posted on December 10, 2000 01:29:45 PM
SMW ....... Good point, and one I agree with. I've seen many similar comments made about using the Andale check out service on "other" chat boards, besides this one on AW.
It seems "some" buyers find it to be a PITA.
Bondmoviebuff ...... I have a cut & paste response to sellers. 1-2-3 & it's done & off to the seller.
posted on December 10, 2000 01:54:48 PM
bondmoviebuff-
What difference does it make if you go to a web page to do it, or you send an email?
I have a form letter which includes my name and address already typed. When I read the seller's EOA notice, I can hit reply and in a couple of clicks (maybe 5 seconds), send my response. Doing this on a webpage takes somewhat longer (and requires me to be online, which is not always the case).
As for the rest...
As a buyer, it's nice to get a shipping notice and feedback, but it doesn't bother me if I don't, just as long as the item shows up in my mailbox.
As a seller, I do all those things for my buyers already without expecting or requiring them to conform to a particular format that I use for my convenience. Some buyers respond to my EOA notice with their address, some buyers respond, but don't include their address and some never respond at all- their check just comes in the mail.
With the understanding that there are many different sellers on eBay from which to choose, I am willing to deal with each of my buyers in whatever manner is most convenient for them (to a point, of course- I do expect to be paid).
posted on December 10, 2000 02:11:16 PMSTAY AWAY! from ANDALE!
Again, my experience(1 HORRIBLE month) was that a full 50% of my auction winners REFUSED to go to Andale -- they all emailed me begging for the info via email!
Most importantly to me: why PAY someone to do something POORLY when I can easily do it BETTER myself for FREE???!!!!
posted on December 10, 2000 02:38:09 PM
With all due respect to the pro buyers with their pre-printed forms, more often than not I received hand scrawled addresses with payments if an address was included at all, and that's not to mention the buyers that would never email their address to confirm the sale/shipping cost.
With an automated checkout the buyer can get their payment information immediately even if I'm not sitting in front of the box and I get an accurate typed address which I can print on a label (ever wonder how many "lost" packages were due to seller typos?). As for the ENORMOUS burden of filling out the online form, I have to assume that anyone who can't overcome that insurmountable task has never purchased anything online outside of p2p auctions, because that's e-commerce baby!
Just as SOME buyers/activists refuse to buy from Andale sellers (Thank You!), I refuse to hobble my business growth to please every crank with a keyboard. Contrary to reports herein there are millions of good customers on eBay and I'm not having too difficult of a time finding them, I have more trouble finding time to list all the stuff I could be selling.
Sometimes in life the fault is actually our own. Not every seller is CAPABLE of using such a system effectively, I just made a purchase from one like that. I wish he would exit the fold as you have chosen to do. Suffice it to say that my mileage has varied greatly from yours.
posted on December 10, 2000 03:07:22 PM
The main feature that Andale has over AW or AuctionWorks (which is also AW ) is its support of dutch auctions. AW does not allow post auction features to be used for dutch auctions.
I just began using Andale because of its many features and have not yet completed any transactions, but my sales seem to be fine. If a bidder emailed me and asked to email me their information instead of going through the checkout, this would be perfectly fine with me. Perhaps instead of just ignoring Andale auctions, the bidders should try emailing the seller and asking any questions that they may have.
Do any of you bidders have a preferable service that you buy from (besides AuctionWatch)? I'm trying to find the best service that supports dutch auctions. AuctionWorks is not a bad service, but its post auction organization is not the best.
Perhaps instead of just ignoring Andale auctions, the bidders should try emailing the seller and asking any questions that they may have.
