posted on December 30, 2000 07:18:53 AM new
Make sure to save that info for Safe Harbor, when & if someone uses this form to turn you in for spamming them.
posted on December 30, 2000 09:06:10 AM newwhynot:
1. Mr Lister needs a "time delay" between postings or remove bulk loading entirely.
Your reasoning is sound - having items close within seconds of one another prevents or at least makes multiple-item sniping difficult - but Mr. Lister isn't the only one that submits items a few seconds apart.
Some of the programs/services submit them at exactly the same second apparently (AW, AuctionRover, etc.) - which causes some items to not appear in Seller search or in the seller's My Ebay.
2. Sellers with multiple accounts selling the same stuff on all the accounts.
Yes, some sellers are using this as a work-around to the 10-item limit; one seller I'm aware of has at least 3 user id's and lists the identical items - title, description, etc. - under all of them. And, per eBay guidelines, different "colors" and "sizes" of the same product must be listed separately. Since each id usually has 200 pages of auctions running at a time, it gives the appearance of "flooding" a category. However, some people will simply contend that is good business sense - to ensure that your item is more likely to be seen.
10. Do not charge extra listing fee's for multiple items in auction. Do charge the commissions on each sale. This encourages sellers to put up more product.
The maximum listing fee a person can pay for a dutch auction is $2.00, which is the same maximum listing fee for a regular auction as well.
There are, IMHO, several downsides to dutch auctions: people don't understand them - even sellers who have been on eBay for a year are seen asking who is the high bidder and how much do they pay; it's a quick way for somebody to defraud a whole lot of people in one whack; the more items a seller lists in a dutch auction, the more likely it is that the items will be sold for the minimum price.
12. Do away with reserve price auctions. Big turn off to bidders... I won but I didnt win.
On the other paw, listing an item with a high opening bid is a turnoff as well. Psychologically, people will willingly keep bidding and end up with a high $ amount, but oddly won't place that first bid for the same high $ amount.
13. Automate the process of customer/seller contact.
That would never fly, because it is counter to the very precepts on which eBay was founded: person to person contact.
Now, as to your contention that IF eBay prevented links to sellers' websites, they would also have to forbid links to PayPal, etc., that is invalid supposition. The links to PayPal, Exchange Path, etc., are for payment facilitiation; other links are credit links for the software programs like bulk listers. That is much different than a link to a website provided solely so the person will buy more products from the seller.
posted on December 30, 2000 06:14:01 PM new
My question is, and I hope this has not been raised before, since this thread is so long, if you are not permitted to contact underbidders, why is one of the options for a non-paying bidder alert and FVF, that the high bidder didn't pay, but you sold it to the second highest bidder (paraphrased). If you cannot offer the item to the next person, that category for partial credit should not exist!! Am I misreading something?? It wouldn't be the first time. Meredith
posted on December 30, 2000 06:31:24 PM new
ESC : I am getting Bladder! I mean better! LOL!
Lisa : I have noted the same thing, no big surpirse. Understand most of the sizeable eBay vendors read AW news, about it. They dont partake in the message service because there are those who have nothing better to do than to A. Talk about what they dont know and B. Flame others. I am glad to see I am not the only one who noticed that rudolph needs psychotherapy.
Now unto it... We LOVE eBay. We were literally one of their first true hiogh volume sellers. We vend through Onsale, uBid, The home shopping network, C/Net shopper and all total right now 14 points of sale. In web "business" in our field of sales (which is all PC media related) we are ranked 53rd on the net by Dunn & Bradstreet.
eBay made us the success we are. We dont want to see eBay make some mistakes that are irreversible. Its exactly what Amazon did and its exactly what Egghead/Onsale did. What seems like a good idea or solution from their business perspective is a very very different view from a vendors perspective. Amazon is picking up now in an entirely different fashion that will impact sites such as eBay and half.com even without "change". Ziff Davis just deployed a site to compete with half.com. While I am not at liberty to discuss what Amazons plans are as we are under non-disclosure agreements with them (we are one of the few "certified" amazon resellers) I do know the last thing eBay at this point wants to do is alienate business.
Its actually our opinion that eBay should focus much more on business to consumer sales models and we whole-heartedly agree with the affiliations eBay has made w/ places such as Buy.com, AOL, Barnes & Noble etc. Thats smart business.
What we really dont want to see is good vendors and bidders restricted due to the bad ones. Instead, the information that makes a "bad seller" do what they do should simply be unavailable.
One poster stated that its "ok" to sell to non-winning bidders and contact them by obtaining thier info via eBay. That is incorrect. Or shall I say partially. According to our states attorney general and law pertinent to auctions (which presently is no different than "in person" auctions in our state) there is no grey area there at all. A winning bidder is bidding against other consumers. If they win an article for $50 and the secondary or lossing bidder is sold that item for $30 the "winning bidder" has been defrauded. If you email that winning bidder and say "I am selling this same article to a loosing bidder for $30" what do you think that winner will say? If the loosing bidder contacts you and says I'll but it for $30 thats different. THEY contacted you. The moment you use the auction itself as the venue to generate sales to non-winners the winner has been defrauded. They NEVER would have bid $50 if they knew you'd sell it to a loosing bidder for $30.
Now people here can say all they like about it, but, if you want the facts simply make a call to your state attorney general or your states board/representitives that deal with auctions in their state. Its that simple. We dont operate on heresay as thats a formula for disaster just as eBay, Amazon, Auctionwatch itself dont.
