realisticly sellable (online) is rather limited. Its either too valuble or too worthless and 95% of it it is not worth paying a fee on to sell.
To make a long story short, I don't think I will be doing much Yahooing in the future.
Its really too bad. I thought that I had finaly discovered how the common man could utilize the internet.
P.S. I am not a nazi, but I think their disision to ban nazi stuff is chicken sh--.
Everyone knows that banning somthing just makes it more desirable to some people.
Boo! Yahoo!
posted on January 8, 2001 12:04:18 PM new
I'm going to wait and see about Yahoo...in the meantime:
go check out BIDBAY.
http://www2.bidbay.com/
Their auction site is a combination of yahoo and ebay functions rolled into one.
It is all FREE as of present...even the
1.BOLD LISTINGS
2.FEATURED LISTINGS
3.BANNER UNDER THE TITLE
4.BUY NOW feature.
5.auto re-list as many times as you want.
I like what I see. There also seems to be buyers and they are being aggressive to attracting more buyers to the site.I even made my first purchase there last night and I'm a seller.
The only negative I see is a post management feature. There isn't one and I don't know of a management site that supports their auction. If you know of one...please let me know!!
posted on January 8, 2001 06:13:21 PM new
How can Yahoo justify Fees when combined sales of all their auctions are less than 1% a month? Someone stated that maybe Yahoo wants to close the Auction sites I don't believe it. Adding fees is just another example of corporate greed. We are a Community organization and have used yahoo as a clearinghouse for our donated goods and in turn have gratefully used as many of yahoos' services as possible not to mention the positive PR we've imbued in all our contacts; praising Yahoo-January 10th it comes to an end. Yahoo is just nothin' but a Yahoo. And we will put the bad mouth on Yahoo and sell our Stock! Anybody got any good Free sites to share? Thanks and Best regards.
UmmmmMe? Do I wear a bone around my neck or what? LOL... Yep... We can STILL open up some of the best sales venues on the net to sellers but we need A. Know who they are, B. They must be businesses or we are not wasting our time and the time of people at various points of sale and C. All goods must be legit for resale, new (preferably) and the auctioneers have to do REAL auctions. Trust me, run real auctions and you will make money, considerable. We have ties to some of the best sites on the net and they are itching for GOOD businesses to come aboard.
Nothing it it for us at all. Or indirectly anyway. The better these POS are then the more people arrive, the better we all do.
Ah and Grace.... Oye. What was that other looper that was at Amazon's message base? What a ginsu he was! Sharp knife, self sharpening with a cheap plastic handle LOL!
granee: Unfortunately yes we know too much about too many things
Most sellers do not even realize where Yahoo came from. At one time Onsale was the GIANT in Business to Consumer (B2C) auctions. There were some other players but basically when someone said auctions either "eBay or Onsale" came to mind. Onsale who we worked with very closely deployed "The Onsale Exchange" a place for small business to enjoy Onsale's immense traffic. It sold easily as well as eBay though the software was no where near as robust as eBay.
Some sellers duped the public using the site and indeed Onsale at the sametime. This caused Onsale's name to suffer and caused issue with their buying public. Anyway, one day we went to login and whamo. Yahoo was there not Onsale. They decided to let Yahoo take the reigns. We worked some with Yahoo and people working on its actual development. The site in our opinion has went entirely in the wrong direction ever since.
No listing fee's at any P2P auction site causes lots of spam auctions and lots of sellers vending snake-oil. People (bidders) get tired of it and go elsewhere so they stay "fresh". eBay is so diverse its always "fresh" plus they have a loyal user following, call em' tribesman for want of a better name (ridiculous but true?)
Site loyalty is and has always been an issue just like wanting to get underwear at no place other than KMART (where have I heard that before). People loyal to Amazon dont tend to go to CDNOW or Barnes & Noble. In fact Onsale eventually got real competition in SurplusDirect.com, they're Surplus Auctions (I think that was the name) and whole kaboodle was bought by Egghead. Egghead and Onsale vye for #1 in B2C and beat each other over the head. Rather than kill each other they merge, and, in doing so the loyal traffic from both sites went... Ummm HEY! whats this! I liked it there and thats why I went there not here! Oooops. It often amazes me how corporate web management thinks as clearly its not like the surfing public or small businesses that keep "the wood on the fire" at these sites.
Anyhow back to it... Yahoo... Free. Mistake. Had they STARTED with listing fee's that were reasonable thats one thing. Pretty hard to stick the genie back in the bottle once out.
