posted on May 10, 2001 02:21:05 PM new
I've never blocked or cancelled a bid, handling problems (and I've had very few) on an individual basis. Short of having a very specific problem with a very specific person, I can't imagine why I'd want to block bidders by category. Everyone started with 0 feedback, and it didn't make us dishonest; lots of folks on AOL (I was myself until a few months ago) and that didn't make us dishonest either. Guess I'd rather live with the assumption that most people are honest - maybe a little ignorant, but honest - and take it from there! Life's too short! mary
posted on May 10, 2001 03:25:57 PM new
>"Guess I'd rather live with the assumption that most people are honest - maybe a little ignorant, but honest - and take it from there!"<
I agree. The vast MAJORITY of AOL users are honest - "maybe a little ignorant, but honest" - but this does not prevent the small MINORITY who use bogus AOL IDs for the MAJORITY of scams and shill bidding on eBay.
posted on May 10, 2001 07:10:41 PM new
>>"There are already enough ding-dong sellers out there with abysmal customer service/ selling behaviors...we don't need ebay to give a tool that could allow even more sellers to step over the line into anti-business behavior that can affect the rest of us."<<
Ebay allows users to create bogus AOL IDs at will. These bogus IDs are used to run up the price and block legitimate bidders from bidding on their competitors items.
This is BID BLOCKING. And this scam blocks ALL bidders from bidding, regardless of the bidders ISP or feedback.
I would prefer having the option to set my own criteria for blocking bidders with 0 or negative feedback instead of having ALL bidders blocked.
I guess what it comes down to is that there are two diametrically opposed viewpoints about most of these business issues.
One viewpoint is that each business has a responsibility to all other businesses (beyond that which is based on the law). This viewpoint argues that anything that one business might legally do that has a side effect of diminishing another business should be controlled or prevented.
The other viewpoint is that each business has a responsibility only to itself. To follow the law and to do whatever the owners of the business feel is in their best interests. This viewpoint argues that anything the business might legally do is very simply the business of that business only. How it affects other businesses is not its primary concern.
I do think that concerns that bid blocking by some sellers will have an adverse effect on other sellers is entirely overblown. If someone has such a concern they rightly ought to be far more concerned about the many aspects of doing business on eBay that has a very obvious deleterious effect.
Shilling, scamming, deadbeat bidding, system availability and reliability, fees, insurance fraud...
These issues have far more impact than the oddball seller who does something to shoot themselves in the foot.
posted on May 11, 2001 09:34:17 AM new
Code..in this specific situation I don't think it is as simple as two opposing views on the responsibility of a business to toehr businesses.
We sell in a co-dependant environment...each of us depends on the other seller to service OUR customer in a way that does not allienate that customer. It is really a unique selling environment and one that means the traditional "independant retailer" method has to be re-examined. What each of us does in our selling on ebay can have a profound impact on the customer base we all share.
Since it is a shared customer base being sold to at a shared marketplace, if that customer base is destroyed in any way not only the individual seller who "pi**ed the customer off is affected but so are other sellers...as is the marketplace itself. Let that marketplace gain the reputation of being anti-customer and the marketplace itself can end up failing. If that were to happen then even the seller who has excellant customer service and business practices can't sell because the WHOLE STORE is being boycotted by the customer pool.
So in this unique marketplace I think the individual seller has to think of the total selling community.
Plus...the managers of the marketplace has a right to regulate it...and hopefully they will realize a suggestion like yours will be more harmful to the entire marketplace.
But there is an easy way to satisfy you and me at the same time...
Your suggestion makes it so a bidder is blocked from placing a bid on a widget he sees on the auction pages...and he is advised the seller will not accept his bid based on some criteria the seller has set. this could really tick off a buyer.
But if the buyer could never see the auction pages of items he is blocked from he is unaware he is being targeted as a "bad buyer".
I suggest that ebay allow the seller to block based on certain criteria (to be decided after polling the community of sellers). When a seller blocks say AOL users then that seller's auctions do not show when an AOL bidder does a search (seller, item, completed) or when the AOL bidder searches the categories.
In other words...the AOL bidder never knows you are selling the widget he wants if you have blocked AOL bidders.
You are happy because you didn't have to get personally involved with telling a bidder you didn't want his business and your auctions will not be bid on by AOL users.
The reat of us are happy because the customer doesn't know he has been blocked and is less likely to get ticked off and stop buying on ebay.
And it has a few added benifits too. Depending on how many sellers block certain classes of buyers there is the possibility of less congestion in the categories. Just think...if 1/3 of the sellers in a certain category blocked AOL users then when the AOL user sees the category it is easier to navigate (less widgets for sale to him)...why , to an AOL user it will seem like ebay in the old days.
And of course, if the buyer never even KNOWS you have the same widget up for sale as I do (and for less money) then he will be bidding on my widget as if it was less common than it really is...he will think he better bid now because there are so few up for sale he might not get another chance.
I can see the hits and bids going up for those few of us who think the bidding should be open to everyone. Those of us who are willing to take your "problem children" would have much less competition this way.
You see...as I see human nature...when a buyer can see your auction and desires the item and then is denied the right to bid on your widget, the buyer might just get angry and not look further... he wants the one he's not allowed to have. But if he never knows about your widget he will never be upset he couldn't bid...because he never KNEW he couldn't bid.
Another person who could benefit from this is ebay itself. They could charge a 25 cent fee per auction that blocks bidders. This would help defray the cost of providing this service and could help Meg reach those goals she has promised wall street. And since it is a per auction fee, the seller can utilize the blocking on a per auction basis...on low priced items no blocking, on high price items block.