Of course, policing such matters is another story. I would not be surprised a bit if some of the changes eBay is looking at are due to the new adminstration coming into office. GW Bush is MUCH more aggressive when it comes to law/internet than the Clintons ever were. There is a philosophy difference. Clinton thinks the web/technology itself evolves to a point where illegalities etc. are "rubbed out". Bush believes regulation, licensing and policing are the way to create a "safe/honest" internet. Dont be surprised a bit if within a year or two to even post an online auction requires contract/licensing with the state one resides in just like "in person" auctioneers are required to do now.
DO you think Sotherby's just decided one day this is what we are. Blah.
Alot of Prono, classified, auction, chat services and sites such as Abandonware, Napster etc. are considering his election to be the kiss of death for the respective services. Anyone who reads any of the industry journals like Smart Partner, Inter@ctive week, Computer reseller news etc have been reading about this stuff for over a year now. G W before the elections process was in full swing and all those denial of service attacks took place publically stated that he wants all internet activities logged to files by ISP's as public information and that anyone having a website would require licensing in the US. We certainly are looking at a whole different ball of wax assuming the Bush administration is not rendered totally ineffective due to the Florida debacle.
Glenda:
Most of the bulk listing software be it a local program or provided by say AW still use eBays Mr Lister. They simply allow you to build your collections and then they send it through the Mr. Lister interface at eBay. Thus the "rapid" listing still takes place.
The only program I know of that did not was called The Lister by Destiny Technologies. It "simulated" the relisting/adding of auctions just as you would do manually. It had a time delay you could set between postings. We bought it, stuffed our myriads of ad's in it and it worked great for about two week. eBay then made changes to the submissions section which broke the software. Any change, having a new field like "buy now price" would throw the software off as its listing just like a person does manually. The bulk listing issue is a BIG revenue looser because of the loss of exposure. With The Lister we could post up 120 items and set the delay between listing to 1 minute getting 2 hours of exposure, set it to 2 minutes delay and we got 4 hours. With Mr. Lister things post so fast... they end just as fast. It puts a seller at a disadvantage in exposure and that means sales and thus eBay revenues as well.
Sellers using multiple accounts. You are correct in that certainly there are valid reasons to have more than 1 account. If ones selling Beanies and trading cards it makes sense to keep them seperated not under 1 account. The majority of sellers with multiple accounts do it for another reason however. Actually several.
1. More exposure. If using 2 accounts you list goods that will end at 8-9 PM EST (primt time) and same for the west coast.
2. The most frequent usage however is that a seller will put up a quanity of one of each item under each account. Say you have 50 items. 5 accounts. You put the same items up, quantities of 1 for each of the 5 accounts. Bidders are MUCH MUCH more likely to competively bid since they "think" only 1 of the item is available when in fact there are 5 but they are all on different accounts. If he put all 5 up under 1 account the odd's of competing bids is reduced significantly. So if he put up 5 @ $10 each and all get bids thats $50. If he has 5 accounts and those same 5 bidders compete to buy from 1 account he's going to get much more money per item sold. A side effect as well is say you bid with joejoe's cards in the past. You hated the service or whatall and would never bid with em' again. One day you see a card you really want. You win the bid and lo & behold you find its the exact same seller who took you before. So... Thats not fair to you. How can you make a sound judgement on bidding when the same seller is under 10 different user ID's? It also has the effect of feedback dispersal. Instead of perhaps having 100 negatives on 1 account there are only 10 negatives, but on the other 9 accounts each of them has 10 as well. You see 10 negatives and figure, well, he has a 600 feedback, must be safe, if you saw 100 you might think different. Its been our suggestiong to have 1 master account. Create all the subaccounts one likes off it as long as the goods on each are unique. Says ClothesRUs. One subaccount for mens, ladies, boys, girls, infants etc. but the master account holds all feedback. That solves ANY reason for multiple accounts.
Reserve auctions. Reserves are what put Auction-Sales out of business. They were the 3rd largest business to consumer auction site on the net. People come to auctions to bid & win, not bid & win to be told they lost. Thats what makes it fun, thats why BOTH sellers and buyers "take a chance". We run TONS of true auctions. Places such as uBid simply dont want you if you dont. Thats why the people come. While bidders who have been around for a while understand reserves, new bidders do not. If a sellers asking price in reserve is too high to list and be attractive to sell odds are its not going to sell anyway so it amounts to everyones time being wasted and thats exactly what killed auction-sales.com. We have run both types and revenue wise no comparison. Running real auctions results in an avg. 200-400% profit margin for our goods. Reserves resulted in less than 70% of the bids and margins (as a whole) of 50-75% consistent. Sure we do lose money on some items at times, for us thats a loss, tax deductible.
Quite frankly from where we sit we'd rather see eBay raise its fee's rather than the restriction being tossed about. For us those fee's are tax deductible both listings and commissions. We sell at some sites where the listing fee is $2-$5 per item and 25% commissions plus $2 on completed sales and we even get the card processing burden of another 2.5%. eBay is EXTREMELY cost effective to sell at, one of the best if not the best in fact.
eBay has enough truly legit businesses at the site to create the absolute best business to consumer auction site on the net. They can charge higher commissions and elimintate 98% of their support/problem issues that are prevelant in P2P points of sale.
One site we sell at (the top B2C point of sale on the net) was outselling eBay 4:1, I know thats went down somewhat so I dont know todays exact figures. From that site we might get 2 emails a week for support. Bout it' and they as a "top point of sale on the net" have all of 12 support people for the entire operation. Its all by contract. Sell here, you abide by the rules and do whats right, that simple. If eBay were to go B2C I have no doubt they could attract JC Penny's, Sears, Ford, GM etc.