I have emailed one Andele and one AW seller before bidding about the possibility of handling the transaction outside of the online system, should I be the winning bidder. Each of them replied (a couple of days after my inquiry) that they would do so, but made it clear in their message that they considered it a bit of a hassle. I decided not to inconvenience them any further.
posted on December 11, 2000 06:06:20 AM
I just did my first Andale deal. Never again! What got me is you have to go there and give them all the info for them to figure out for you. Yeah, $2.00 + $2.00 =$4.00 is real hard to figure out! Then I still had to go to Paypal and do it all over again, so what was the purpose, besides wasting my time?
posted on December 11, 2000 06:10:58 AM
I suppose I could email a seller and say I don't do Andale and ask if they would send me an email if I happen to win an auction.
But why should I? I have always been able to find something else or the same item from another seller where I don't have to do anything but bid, receive an email, respond, pay for the item, and receive it.
Saying "All the buyer has to do is..." is just one more step that I am not willing to do and would not ask a buyer to do. But if Andale works for you, by all means use it.
The point of these responses is not to be adversarial but to offer some feedback that perhaps you could be losing sales because of using Andale.
I have found that some, (certainly not all), of the opinions and experiences that are expressed here at AW and on other boards can be a good sampling of how things are evolving on eBay. Often the information can help a seller stay ahead of the curve, or at least have a heads up to think about an issue.
posted on December 11, 2000 08:08:57 AM
There was a segment on 60 Minutes last night about the large number of dotcoms which are failing these days. During the story, there was an interview with a self-described "vulture capitalist", who explained that he made his living buying the remaining assets of failed internet businesses.
One of the assets he mentioned that was of value was the failed company's customer data.
What does this have to do with online auction management services? Nothing, as long as those services remain in business. If these services find that they are not able to either generate a profit or continue to find new investors to pour money in to keep them afloat, then that's another story altogether.
posted on December 11, 2000 01:46:01 PM
Companies selling information about me for direct marketing purposes makes me cranky (obviously ) within the context of being a consumer, but whether that people concerned about that into cranks, I don't know. Seems to me that outside of AW or even auctions as a whole, that many Net users are concerned, not some tiny fraction. Sometimes they add up to the majority of people having at least some concern about it, and even a slim majority in the number of people whose decisions to purchase were affected one or more times.
Direct marketing is not "doomsday," and is utterly insufficient to make me turn off "the box." I rather like the metaphor I used earlier. Unwanted direct marketing is an obnoxious swarm of numerous mosquitos. Each sucks out a little bit of life (blood in one case, time in another). Even collectively, they won't directly kill, but they sure can get terribly annoying. Some carry certain additional dangers (disease vectors in one case, theft or fraud in some other cases, if such information is further compromised). Real mosquitos exist, but can be kept at bay with screens; so can the metaphorical kind, if some effort is taken to figure out what screens are effective (preferably with the least effort taken).
Anyway, metaphors and crankiness aside, the difference in perspective in this thread seems to be fairly straightforward in the end, at least from what I can tell. In hypothesis form, it seems likely that while some buyers are refusing to do auctions involving third parties, there are enough others willing to, and that given those tools can help the seller make the process more efficient, the sellers can move more items, in terms of quantity, with the tools than without. A smaller pool of bidders would suggest individual items won't go quite as quickly or for as much, but that the seller can put a greater volume of items up, which could make up for the difference.
That's perfectly fine. If you look carefully at my arguments, I have not argued for sellers to not use third parties, just that some buyers won't use them (and lots about potential reasons why, even if it turned out that a lot of the arguments were familiar to some). Of course, I can't speak for others in this thread, but that's what I've been talking about.
As corny as it sounds, it appears there is no real "wrong" answer here, or any perfect "right" either. Just that some buyers won't use the third parties (either due to privacy concerns or other problems like perhaps the JavaScript at Andale), but that sellers find them to be very helpful. I could, however, be over-simplifying, or flat out wrong.
As to shopping elsewhere, well that's fine, I'll save my money for someone else (or just save it), and save some sellers the hassle as well. I already don't want to hassle sellers in the sense that I do want to follow their EOAs, even to the point that I did fill in an unexpected third party form not long ago.