Seems like a win-win-win-win solution to me. Customer wins (he's not being ticked off), the seller wins (he can sell to "selected" clientel), ebay wins (helps the bottom profit line) and those of us who want to sell to everyone win (our customers aren't being driven off by paranoid sellers)
[ edited by amy on May 11, 2001 09:47 AM ]
posted on May 11, 2001 09:52:49 AM newBut if the buyer could never see the auction pages of items he is blocked from he is unaware he is being targeted as a "bad buyer".
A possible problem with this idea is that in order to block the potential bidder from viewing items not available to him, he would have to be logged in so that the blocking criteria (feedback, isp, etc.) could be used to generate the list of items available.
A person not yet registered on eBay who was just browsing would see a certain number of items available. Once registered and logged in, this list of items may be smaller, and may not include the particular item that the bidder registered in order to bid on.
posted on May 11, 2001 10:21:04 AM new
Mrpotatoehead...kind of the same kind of situation that occurs with a registered user who sees a widget they have desired for ages, goes to bid and are told.. "sorry, the seller has blocked bids from buyers like you"
posted on May 11, 2001 12:44:07 PM new
I believe you would have a hard time finding any sellers who would block bids from entire ISPs. Most sellers in favor of these options, would be primarily interested in blocking bids based on feedback and/or bid retractions.
Yahoo sellers had the option of filtering or blocking bidders based on feedback. Setting the filter at +1 to +3 for higher priced items pretty much eliminated problems with bogus IDs. This option works reasonably well for sellers and motivates buyers to follow the rules and retain their feedback instead of creating new IDs when they receive a negative for non-payment.
That sounds like a reasonable approach to me. That it might require folk to login wouldn't be all that onerous either, in my opinion.
You want to employ a listing filter criteria as a buyer? Well then, log in and invoke the list by doing so.
You want to not be teased by seeing auctions that the seller has set up criteria that will block your bid? Then log in and let the software do the filtering for you by comparing your profile to the seller's crtieria before adding the auction to any display (whether by category or by word search).
Incidentally, I would agree with you that there is a certain responsibility on the part of every eBayer to act in a reasonable manner towards the rest of eBaydom. But, because there are many who are abject failures in terms of their "social" responsibilities, I think it only fair that responsible folk have the means to protect themselves from the miscreants. That those same miscreants would abuse the opportunity that must be afforded to all is regretable. That seems to be how things normally go and I don't believe the answer is to deny the responsible folk the use of resaonable protection.
posted on May 11, 2001 02:21:03 PM new
>"I do think that concerns that bid blocking by some sellers will have an adverse effect on other sellers is entirely overblown"<
Well said. Amy's argument is based on an irrational assumption that there are a significant amount of eBay sellers more interested in blocking bidders than selling at good prices with a high sell thru rate.
She also makes the assumption that in the rare or occasional case where a bidder is blocked from bidding on an item, the bidder will automatically consider eBay as hostile or "anti-business", where in reality most of these bidders would understand why they were blocked (the item is high priced and they have little to no feedback or negative feedback, etc.)
She also ignores the fact that many bidders are concerned about shill bidding and scams on eBay, and would welcome steps that would help elimintate them. These steps would also motivate users to follow the rules and keep their feedback intact.
posted on May 12, 2001 05:44:40 PM new
Sasoony...My understanding is that the definition of "shill bidding" is for the SELLER to artificially raise the price on HIS auctions through the use of fake ids or by having "friends" do it for him.
It is highly unlikely that a seller would filter out those ids he is using to shill his auctions as he WANTS those ids to bid. A filtering system such as Code suggested would do absolutely zilch in stopping shilling. It also would do nothing to stop seller scams.
also...I am not assuming all bidder would think it was ebay who is stopping them from bidding...but there will be a large enough group who see it that way to possibly do harm.
What makes you think a bidder, who realizes it was the seller who had blocked his bid because he had low feedback, would think "oh, well, thats ok, I don't mind this seller thinking my money isn't good"? Come on...the bidder will STILL be highly INSULTED. all you have to do is search through the AW archives to find threads where buyers are complaining because a seller has a 10 day hold on checks...they got pi**ed because "I have a high feedback with no negatives..how DARE this seller treat me like a check bouncer!!"
Code...my proposal would make use of a log-in feature.
If you are a registered user and you log in then you would only be affected by those filters that would normally affect you (you have under 10 feedback and your blocked from any seller who will not sell to buyers with under 10 feedback).
If you are not a registered user and therefore cannot log-in, or you are registered but chose not to log-in, you would be able to "window shop" but when you perused the listings you would be unable to see the listings from any sellers who had any type of blocking filter in place.
My "shared responsibility" philosophy does NOT extend to bidders. It has to do with the SELLERS doing nothing that would reduce the shared buyer pool.
Your talking about people who don't pay etc and others protecting themsleves from that type of miscreant. It is just that type of "protecting" that could damage the customer base.
Lets say ebay allows us to black based on number of negatives. How many people have negatives from deadbeat buyers who retaliated for negs given them? How many people have negs from "clueless" buyers who negged over something as tivial as "didn't contact me fast enough after the auction ended"? How many buyers have negatives from sellers who retaliated for the deserved negative the buyer gave them?
How many of these people will be unjustly blocked from bidding because of the negs they may currently wear as a "badge of being a responsible ebay seller who gives deadbeats deserved negs"? How many of those will be angry about it?
[ edited by amy on May 12, 2001 06:03 PM ]
[ edited by amy on May 12, 2001 06:09 PM ]
mary