In closing, it was noted by one poster that people will always slam eBay. Thats baloney. We absolutely love eBay and we have stuck steadfast by them through thick & thin. When sellers yell about downtime we dont yell. When they yell its slow or I got undeserved feedback blah blah blah... we dont yell. In fact we have done the opposite. We commend eBay as it is truly a remarkable venue for sales. What we do not wish to see however is good bidders and good sellers damaged because eBay must make changes due to those people who actively engage in ripping eBay off, consumers off and ultimately the entire "good eBay community" off and in doing so ruining the service which many good folks love. We really have no issue with them wanting to remove links from Ad's either. We'd much rather see them set up online storefronts for bonified businesses.
posted on December 30, 2000 07:44:17 PM new
whynot
You refer in several places to selling to the underbidder
"No access to email addresses/contact info for non-winning bidders. Should a buyer skip out on payment, whatall, the secondary bidder must
use a form which eBay can track for abuse in being used for Fee Avoidance. It also happens to be fraudulent. The Winning bidder would not
pay say $20 if they knew a looser was also being sold one for $10."
and
"One poster stated that its "ok" to sell to non-winning bidders and contact them by obtaining thier info via eBay. That is incorrect. Or shall I say
partially. According to our states attorney general and law pertinent to auctions (which presently is no different than "in person" auctions in our
state) there is no grey area there at all. A winning bidder is bidding against other consumers. If they win an article for $50 and the secondary or
lossing bidder is sold that item for $30 the "winning bidder" has been defrauded. If you email that winning bidder and say "I am selling this
same article to a loosing bidder for $30" what do you think that winner will say? If the loosing bidder contacts you and says I'll but it for $30
thats different. THEY contacted you. The moment you use the auction itself as the venue to generate sales to non-winners the winner has
been defrauded. They NEVER would have bid $50 if they knew you'd sell it to a loosing bidder for $30."
These are quotes, the spelling is yours, I do think you exaggerate. If a seller contacts an underbidder for an auction that ended at $20. The next bidder would be $19.50, $19.00, etc. The same goes for your example of $50 versus $30. I think very few sellers will sell to the high bidder at $20 and then sell an identical item for $10 or the other example of $50 and then settle for $30. A savy seller would just relist the item and hope for similar results to the first auction. It would be more profitable, even though they would avoid fees, than selling items for the amounts you quoted. And yes, as a buyer, it would be unaceptable to learn that one person got an item for $10-$20 less. Just my opinion. Meredith
[ edited by merrie on Dec 30, 2000 07:47 PM ]
posted on December 30, 2000 10:10:12 PM new
When they say a "listed item", doesn't this mean an auction that hasn't ended?
I don't see where it says you can't contact a seller about an item that didn't sell in an auction that has ended.
Somewhere it says that a seller can't make an 'unsolicited' offer of an item. Doesn't this imply that I can 'solicit' a seller? Does this mean as a buyer I can 'solicit' sellers, such as stating my wants on my about me page?
posted on December 30, 2000 11:06:01 PM new
WoW - ranked 53rd on the net by Dunn & Bradstreet. I'm truly impressed, YAWN.
As far as flames, if you can manage to figure out how to search my posts on AW, I think you'll find I only light a match when I smell an odour in the air.
posted on December 30, 2000 11:12:42 PM newkatiyana is correct. You can still contact the underbidder on your completed auction if the winning bidder doesn't follow through with the contract. If they ever get rid of this option I think they'll see some MAJOR backlash. This is a quote from the Announcement Board:
"Notes:
Selling to the underbidder in a Non-Paying Bidder situation is still permitted. However, this transaction is not covered by services such as insurance or Feedback"
posted on December 30, 2000 11:49:24 PM new
After reading some of the threads in this forum, I can only say that I wish eBay would hurry up and grind these cheaters under their heel. Jeez, I wondered why sales were down and now I know. Every seller and his brother is striking deals under the table. Sellers put up one item for sale, sell 10 duplicates, and argue that it isn't fee avoidance. No wonder our prisons are full.
posted on December 31, 2000 01:22:37 AM new
Just have to say that many of "rudolph's" posts (which are nonbloviating) have been very helpful to me and other auctionwatch users.
posted on December 31, 2000 05:09:09 PM new
Merrie:
We formally submitted some ideas to eBay today on the contact of non-winning bidders.
With bidders that dont pay, we personally dont even bother to contact the secondary high bidder, most of the time when they are outbid they wont pay so we find it wasted time.
What we suggested is that all access to any bidder information other than the winner(s) must be made through an eBay form. We have suggested with non-paying bidders that should a secondary bidder be contacted the primary winner(s) also recieve an email. So... if they did or do plan to pay the seller can be counseled as appropriate.
We suggested that eBay insurance only be allowed if Billpoint is used as the payment method. eBay needs to make the service a much more closed loop to avoid basically being ripped off just like uBid, Onsale, HSN, C/Net and others have a pretty tightly closed loop.