Though I don't use bogus information (I just don't give out info often), I'd guess, however, that the only way to get everyone to quit making up bogus information would be for companies to... well, I've said it plenty already.
MrsTee: If the auction page or EOA gave me an option to communicate directly rather than through a third party, I'd then consider the third party a non-factor in a bid decision; i.e. all other things being equal (seller FB, item quality, how much I want the item, etc. ), I'd bid. Whether the seller sees offering options to buyer as generating enough additional income to offset the greater complexity of their now hybrid process, I couldn't say (some already get stuck with a hybrid process due to some buyers ignoring the EOA and sending information directly, but "inviting" more people to avoid the third party option might be seen as creating more trouble than it's worth).
Obviously, the lack of hard numbers makes it impossible to quantify more than separate fragments of the picture, so I doubt this is resolvable.
----
What's being done in the name of direct marketing nowadays is crazy.
The above are all just my opinions, except where I cite facts as such.
Oh, I am not dc9a320 anywhere except AW. Any others are not me.
Is eBay is changing from a world bazaar into a bizarre world?
posted on December 11, 2000 02:40:13 PM
As a bidder, which management services do you prefer sellers to use, or is it purely based upon the seller's performance?
As a seller, which auction management services do you find to be the best for the money with the most amount of features? Does using an automated checkout subtract from the number of bidders (due to privacy reasons), add to the number of bidders (due to speed and easiness of transaction) or not effect the amount of bidders?
What are a seller's options if they are looking for an auction management service that does everything from create the auction to keeping an inventory to completing the post auction?
posted on December 11, 2000 02:56:31 PM
Chis, as a buyer and it has been said many times before, I don't like the idea of going to another web page to "check out" I won an auction, the seller can get off the couch, put the bon bons down and send me an email or they don't get paid. I avoid andale auctions and have only won on one, didn't read down far enough before bidding. I email the seller after winning explaining I don't do andale and here is my info. If not satisfactory, you can sell to the next high bidder. I am the customer. He replied very politely agreeing and we completed a very nice transaction and I left feedback saying so. If you want automation, send me the form to fill out and I will return it with my payment.
Ain't Life Grand...
Hmmm, let's see: not reading the auction description, dictating terms post sale, almost certain to leave negative feedback in response to NPB warning. Whewww, I think I'm going to start using "ANDALE" wallpaper on my auction listings to avoid any real peaches like you.
"the seller can get off the couch, put the bon bons down..." -- Stereotype much?
dc9a320
You're comments are well received, but I would disagree with your notion that I as an Andale seller rely on throwing as much crap against the wall as possible until something sticks (paraphrased). I sell about 90% of everything I list (including the free relist), and the biggest problem I have as a seller is not having enough time to list in the kind of volume you describe since everything I sell now must be photo'd and described individually. Soon I will be selling some items I am buying in bulk as well and Andale's Inventory Mgmt functions will prove to be invaluable to me and help insure that I don't auction something that isn't in stock.
[ edited by bemused on Dec 11, 2000 04:22 PM ]
posted on December 11, 2000 04:47:02 PM
"As a bidder, which management services do you prefer sellers to use, or is it purely based upon the seller's performance?"
I don't care, and don't need to know which, if any, service a seller uses. That is up to the seller. I prefer personal contact from a seller which is part of my assessment of a sellers performance.
"As a seller, which auction management services do you find to be the best for the money with the most amount of features?"
I don't use auction management services. I have my own software. I used to use eBud before John sold it. I get up off the sofa, put down the Zagnut bars and do my own record keeping.
"Does using an automated checkout subtract from the number of bidders (due to privacy reasons)?"
I suspect so.
"Add to the number of bidders (due to speed and easiness of transaction) or not effect the amount of bidders?"
I suspect it does not add to the number of bidders, and if anything decreases the number of bidders. The only speed and ease of the transaction is for the seller.