Traffic at the site is not robust, one poster said like 2,000 hits... What were you selling? Maybe a playstation 2? I'd doubt any eBay seller even of those when they were the TOTAL must have got 2000 hits on em', but maybe, with that item.
Why sellers put counters in auctions is beyond me. More is not always better, sometimes its just more. You dont see Walmart going "BIG BIG SALE ON HOT ITEM! ONLY 25 in a store". Or "We've had 5000 people look!". Its peas poor marketing, the more people look and dont buy and see the counter the more they think "this is junk or something is wrong here". Low counters mean it must be junk. No counters means that FORMULA is never a factor.
Hold on.... Phones ringing... Its BAXTER!
LOL.
Yahoo is full of features which makes it worse to use all the way around. Again, more is not always better. eBay has added many features and again, more is not always better. Dont fix it if it ain't broken?
Amazon! Same deal.
Yahoo charging fee's now will kill the place and thats the intent. Why struggle with a revenue looser (at best) that happens to become the targer of both authorities and rotten sellers? Why damage the Brand Name for waht gain? The GAIN they had hoped for was TRAFFIC. That did not materialize, instead its flopped around, lets add more features, lets do this & that and still NO materialization. A site cant attract buyers without a steady core seller group, normally these are small businesses. Those core groups dont stay unless traffic is there. eBay has natural traffic, no search engines at eBay or free email or this or that. They stay focused. Traffic has to be DRIVEN to any site. eBay has so much that places like PayPal, AW itself survive. If eBay went aay tomorrow all these sites would be ghosts in less than a month.
Yahoo has natural traffic too. Lots of it. If they are going to direct it into Yahoo auctions and I mean DIRECT it you'd see alot of sales. But, in doing that the rest of Yahoo takes a back seat and for what? Its free. A tax deduction thats all.
Yahoo is going fee based to A. hopefully remove the garbage sellers and to gauge the results there-of. If sellers leave whatall they close shop.
Mark my words. It will close.
There is literally no reason not to.
If *I* were in corporate Yahoo I'd be saying lets do away with P2P auctions and go B2C. Again, like Amazon they have a brand name that CAN attract JC Penny's, CompUSA, Sears, Walmart, Us and other businesses.
Now they can get the CONFIDENT buying traffic and the merchants who wont put up disasterous consumer goods.
Why in the world Amazon went the way it did is beyond me. Same deal. We spoke extensively with Amazon since day 1 the site went live. They insisted on staying P2P sales. wrong answer. eBay OWNS the P2P sales market and there are obvious reasons for it.
They SPECIALIZE in it, they do NOTHING ELSE. They have an immense staff that is simply put the best in the internet industry bar knowbody.
Yahoo specialized in a search engine, advertising, web presence, stores blah blah. No particular total FOCUS.
Amazon sells goods to consumers and deploys a site that compete's directly against their sales with their traffic. That takes GUTS. LOTS of guts. Motivation I presume is "we want to be profitable". Always a good idea.
They looked at eBay and said "we can do that too, we have traffic, we can get sellers, we will do that". Well sure... but but but when you do it make sure the software running it is the best, when Amazon deployed it wasnt. They made CHANGES!!!! Sellers went SEEE YA!!!!
Ever since its been kinda like trying to chase the magic it has when it first went online. Where-as what Amazon should (opinion) be doing is going after small business and creating a B2C auctions place. Again, they have the name, traffic, buying consumers but need to place more focus back on the auctions and have only businesses onboard working terms of consignment to Amazon.
FOCUS...
In closing you Yahoo abandon's might want to take a look at Amazon. Our sales there are decent, not great, about 50% of eBay, just as high of a payout ratio (95% of all bidders pay).
Watafind: I am going to have to alter my online dialog if its that noticable as to who we are LOL
posted on January 8, 2001 07:51:02 PM new
I am sorry to say that I am leaving Yahoo,I really liked listing on Yahoo,but I do not have the sales volume to justify paying the fees that they are suggesting.I would not have a problem paying an FVF,that would be fair but it's not worth paying to relist items over and over untill they sell if they sell!
(mdgifts)
posted on January 8, 2001 10:41:00 PM new
There's too many scammers placing fake bids at Yahoo to justify paying them for anything. I came across someone a couple months ago that had a NEGATIVE 73! And when I complained to Yahoo, they basically told me to mind my own business. They don't boot anyone from their service, no matter what the other person does. So what does Yahoo expect people to do if the second place person finds the same item somewhere else by the time you realise you were scammed? Just pay another fee to put up with another scammer?
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