As to the figures of $50 vs $30 thats not a misquote at all. We have VERY wide ranging bids many many times. But even regardless of that. If a seller puts say 2 of an item up instead of 1 odds are the bidding will not go as high as 1 item. Using the "auction" as the venue to propagate extra sales BY the seller is defrauding winning bidders. We get for example many items that get 15-25 bids in a week. Were we to contact "each bidder" (which we dont, we deal w/ the winner only) for an item we sold for say $50, we could go all the way down to $15 bidders and still make a good profit. Its fraud, right up to the top. The looser contacted who had a $25 bid would also not pay $25 if they knew another looser got it for $15 more or less the winner. If a bidder contacts the seller and says "I'll give you $25" they initiated the contact, thats not a fraudulent issue, its a fee avoidance issue. The moment the seller decides to contact loosing bidders however the "auction process" has now been manipulated by the seller w/ the winning bidder(s) totally in the dark. They were never informed the seller would sell to loosers as well. Even in retail if you buy something at say Walmart on Friday, Sundays flyer comes out and its now on sale you can go back to walmart and get the difference. Thats not done by Walmarts good graces or business model. There are LAWS on the books when it comes to sales, auctions, mail order etc. 90% of sellers never do any research, homework, but instead figure "they know it all" when in fact they know next to nothing. Of all the myraids, thousands and thousands of sellers at eBay how many of them are also at say The Home Shopping Net? or uBid? Onsale? You can count them on two hands. Reason is simple, they have no clues to 90% of what a uBids terms of sale, terms of consignment and all the legalease means. Some of it even throws me. My partner in our business however was a regulator for our states racing & wagering board for 11 years.
Not much throws her.
I'll put a different spin on it. How would a seller feel if eBay decided that every bid a seller gets they will draw a commission on. Boy howdy they'd be screaming up a storm and eBay could legally do that if they wished. Or, if they implemented a modification to the auctions process similar to say Mercata's new site. If you use an eBay form to sell to loosing bidders ALL bidders, winner's or loosers can pay the "lowest" bid accepted. Again, they'd be screaming murder. They have no issue in ripping eBay off, ripping sales off of other sellers and ultimately lying to multitudes of bidders who they sell to "under the table". But the moment eBay takes issue with it then they scream. Its nothing but simple greed. eBays fee's are extremely affordable, even if they doubled them they'd be extremely affordable. eBay right now is less than 50% in fee's of any business to consumer auction on the net thats worth attending.
A "fair and level playing field" means fair for all, all sellers, bidders and eBay. Not just those who choose to do right and those who choose not to are free to destroy the place.
We have always been in favor of eBays former idea of Equifax reporting for anyone signing unto the service. This way people who have been booted off cannot boot themselves right back on.
alicefaye: eBay considers a bidder contacting a seller and consumating a sale generated from eBay to be fee avoidance. Its very different than the seller contacting loosing bidders as its initiated by the buyer, not the seller. The moment it occurs from a seller, and the winning bidder is honoring the contract w/ the seller the auctions process is manipulated, thus fraud.
Imagine say a Police auction where they are selling recovered, unclaimed bicycles that were originally stolen. Happens in every community. You bid and win a bike. The cops have 5 of these bikes. How would you feel if they turned around and sold the other 4 to the people you bid against, thus causing you to pay a higher price and them getting it at whatever they bid at. Say 20% lower than you paid? You just got taken. Ask ANY auctioneer, any of em' locally to you, cops, even your local district attorney if its "legal". Its not. In fact the "winner" is perfectly within their rights if they find out to sue the seller for the difference and all legal fee's incurred as a civil matter as well.
This is not brain surgery folks. Its simply wrong. If sellers "care" about eBay they dont do it, if they care about honesty they dont do it and honesty is what has made eBay what it is. Most assuredly dishonesty can take it right back apart.
We do get loosing bidders that will contact us and say "can I buy it for my loosing bid" and we tell them no. Another might be in auction for them to bid upon and we direct them to that. The majority of these bidders then get hostile telling us, this seller and that seller and this one and that one do it and that we are $ss$les as we wont rip off our "winners" or eBay. eBay has been very good to us, why would we dupe them?
reddear: Yep 53rd, we are proud of it. Quite the accomplishment. As to your posts, could care less. You have made 2999 of them, appears you have alot of time on your hands. If your helpful to folks god bless ya. As far as calling people names, rudeness whatall thats the sign of a child not an adult in ANY situation.
Twinsoft: I agree wholeheartedly. The faster eBay removes the sellers or the ability of dishonest sellers to steal others sales, sell to the non-winners and the winner the playing field gets leveled and fair for sellers, bidders and eBay. We do however feel that "restricting" everyone punishes good people for the actions of bad ones. So rather than see "everything" go form based mail we would much rather see the elimintation of the ability for sellers to contact non-winners unless the high bidder(s) back out. The only way to "track" that is to use an online form to get a "loosing bidders" email information. This way eBay can monitor that activity and act accordingly when its abused. For example, a NPB alert is generated. When the NPB is finally completed, the seller can then go and get the secondary winners information. We'd also like to see the multiple accounts consolidated under a master account so bidders will know who they are dealing with.
Hi ESC! 2,026 words... Hmmm... 20 minutes. Not sure if I typed that straight through or not. Am I a writer? No. I do type upwards of 100-110 WPM, 20+ years of computer programming underfoot and believe it or not I dont touch type which may account for some of the typos. <gulp>. I have written code since the days of the TRS 80 model 1 in the commercial software sector. Some notables I have worked for are EA, Dynamix, Sierra, Atari, Thorn EMI. I was working writing code for the nations third largest legal collections firm (its unreal what somepeople do with credit, checks and payments! Curl your hair!) when I was one day injured. I started just dumping some stuff on eBay I had laying around to help the ole' pocket out as I couldnt work (pinched nerves in my back). Thats how my business which was contract programming stepped into sales. Since then we have never looked back. Our business has grown at a rate of over 400% a year. Last year I paid as much in taxes as I made in salary before. So you might say our success was an accident of sorts I guess.