"What are a seller's options if they are looking for an auction management service that does everything from create the auction to keeping an inventory to completing the post auction?"
It would appear that Andale is one.
It would seem that these questions are predicated on the assumption that using automated auction management services is the only viable option open to a seller when indeed it is not. There are 2 words conspicuously absent: Customer Service.
posted on December 11, 2000 07:10:49 PM
Just because an automated checkout is used doesn't mean that there is no customer support. I usually answer emails within 1-5 hours of receiving them as detailed and as friendly as I can be. It isn't fair to assume that the seller is lazy just because they use automated services. Andale has post auction processes which can only be used if the checkout is used. If a seller wants to have many auctions open at the same time, they most likely don't want to keep track of them by hand or in their own custom spreadsheet due to lack of features and easiness.
posted on December 11, 2000 09:26:10 PM
Amen to that!! I use Andale to help me keep track of auctions, not to lose the personal touch. Almost 100% of my feedbacks mention how friendly I am. I am able to give better service because of the time saved not doing the tasks that can be more easily and effectively handled by Andale. Not to mention, as a buyer if the seller is using Andale, my information is on there automatically. I don't have to fill out a thing. I will continue to use Andale as it has INCREASED my sales over what I was able to do before having it. I don't believe that the posters on this thread represent the majority of buyers, but a small but vocal minority who are definitely entitled to their opinions. I hope that you are all able to find sellers who still have 100% of the personal touch if that's what you're looking for.
posted on December 11, 2000 09:51:04 PM
Actually bemused you'd be damned lucky to have me as a customer...checks are good and fast. Of course by putting that Andale closer to the top of the description instead of hiding it at the bottom, would save me alot of trouble.
Ain't Life Grand...
posted on December 11, 2000 10:03:48 PMchis: "As a bidder, which management services do you prefer sellers to use, or is it purely based upon the seller's performance?"
If you're speaking of "services" as image hosting vs. EOA form vs. whatever else (?), I don't care about image hosting, or anything else where I do not have to share my personal information and wonder where else it may go. I do care whether there would be an EOA form where I'd have to give information to a third party.
If you're talking "services" as in company, that does not matter at all to me. I don't care which company is hosting the image, because I'll download the image; and I don't care which company is hosting the EOA form, because I'll avoid that.
bemused: "would disagree with your notion that I as an Andale seller rely on throwing as much crap against the wall as possible until something sticks (paraphrased). "
Interesting paraphrasing, but point still well taken here too. You've obviously nailed a target market, given your 90% bid rate, so some unknown volume of lost bids probably isn't going to hurt against the ability to post more of these items. I stated earlier on that this would be the case for some sellers, and you sound like you fit that bill. I still say some of your potential bidders will decide they do not want to bid because of the third party service, but if it allows you to do three times more volume (did you say that, or someone else? ), then it doesn't really matter much.
Other sellers probably feel they can't lose bids over something like a third party. If they're only using a third party to simplify the volume they are doing, and not to increase the volume greatly, lost bids could still have an impact.
It seems buyers have mixed feelings about third parties: professional, efficient, impersonal, worrisome, problem-causing (e.g. reports on the JavaScript), or just neutral. It seems sellers feel mostly positive, except for some who decide they don't want to be losing some buyers due to the mixed feelings. If companies stopped selling customer information, all the negative perceptions except the "impersonal" aspect would probably evaporate.
posted on December 12, 2000 07:44:12 AMIf your're so hell-bent against automation, why do you use a computer, email, or any of the other time-saving, yet potentially impersonal ways of communicating and conducting your business? Right on Coca girl!
I used the AW post-sale tools for a one-month period. The complaints that these systems are impersonal aren't valid. Messages can be customized to provide that "personal touch" and give the buyer that "warm, fuzzy feeling".