I have talked with many many various sellers over the years now and often its been a very similar type of circumstance that motivated them to try online sales. We have also helped dozens of people to become legit businesses and find them merchandise sourcing at prices that assure them success as well as technical help at a very modest cost to get them ranked near the tops of search engines, web hosting thats a good value (about 10% of hosting companies are "good", getting them with reputable firms for merchant accounts to process credit cards etc. What comes around goes around basically. One seller we helped "hook up" on the net sells audio equipment. He was so grateful to us for opening some doors for him to top points of sale on the net he sold me a total kick butt home theatre
system at 30% below his cost.
Doing good things and doing them right for people always comes back. We have an extremely loyal following at eBay for example. Most sellers are lucky to get 100, 200 repeat bidders, we have over 1500.
No form letters, no baloney, real policies for returns etc. I understand many eBay sellers concerns as its their only point of sale thats good. Its their practices and attitudes that keep them from opening other doors and with that, for the life of me I dont understand why they bite the very hand that feeds them with eBay.
eBays staff is exceptional. By far the best support people on the internet hands down. Their management is also of the absolute highest calibur and remarkably honest almost to a fault. The service itself is history in the making. The largest and most diverse marketplace in the history of mankind. Sure "tribesman" exist and sure there are those who will always yell about the site. Few however look at the reality of what eBay really is. eBay is the most remarkable marketplace mankind has ever created. With that comes a HUGE responsibility that eBay does a absolutely wonderful job with. Unfortunately with that type of success comes people (sellers) who care about only one thing, self.
Signed: WhyNot!
[ edited by whynot on Dec 31, 2000 05:12 PM ]
posted on December 31, 2000 09:43:50 PM new
WOW - finally - a poster who makes me look downright terse!!!
Person to Person sales ARE the most important OAI/OTI commerce. PtoP will be what is left after all the rest of eCommerce dies - and it is those eRetailers who are adding internal PtoP capability to their sites who are succeeding online. ebaY is riding the tail of its PtoP business that made it profitable. The afterglow has lasted quite a while and the PTBs at ebaY will ride it only until they can unload the site - take the money and run. They do not have long term goals - only short term ones. And can anyone name anything ebaY has done since Pierre invented P to P auctions that they have had a success with? Butterfields? Great Collections? Kruse Cars? ebaY Motors? Billpoint? iEscrow? We the P to P sellers have carried all the rest of ebaY on our backs - we are the reason buyers come to ebaY.
There is no way they can enforce these new rules. They can limit access to email addys to everyone but the winning bidder and seller, but that is about all they can do, unless they are going to completely redo the site, prohibiting html in listings - which will prohibit using your own photos etc etc. I do not believe ebaY has the capacity to accomplish all this, and I definitely do not believe they have the smarts. As fast as they design restrictions, savvy techies will design workarounds. The programmers outside ebaY are MUCH smarter than the ones inside - as we have all seen time and time again.
We in the OAI/OTI are a bunch of independent cusses - and we will continue to manipulate ebaY to serve our needs, not the other way round. As ebaY draws more lines in the sand and alienates sellers, they will simply move.
This effort to close the barn door after the horse has left is absurd. Tools like the SmoothSale SmoothDealer make all ebaY's machinations comical.
And anyone who dismisses Yahoo is foolish. They are slowly but surely catching up to ebaY. Right now Yahoo has approx 2.6 mil auctions running, slowly and steadily increasing. ebaY has approx 3.7 mil slowly but steadily DECREASING. During the same time period as ebaYs auction numbers were flat and then decreased, Yahoo grew. Yahoo is a different type of site, but though there are a couple of real bad stumbles, the MAJORITY of things they have in place are very very smart - and VERY seller friendly. Their very savvy moves are having an impact
As always, time will tell who had the better educated guesses. Though these particular rule "clarifications" might be minor, they reflect an interesting revelation of ebaY's attitude towards the independent P to P sellers who MADE ebaY. -Rosalinda
(edited to change last sentence so itmade sense)
TAGnotes - daily email synopsis about the Online Auction Industry
http://www.topica.com/lists/tagnotes
posted on December 31, 2000 11:04:21 PM new
I've never been one to withhold criticism of eBay. And there is much to criticize. I completely agree with Rosalinda that every venture eBay has tried has ended up in failure. They should have left well enough alone. And of course, it's the mom and pop sellers, the ones in the trenches, who pay the bills for these spectacular failures. It's no coincidence that sellers for years have been clamoring for another auction site, any auction site, to replace eBay.
The other side of the coin is this: Judging by the sheer number of sellers who freely admit selling to underbidders and negotiating deals in reserve not met auctions, there is a genuine misunderstanding of eBay's policy. eBay has taken a big step towards clarifying that policy.
Naturally, no seller is going to snitch on a customer who inquires about an item. But what about sellers who violate what has been a long-standing prohibition re: spam (offering items to underbidders)? eBay is setting limits (or clarifying existing limits) and I believe that is the right thing to do. I buy items in lots, and if I sold to underbidders I could easily double my income. This is an important issue to me. I'm not interested in limiting any other seller, only that everyone is following the same set of rules.
As Reddeer pointed out earlier, the only new prohibition regards reserve not met items. I think there are many sellers (and buyers) who intentionally misuse this feature. Really, all this is nothing new, just a clarification, and honest sellers have nothing to fear.
Whynot, if you used 10 fingers to type instead of just two, you could type 500 words per minute. Please don't ever learn touch typing! HNY!
whew, you have typed "a mouthful." 99% I agree with. I still do not think, but that could be because of the type of merchandise I sell that most sellers, myself included would have an auction end at $50 and sell all the way down to $30. That is a big diference with the incremental way of bidding and if you made one sale at $50, why not simply relist the item and hope for another similar sale, like I said that may depend on the type of merchandise I sell I do. I not have the type of inventory you must have.
I agree that offering to the underbidder whether because you have a deadbeat or otherwise is generally a waste of time. Buyers are cautious about these transactions, no safety net at all. When I have been offered items from a seller from an auction I did not "win" I am very hesitant. I am concered that there has been manipulation and there is no real high bidder, so they come to me instead because they still want to sell the original item. Just my paranoia. I would rather take my chances with the next auction of a similar nature.
I love ebay. I think they are a unique opportunity for little sellers to sell items that would normally wait for a garage sale and for buyers to find a huge number of unusual items from the comfor and convenience of their own homes. Ebay is also a great place for retailers such as yourself. My concern is let's not make it so complicated. I like full disclosure. I want access to emails, etc in case I suspect foul play. Most people have nothing to hide, let's not punish them for the few that do. If these are ebays rules, they are their rules, follow them or fund a diferent place with different rules. IMHO Meredith
posted on January 1, 2001 10:37:58 AM new
"Whynot, if you used 10 fingers to type instead of just two, you could type 500 words per minute. Please don't ever learn touch typing!" - twinsoft
lol - and I second it!
whynot, I sincerely hope you copyright your work.
btw, "whatall" is not a real word. either is "whatnot."
...desperately hoping a mild case of carpal tunnel suyndrome sets in.
posted on January 2, 2001 03:48:19 AM new
RM: I actually have done a few short stories and am far better at Poetry. I have had several poems published over the years. I also authored many a programming article for various magazines like C++ Developers journal etc. Sone some work with Ziff Davis in the past. Frank Quitely after 20+ years of coding and the "must never stop learning" that comes with it I kinda burned out on it.
ESC: No. (I cant resist) I am taken however
rnrgroup: LOL! Terse Huh? I agree with much of what your saying and much I do not. Auctions in general on the web have been on the "fade" for over a year now be they B2C, B2B or P2P. Many of the price search engines are taking consumers off these venues. Atop that, it doesnt help when Attorney Generals from literally every single state now are saying auctions are the #1 venue of con's and rip offs. While they dont mention "names" specifically they have basically targeted one place. This is going to be REAL interesting as Bush gets in motion as he is VERY pro legit web business and very anti P2P commerce. I guess that somewhat follows ye' ole' republican trend. Make sure business does the best and the success trickles down.
As to YooHoo auctions, how they could take a BRILLIANT site Onsale gave up and make a sales mess of it I dont know. Granted, we have not sold there in well in excess of a year now. When we were active there sales were less than 5% of what Onsale Exchange delivered. I went there earlier tonight and bids are few and far between. How much product is on a site means nothing if traffic/sales dont appear. Yahoo support has always been at best, the worst on the site. I dont know if Yahoo's view of the site has changed. For quite sometime it meant zero to them, literally. It was a tax deduction and nothing more, presumably this is why they began charging for bolding, featured etc. as the IRS isnt fond of planned losses.
eBay is somewhat odd in some extents actually. Whenever eBay has made national news due to some illegality on part of sellers that makes it to CNN etc. traffic jumps upward. The moment people like State Attorney generals and such deliver statements it goes the other way. Weird.
If I could give eBay one piece of advice. And have. It would be to put a delay increment in the bulk loader. I'd bet money they would see a bid and revenue jump. Many sellers with lots of stuff are using it and sales on the net is simply exposure.
I'll give you another example. C/Net auctions. When C/Net first bought the site up from AuctionGate (Race computing) they slapped a big ole' VISIT THE NEW AUCTIONS on C/net's home page. When they did that site sales were absolutely incredible. It outsold any site we have ever attended from eBay to uBid to Onsale.
The micro-categorization at eBay was more than likely done due to bidders saying "I dislike having to look through 6 zillion auctions to find say a genre of book they want". Thats quite understandable and makes sense. However, it does limit the sellers exposure to items and exposure IS sales on the net, well that and presentation. Alot of sellers at eBay make that mistake. Flashy HTML, no HTML have the exact opposite effect that people might think. We sell in some of the most highly competitive goods on the net in computer related goods. Our ad's are all nice and homey feeling w/ soft colors, all the facts, great descriptions and are extremely pleasant to view. We get higher bids then 90% of our competitors. Sales on the net are no different than catalogs or the weekend flyers. Portray professionalism through the ad and confidence stays "up" with consumers.
Now the exact same ad's at Yahoo, nuthin'. The traffic, buying traffic simply isnt there.
Some think "features" make a site, thats incorrect. Put counters in auctions and watch the bids go down. One must think like a consumer. See 500 hits, and 50 bids it must be good. See 40 hits and no bids, they pass.
The majority of web/auction buyers are impulse buyers. Those that are not do their homework and can often find better deals elsewhere. I am an impulse buyer so I totally understand that.
As to "news reporting" places about auctions, auctionwatch has good news. I enjoy reading it. The others I have read are trying to make news not report it. To that end I give AuctionWatch a great deal of credit as they will report news even if its controversial or not necessarily in AW's best interests.
Wired News is another that doesnt fuddle around. Not the magazine mind you, but the news they will deliver free to your email box each and everyday. One of the absolute best resources on the net for "web info" in my opinion.