As far as security goes, the poster above makes a very valid point in that most of us have already sold our soul to the internet Devil by giving personal information to eBay, and most often a service like PayPal. I'm ASSuming too that most of us have made online credit card purchases as well. At this point, not giving that information out one more time is like using a teaspoon to bail out the Titanic. At this point, it's far too late. We're down the tubes. Our names are on every mailing list in the world already. Oddly though, I've not received one piece of junk snail-mail that can be traced to my internet buying and selling.
I only use my AW e-mail address for auctions and never anywhere else. Until one week ago I was spam-free and now the deluge has begun.
Yes, it bothers me that so much personal information is out there, but internet selling and buying is just a small part of the information that is out there regarding each and every one of us. Once you've used a credit card in the "real" world, your privacy is shot.
As far as credit card fraud goes, yes we assume we're safe from it when we hand it over to the waiter. I'd used cards for twenty years, then two months ago my wife was checking our account online(nice!) and noticed some unusual charges. We filed notice with the card holder and they put it right. We checked to make sure the card wasn't lost--it wasn't. Therefore it had to be a local clerk, waiter, or other warm live human being.
posted on December 12, 2000 07:57:00 AM
Oh, my own results with AWs post-sale management were mixed.
One buyer absolutely refused to deal with it. She subsequently managed to screw up her PayPal payment, and scolded me about not leaving feedback soon enough. Her own feedback was late in coming but was glowing--all caps.
Another buyer absolutely loved the automation, and proclaimed in his feedback that the transaction was an example of how all selling on eBay should be handled!
I think the reaction to automated services is related to how we like business to be done. Sometimes when we walk into a brick-and-mortar store, we want the salesperson to be invisible, take our money when we'r ready to go, and generally stay the hell out of the way. Other times we want the personal attention and expertise of the seller at our disposal. How to translate this into online auction sales is a tough call.
My own personal dislike of the AW service is that it's pretty slow most of the time. I thik I could build a database and use prewritten notices much faster.
Unless the seller somehow removes it the Andale information appears midway and at the bottom of the Auction listings. I would suggest to you that perhaps the laziness in question is you're own if you can't get past the title and purty pictures before deciding to place your bid. Like the commercial says reading is fundamental. With such a painfully short attention span I'm suprised at how much thought you've given to defaming Andale sellers. Way to go! You'll be able to read a whole auction description any day now.
posted on December 12, 2000 08:42:00 AM
Canvid13, are you saying you don't follow through with the purchase if a seller uses automated post-management tools, or only that you won't deal with the automation?
posted on December 12, 2000 08:42:38 AM
.... just sitting here lurking and noting that all of the sellers that use Andale love it and are posting with great frequency. I don't think I have yet seen a buyer post and say they love Andale and search for those Andale sellers to buy from.
You would do well to also notice that most of the posts on AW in general come from the usual suspects. I feel pretty safe in saying that the vast majority of buyers don't waste their time here. If you want to know how irrelevant these boards are to customers try polling yours and see how many actually hang out here, unless of course you sell manifestos in which case results may be slightly skewed.
posted on December 12, 2000 04:51:19 PM
As for the people claiming that sellers should just put down the bon-bons and get up off the couch...
How many of you are trying to list 1000+ items a week?
Try spending 80 hours a week at the keyboard answering the emails and tracking everything and then ask yourself if a Auction Service isn't something that might be worth looking into.
For the record, we aren't using Andale at the moment but are certainly considering it. We have researched the options out there and they are the best we have come across. Friendly folks on the end of the phone and plenty of options.
I expect that we'll be able to double the number of auctions by this time next year using their service. And provide better customer service than we are right now (which is pretty damn good according to the 6000+ positives we've received).