Twinsoft: The core vendor groups tend to be the ones that "keep the bidders happy". These tend to be the high feedback sellers. We get GOBS of newbies bidding as we have high feedback. There are hundreds of independent sellers that have the same item or a few items we peddle. Their price can be 25% of ours and they wont get the bids where we will. Users who do get "smoked" on a deal very very often will no longer deal with any seller with feedback less than 1000-2000.
Your absolutely right in that eBay needs to take a look at eliminating not only the rotten sellers but more so simply eliminating the means by which it occurs. If a seller cant get at loosing bidders without an online form so eBay can track it that solves a large part of the problem. While an item is "active" ie: not closed there is no reason for a seller to get access to the email addy of the bidder. So for say reserve auctions, if the reserve it not met a seller cant get at the bidder(s) info. So, they cant abuse the reserve and sell outside the service by manipulating the reserve process.
The majority of folks using eBay be they selling or buying are great people. However as the old saying goes "bad apples can ruin a bushell".
What we are hoping eBay will do is not punish the good people, thats the majority there due to bad ones. Instead, the "holes" that allow people to stiff eBay, defraud bidders, manipulate the auctions process should be plugged but NOT in a way that makes such drastic changes to the service as to make it even more difficult to manage than it is.
Our suggestions do exactly that.
Oh! and BTW, I do use more than two fingers to type, I use 8 actually.
reddear: You would not believe some of the hostile mail we get at times. Often from other sellers. Someone will cancel a bid with them, and bid with us. Again, its the professionalism of our ad's and the fact we are not scared to run $1 starts. We dont have any control over it. Bidders do abuse the "bid cancellation" feature, we get 3-4 a week cancel out on bids and bid elsewhere as the bid price is being driven higher. For some reason, the more bids people see, the more bidders come to that auction. Again, Weird.
We do not flame them. Instead, we tell them exactly how we make those ad's, the tools etc. so as they can do better. After that they tend to apologize. We've had bidders who are INSTANTLY hostile (I mean hostile) right from first contact after they win, when we ask them why its the same story everytime. They got ripped off by another seller and when they tried to get the problem resolved they got ripped up in feedback. So the next time they figure they'll take the upper hand.
Flames never accomplish anything, except people viewing the flamer in a bad way. Hostility breeds same and serves no purpose.
merrie: We love eBay too. We consider it our online home of sorts. eBay has told us several times we are one of the best welcome wagons for new bidders at the site. They actually awarded us certificates for sales & service excellence signed by both Pierre & President long before "powersellers" even existed. We hang them proudly in our office. It does mean something. We were very tiny when we started at eBay and thus we understand the plight of upstart sellers and when asked we help them all we can. Not a month goes by where some upstart seller doesnt email us asking questions. We dont brush them off, we take the time to help them all the way to even finding them sourcing for goods if they want to be a business. We explain exactly where to start, how to do it w/o huge risks financially without overwhelming them. As they move forward we often hear back from them with thanks and more questions. How do I process credit cards? What companies are good? What should I know/be aware of. How important is the bank they work with? Shouldnt I use a regional bank with cheaper rates etc. We explain why and why not to make the proper choices. For example, take banks, A national bank such as Chase or Citibank MEANS something over the years. Your being established with them becomes a HUGE asset for business credit, venture capital and getting "the big businesses" out there to realize you are indeed credible. Something as simple as the bank you choose when starting your business 2-3 years down the path can be a HUGE asset.
As to using other sites than eBay, well, many have tried. Its difficult for any upstart to get a foothold in the P2P auctions market. Literally thousands have tried. Most do not have the capital to make a sustained run at a site like eBay. People dont just "come". It takes advertising. This is another reason the core vendor groups are important to eBay. Advertising on the net costs big money and it must be targeted advertising. Upstart sites are chicken and the egg. They cant attract the volume sellers without the buying traffic at the site. They cant attract the buying traffic without the volume sellers at the site thus advertising is an imperative. If one cant advertise due to no $$$ they either need find significant venture capital or build strategic affiliations with places that have traffic. Those places thus want a stake, its money. That tends to scare off the upstart. So they flop around for a while and flounder. Gold's auction, AuctionUniverse etc. are good examples. Its not only limited to P2P venues either, its any commerce. CompUSA for example uses all these rebates to draw customers into the store, if they are not there they are buying nothing. Even with items such as that no guarentee of success is there. Business is a risk.
Its another thing auctioneers tend to "not get". They go fixed price on 99.9% of what they offer in auction. Well, thats not an auction. We have tons of items. Those that are REAL popular, we do $1 starts with. That causes the bidders to partake. With items that are fair or poor sellers we go fixed price. We offer consolidated shipping for one flat rate. So... often they will bid on multiple items to save shipping fee's and still get excellent deals on what they buy.
If a site doesnt have the traffic, $1 starts mean you loose money. If the products being sold are not mainstream popular its often a looser of money. There have been times eBay has went down and we loose LOTS of money on the $1 starts, we dont scream at em'. Its part of the internet game. It happens. Nothing is going to be accomplished by getting upset.
ESC: Whatall... Whynot, Whatnot are words. Just not one's in this particular universe
As Madonna said... You've got to make it express yourself... hey hey hey hey...
posted on January 2, 2001 05:38:48 AM new
Great post, WhyNot.
I don't think Yahoo fumbled the ball. They are starting to realize the importance of auctions. It does attract people. A while back, online auctions was becoming a national pastime, until eBay made it too user-unfriendly.
The fun of eBay used to be browsing the listings. Now it's become a game of "who can place the last-minute snipe bid?" It's really not as fun. "Buy It Now" is a step in the right direction, but if eBay charges for BIN no one will use it.