Yes, we'll accept non-Andale processed purchases but I have bought something from an Andale merchant and it was the smoothest online purchase I've ever made.
posted on December 12, 2000 05:05:25 PM
On "selling" (and reclaiming) one's "soul" from direct marketers...:
Most people don't realize they've "sold their soul" to the marketing "devil" until a long time after, because the connections are kept quiet -- for obvious reasons.
lswanson: I've found out that it's really not that "you're on every list anyway." While a few (typically local stores serving a small region) load up on phone book or address block information, I think most cannot afford to directly market every ad to all 100-plus million U.S. households. So to "target," they collect info about you from stores or other sources -- anywhere you leave info with someone willing to sell it. In sending the marketing, they still cast a fairly wide net, because it is still very difficult to divine your true interests vs. one-shot purchases, gifts, your favorite brands or stores you're not likely to change, and other complications. But they're at least "closer." Even if scattershot, this still saves them money: better to market to a large subset than every single household. Yet by the same token, the more times you "ping," by "name," your purchasing presence, the more "noticed" you'll be, and the more attention you'll attract. (Same thing goes for buying from catalogs or those cheesy non-prime-time TV ads -- you're demonstrating willingness to buy from such channels. )
If it sounds like their getting ever more information can improve (better focus) how they market to you, there are a couple problems here too. One is that even if they can determine your true interests somewhat better, they'll also notice more of the "one-shot" purchases, for example, and will likely try pounding at those too, in hope of getting you to buy more of those again. In other words, "better targeting" may not be exactly what it sounds. They've been gathering more information on consumers for years, yet consumers just keep getting more junk, and I don't see that reversing. The other thing is it could be awfully creepy to have companies tracking so much more about you, and this even more extensive data can become even more "fat" for existing and new forms of abuse. You'd be more exposed, and for the sake of what? I think that's part of why DoubleClick triggered such a firestorm: they demonstrated what direct marketing companies generally would like to do, and that woke more people up than they expected.
If the "you're on every list" statement is largely untrue, what can be done to get off most lists you are on, without wasting time and energy tilting at windmills? Well, there are a lot of ways they get you on various lists, so there are almost as many ways to get off, most of them not as hard as they may first sound. I'll restrain myself to a few examples.
Contests, rebates, warranty cards: for the small chance of winning, the usually small rebate, or for not even having to register to get the from-the-box warranty in the first place (!), they are finding out who you are. If all they used it for was to analyze sales trends, or just (with the first two) get you to buy more at their store, even I wouldn't care, but many use it for mailing lists.
Skip the "club" and "savings" cards. Look very closely at your habits with and w/o them, and chances are pretty good that you actually spend more overall with the cards. "Savings" sound tempting, and "points" are an almost Pavlovian incentive to get you to spend more rapidly, for the sake of the "benefits."
Write the Direct Marketing Association. This will help get rid of a chunk of junk (not even 50%, but a good amount). Also tell the telemarketers that call, "remove me from your calling list." This has to, by law at least, be followed. CallerID can help too (though you'll have to spend $$ ), in that if you screen with that, even direct marketers will eventually give up -- most, anyway.
Use checks and credit/debit cards less. Besides, you'll shorten the time spent in checking out, paying bills, and balancing checkbooks -- and have less risk of debt or fraud. Careful, though, don't entirely cease: you need some credit history, but you don't have to use them so much, just enough to prove you can carry credit and pay it off reliably. ATMs are handy, so you don't have to carry lots of cash either. Also, write one of the big three credit bureaus to remove you from their marketing lists; all three have to follow the one request.
This is not a complete list, and there is no way I know of to get rid of all the junk, but with some research (mostly reading some articles every few weeks), I spent less time learning about the problem and figuring out how to largely drop "below the radar" than I think they were typically wasting of my time, reduced the various forms of direct marketing I receive by 80-99.9%, and ended up with some other unexpected savings besides. So while there is no 100% solution for us consumers, I feel it is also far from too late.
[ Edited for clarity in an early paragraph. ]
[ edited by dc9a320 on Dec 12, 2000 07:40 PM ]
) is its support of dutch auctions. AW does not allow post auction features to be used for dutch auctions.