I picked up a $5 copy of a software program that currently lists for $2500. (This one is an older version.) I'd like to get a "fair" price for it. I can auction this at eBay and hope somebody sees it, or keep paying eBay $2 per week until it sells.
At Yahoo I can display the item at a reasonable minimum bid and just leave it there until it sells. And Yahoo won't come after me with a pitchfork if I change my mind and decide to sell my software elsewhere. I'm going to list this item first at Yahoo. If other sellers do the same thing, buyers will figure it out and shop Yahoo first.
I don't want to topple eBay, since I rely on them. But eBay needs some competition to keep them in line.
posted on January 2, 2001 10:09:57 PM new
Gee... Only two responses. How am I to write a journal like this!
TwinSoft: There is a message thread on AW about Yahoo thinking about charging for listings. Of course there also has been talk in the past about Yahoo being assimilated by eBay. If Yahoo were to charge a quarter listing fee it will be like having a sink full of water (auctions) and someone pulling the stopper out of the drain.
I do not know how true the purported news article is or the reporting organization. As I noted, many news sites like to make news and not report it. Thus they get traffic of all the (pardon the pun) Yahoo's who need go investigate and read, often picking up 2-3 cents for a banner rotation and thus being able to eat for the rest of the week. The web is just so weird at times.
I would assume if a report is credible it will appear on AW. AW as I noted at least reports new and doesnt try to make it. Does not mean I necessarily agree with all thats said but its clear they dont try and embelish .
If Yoohoo were assimilated by eBay I see no advantage to eBay. 99.9% of the people listing at YooHoo will list at eBay as well. So of the (uh oh) whatall 2.9 million listings probably less than 20,000 are unique to Yahoo.
If eBay were to strike up a deal similar to the branding done w/ AOL that may well increase traffic, it certainly wont result in less, so thats a plus.
I have often wondered why eBay did not attempt to go the route of Fairmarket. eBay can succeed in that, Fairmarket needs to learn ho to lace their shoes before putting them on their feet and then scratching their heads. I laughed real hard like when Fairmarket first made their announcement of "we will put a serious dent in eBay". The only serious dent made was to the toilet paper roll in the john where they made and read their own press releases.
How they could POSSIBLY fail with sites such as MSN, ZDNET, Lycos, Dell etc. as affiliated sites is totally beyond me. I would LOVE to hear the song and dance they gave those entities for them to sign a contract.
Amazon is poising itself to become quite possibly the #1 eCommerce site on the net. They alienated groups of sellers by making changes and implmenting features that are truly great features but accomplished by engineers. I always viewed it as whats said at the top level management that they want done then goes to engineering who says, this is what we can do. Wrong Answer (buzzzz). If its not done right, than its often better to not do it at all. If eBay makes some really bad engineering decisions Amazon will be the beneficiary. Time will tell I guess.
ESC: I sincerely hope the recount does not happen via the state of Florida which certainly proved the state of Florida is in a "state" of its own I figured that they could have made the issue much simpler. Either strap both candidates to a shuttle and launch, he who stays on longest or for that matter falls off first wins OR bring both of them to Disneyland and the one who can recite all the names of the seven dwarfs first wins and if THATS a tie, well then take it to the supreme court as long as it doesnt prempt any Scooby Doo episodes.
posted on January 2, 2001 10:52:34 PM new
Well, it's the latest in a string of disappointing but not surprising policy changes. EBay continues to prove the cynics right.
The changes concerning "side sales" if initiated by a seller or bidder are entirely self-serving and, IMO, can be ignored with a clear conscience. EBay deserves to be taken into court on some of them on either First Amendment grounds or restraint-of-trade grounds, as they push the limits of what should be fair game for contracts. Especially since eBay has such a dominant market share that it may well deserve U.S. Department of Justice scrutiny for abusive or anticompetitive practices that it gets away with only BECAUSE it has such a dominant position.
I'm more sympathetic about the "spam" from third parties issue, though I'd note it took them a long time to get religion about that. I and others have been saying for months that privacy and data mining are bigger problems than the ones they were focusing on. But since privacy and data mining didn't directly affect eBay revenues, they dragged their feet on it. Typical. Someone had to MAKE them care about it (no doubt some threat of a lawsuit).
Not many heroes here...the lawyers can ruin it, and the management greedheads can ruin it. Pretty bad when you're having to root for one group as a check against the other.
posted on January 2, 2001 11:01:22 PM new
Yes, after my earlier post Yahoo announced new fees. There's some grumbling about it. D'oh! PayDirect is probably not far behind.
If Yahoo cleans up the auctions and gets rid of all the flakes, I am willing to pay a fee. Wish I didn't have to. I'd list on Yahoo, but in the Software category most of the auctions are for homemade "burned" CDs. It's hard to sell commercial software there. Also, Yahoo only allows one of an item to be listed at a time. I won't sell on Yahoo right now, but if they clean it up I am willing to pay a quarter.
I know Yahoo is taking steps to cut down on the bootlegs. I got the equivalent of a VeRO letter from Microsoft via Yahoo last month. Microsoft is a pain, but there is large-scale bootlegging going on at Yahoo where a complete Adobe software library can be bought for $25.
So, are we looking at "Bride Of Ebay?" I am feeling just a LITTLE bit manipulated!
This topic is 8 pages long: 1new2new3new4new5new6new7new8new
, getting them with reputable firms for merchant accounts to process credit cards etc. What comes around goes around basically. One seller we helped "hook up" on the net sells audio equipment. He was so grateful to us for opening some doors for him to top points of sale on the net he sold me a total kick butt home theatre